What Etsy Did When Temu Listings Infiltrated Its Site

by: Lisa

this is too little too late. the buyers threat of leaving if etsy doesn't do... has come and gone. they have left.

by: racheltreasures

this is yet another of the many many reasons why I left Etsy 15 months ago.

Any time I need help from Shopify, I NEVER have to give them any personal information!

Get a grip Etsy and handmade sellers, run and run fast from Etsy!

by: Lisa

why leave completely? etsy is a great source of easy marketing. I mean, you still  get traffic, it's just not as much. But etsy shouldn't kid themselves, they  have ruined their brand.  

by: Rexford

Did he really say "We've very focused on suppressing visibility on items that are not handmade because the Etsy brand is about things that are made just for you, made by the maker, and we think being even more Etsy is the right answer for the commoditized commerce."

Seriously?  Does he ever look at the site?  Suppressing?  Since when?

Everything that I see from Shein looks like it would fall apart in the wash.

by: LDWCallsOut

It is concerning to see Etsy Handmade defined by Silverman as items "made just for you".  This sounds like another push for "personalized" mass made items, rather than legit items designed and crafted by the shop owner that are often not custom made-to-order or personalized in any way. 

Chinese manufacturers have been stealing photo images from Etsy shops for like 15 years now.  It many cases, it's not hard to distinguish a reseller listing selling Chinese product from a legit seller who has been ripped off.  Etsy's tech staff has to know what they are looking for before they can program bots to find only -- well, mostly anyway -- reseller listings.

by: Stone Cutter

*** Less money made, per sale ***

Years ago, around 2018, a bunch of canvas Fine Artists showed up on the Etsy forum with complaints that their sales had completely stopped. These artists sold paintings priced at $600-$1000, with over 5000 sales, each.

Instead, Etsys algorithm gave “search” results to digital prints priced at $19.95, which is pretty much no money for Etsy.

I have no doubt that Etsy has lost commissions, per sale, as Etsy thought that selling “volume” would be Etsys golden ticket. By allowing cheap mass production to take over its site, it puts pressure on better quality artists while Etsy makes very little money per sale.

Todays data remains clear, the top 20% of U.S. wage earners continue to spend well while propping up overall retail sales. Recently, CEO Silverman was quoted as saying that “these are difficult times”. But difficult for who? These are only difficult times for the cheap Buyer that Etsy has attracted — the Buyer who looks for that cheaply made designer import for $19.95.

Cheap Temu products will do nothing but drill down on Etsys “bottom line” by taking away profits from higher selling products.

There is no money selling to people with no money. And Etsy is now feeling the financial pain as they turned their backs on quality products.  

by: Queen of the Jungle

JS is not kidding anyone.  His attitude is strictly "show me the money."

The people who run the show have zero regard for the sellers who are working for less than minimum wage in most cases.   They pretend to want to "make commerce human" yet it's impossible to speak to a human with all the robots that have replaced them.

I have no hope that Etsy will change for the better any time soon.   I have other places online and off where I sell my items in addition to my Etsy shops.   Business has been bad for quite some time but I still make at least a few sales here and there.  

Everyone who's a long time seller knows exactly what happened.   One of the first things JS and his band of merry men did was to remove Vintage and Handmade as marquee categories on the first page.   It's been downhill since then.

by: MLo

Apparently Temu is a PAIN POINT for Etsy!  

by: me22

Silverman andEtsy are pathetic. They are "suppressing" listings that aren't handmade? Really?

I can barely shop on Etsy anymore because most of the items for sale is NOT handmade. It is awful.

You can find Amazon mystery boxes for sale on Etsy! You can find soda and candy being resold as is among all the jewelry resellers.

I ha great success on Etsy but no more. Search is so cluttered up with crap, I can't sell or barely buy anything there now because it takes too much effort trying to figure out if what I am buying is truly handmade or not.

As a seller I am disgusted and as I STOCK OWNER, I am angry and feel like I have been defrauded. I would never have bought so many stocks if I had known Etsy allowed so many resellers and that they lie in their slogans.  

by: Bidonmine

I stopped using Etsy a few years ago because of all the factory made items that littered my search... and because people could not find my handmade items due to all the ''noise''.  

by: mountaingirl

@stonecutter - ''There is no money selling to people with no money''. You nailed it! Etsy has filled up the site with mass-produced garbage that can be found for less practically everywhere else online. The true, quality, handmade has now become buried among so much garbage.

I sell on Etsy, but sadly, I hardly ever shop there anymore. I don't want to waste hours of my time wading through garbage and having to reverse image search every ''handmade'' item I run across. Silverman has ruined the site for buyers who actually are interested in spending higher amounts of money on quality items.

by: LDWCallsOut

Not excusing the poor management decisions by Etsy under Silverman...but Etsy started allowing resellers of mass-made ''handmade'' and ''vintage can be any age'' retail boutiques during the Summer of 2015.  Silverman wasn't appointed CEO until 2016.  

by: cvsharkey

Hiring freezes & "cost reduction," ie layoffs?

So, I guess increased revenues from their sellers and touted as "growth," when actual sales have declined are finally coming home to roost.

If you're holding their stock--you best keep a close eye on it. It's been sinking this year.

by: Snapped

“ Instead, Etsys algorithm gave “search” results to digital prints priced at $19.95, which is pretty much no money for Etsy.”

Essentially the same myopic plagiarism of process that eBay and in some ways, other venues which don’t own their wares have done too.  That’s because ‘success’ for those responsible is measured by ‘growth’.  Quality, legacy, and too often, reality rarely make it past the receptionist by that standard.  

The fact it encompasses any one ‘competitor’ or another for the ‘inventory’ the venue makes (these days ‘chooses’) available is not the focus though.  The ‘inventory’ itself is the issue, specifically quality vs quantity.

Etsy started with a legacy niche.  But the ‘inventory’ for that is unpredictable, and any ‘growth’ envisioned would fall way short of boardroom ‘goals’.  Being of ‘sound’ education and unimaginative mind, those responsible thought only to look at the other guy’s paper who seemed to have this ‘growth’ question nailed, and try to copy their answers to this quarter’s quiz.

Not a one of them lazy management pros able to see that if they wanted to ‘expand’, and if the only way they could see was to ‘disrupt’ their niche, perhaps if they could do it AND still nourish their niche by fire-walling it from the pablum for the masses - then THAT would truly BE innovative.

Meantime, that those counterfeiters and cookie cutters out there would ‘borrow’ another seller’s intellectual property for their own purpose isn’t really the venue’s issue either, they say - though it should be if the venue keeps insisting on controlling the inventory, especially so hypocritically, AND the transaction.  Until the unlikely event that the venue does take some responsibility though, sellers need to do what they can to protect and prosecute violations of their title rights on their own.

And that’s another test of tolerance to endure.