etsy Sells Out

Yesterday (October 1, 2013), etsy notified their sellers that they have been screwed. They did it in a very nice manner, with an email letting them know they have been screwed, a video explaining how the action of being screwed is really for everyone's good, etc.

According to the email, "Over the past eight years, Etsy sellers have astounded (us) with their creativity, ingenuity and ambition. This is a marketplace we make together; we lay the foundation and you build on it. You’ve grown Etsy in ways we never predicted, but part of our foundation hasn’t kept up."........That's true.

"Sellers tell us that our policies for shops with handmade items have become confusing, intrusive and restrictive. It’s time to give those policies a renovation."........True again.

And then the screwing begins. What we etsy sellers hoped to happen was for etsy to stop allowing many of their sellers to sell mass-produced items, primarily from China, and passing them off as handmade items. Those of us that make one of a kind items are truly what etsy was all about when it first began. Back in the early days they constantly stressed "Buy Hand-made"!!

Well, that's not at all what happened. Instead of etsy putting on their big-boy pants and telling these shop owners to cease and desist, instead they caved in to money. They don't care what is ethical, they just want the money these shops are bringing in. Hello???? In what sense of the word does "handmade" bring to mind Chinese sweat shops. I know my studio is only as big as a bedroom. There's no room for an assembly line in here!

So etsy wants us all to believe that this is for everyone's good. This is to allow shop owners to take responsibility for how their product is made and being honest about it. My question is how will these shop owners be forced to comply with this new guideline? I seriously doubt these shop owners will even take the initiative to apply.

In one of the Facebook groups I belong to, it's evident that people are not buying into this. Left and right people are scrambling to get their own website up and running, or move their listings to other venues such as ArtFire. I, too, am seriously considering abandoning ship. Etsy has been good to me as far as visibility goes, but with SO much competition on etsy, you can't also compete with ridiculously low priced items from China. It's like trying to set up a kiosk in the middle of Wal-Mart!

I may not leave etsy immediately, it's going to take a little while. I already have my own domain (beadifulworld.com) with a few items listed. I need to do some tweaking to make it more user-friendly, but this is a "heads up" to everyone that it's coming.