Maybe if Etsy’s “crafters only” business model also applied to themselves—DIY computers made from egg cartons and lawnmower parts, internet run on hamster-wheels, office inside a treehouse—I could get behind it.
As it stands, Etsy earns around $90 million a year off their sellers, who themselves on average each earn less than minimum wage from sales of their own work. *cough* (Slave labor!) *cough*
Anyway, here they are looking like mean ol’ jerks:
In January, e-commerce site Etsy.com banned Tracy Robertson from selling goods on its marketplace after discovering that she had outsourced some of her work.
“My business is completely crippled right now,” Robertson, a model and fashion designer, wrote in an email to Etsy after the company pulled the plug on her account. “I moved my entire catalog over to Etsy and closed my personal Web site because I loved and trusted your platform so much.”
Etsy, which promises shoppers handmade items, stood by its action. Robertson had delegated too much of her operation to other people, leading Etsy to flag her items as “factory made” and revoke her right to sell on the site.
It should also be noted that Robertson, above, relied exclusively on Etsy for sales (even closing her own website), and this is always a bad idea. Don’t build your business entirely on someone else’s platform. And read the TOS.
What do you think about this? Any Etsy sellers out there who’d like to comment?