Last week, Wired Magazine ran an online story about etsy alienating it’s base in the interest of making money. There is no shortage of articles about how etsy has lost it’s soul. Just a couple of weeks ago, I told my own story about closing down my etsy shop. While my decision had just as much to do my personal change in focus as it did with etsy’s policy shifts, I feel no less disappointed at the transformation of the handmade marketplace into a corporate one.
Etsy was the place to go when you didn’t want to buy from a box store. It was a place where you could easily find unique, handmade pieces. It was a reliable source for gifts that had a story. Etsy was the site that connected the consumer directly to the producer. You knew when you shopped on etsy that you were helping an artist fund her dreams.
Buying through etsy was also subversive. You were taking a stand against consumer culture one piece of handmade jewelry or vintage tableware at a time. Your purchase wasn’t just a new handbag, it was a protest against mass production and etsy was the standard bearer.
With Etsy becoming a publicly traded company, that protest starts to feel a little flimsy. The oomph is out of the gesture because the primary focus is no longer on the independent artist, it’s on how to maximize profits for the company at large. Sure, etsy will still connect you with an artist,if you take the time to sift through the pages and pages of trendy mass produced stuff to find what you’re looking for, and that artist will still get your money, minus the small fee etsy takes.
Charging fees to sellers has always been the way etsy makes money. Compared to the price of running a brick and mortar store, etsy is relatively inexpensive: $.20 to list, a small percentage when something sells, a few dollars a week to boost listings. It’s a humble investment, and when you’re looking for a place to launch your fledgling handmade business, etsy sounds like a steal.
The way etsy attracts it’s sellers through campaigns like Quit Your Day Job, which features shops that make a living wage for their sellers feels disingenuous. The series plays on the romantic daydreams of office workers who hate their jobs, promising that they too might one day work from their own sunlit studio. While grist.org reports that only 18% of etsy sellers are able to make a living from their shops, etsy sells the promise of a living wage to budding entrepreneurs who have little chance of making it. Meanwhile, etsy collects more fees from small sellers struggling to just have their items seen, let alone purchased.
The system favors those sellers who already have a high volume of sales or have the money to invest in etsy’s on-site advertising before any sales are made. Whether the artist is selling or not, etsy is making money. Charging sellers just to get their products seen is likely to cost them more as making money takes precedence over providing a unique marketplace. Making this switch turns etsy into the kind of company shoppers like me were trying to avoid in the first place. The site’s focus has become less about helping the consumer find the perfect product, and more about producing profit, through luring in new sellers.
And yet, there are still artists on etsy whose shops are a big part part of their business plan. Some don’t sell anywhere else. If we want to keep the focus on the artists, the ones whose dreams to make a living from their art are completely legitimate, what is a consumer to do?
First, I would do a little digging and see if the artist sells anywhere else you can purchase from: her website, a local boutique, a craft show, etc. Buy local if possible and keep that money in your community. But if you’ve found the perfect self-striping sock yarn from an indie dyer two states away who only sells on etsy, then go ahead and buy it. Your purchase is still helping that artist live her dream, even if etsy isn’t.