“Increasing seller fees by 30% after two years of record sales is nothing short of pandemic profiteering. After the planned increase, our fees as sellers will have more than doubled in less than 4 years.”
That’s how an online petition at Co-Worker.org characterizes a planned fee increase by online retailer Etsy, an increase that could be incredibly impactful for some of the smaller dealers who sell their creations on the internet marketplace.
Over 5,000 people have already signed the petition, which continues, “Even though it's the hard work of Etsy's sellers who've made it the massively successful company it is today, we have fewer rights and less of a voice in our workplaces than ever.”
The retailer announced the increase last month, immediately sparking a social media backlash among many of the site’s 5.3 million registered sellers. And the petition isn’t the only venue where vendors are planning to make their voices heard.
In an effort to create pressure on Etsy to rethink the increase, a few of the retailer’s sellers are organizing a “strike,” asking other like-minded sellers and buyers to boycott the website from April 11 to April 18 as they look to freeze as much of the company’s business as possible.
This is not the first time Etsy’s policies have rankled the sellers who use its platform since the company became publicly traded in 2015.
Kristi Cassidy, a costume-maker who has sold her wares on Etsy for 15 years, told Buzzfeed News that she feels the site is moving further and further away from its original mission and hurting creators who depend on the site.
Cassidy said the site underwent a shift in values five years ago with a policy change that seemed to de-emphasize higher quality craftwork in favor of cheaper, commercially-made items, a change they exacerbated in 2020 with the introduction of the Star Seller program, which rewards sellers for outsourcing actual production of their original designs in service of faster shipping to buyers.
This loose definition of “handmade” is harmful to her business, Cassidy said. “At that point, I decided, no matter what is going on in the world or my life, the next time Etsy does something that hurts me, I will fight back.”
Etsy also instituted a mandatory minimum 12% advertising fee that same year that caught sellers off-guard – and that they are not allowed to opt out of. “Do I just charge everyone 12% more or agree to take a pay cut on some orders?” Cassidy said. “[It] really cuts into your labor.”
All of these changes led Cassidy to lead the charge on the Etsy Strike movement, which she coordinated with other sellers on Discord. She says she hopes to “start a solidarity movement” that helps disgruntled sellers extract their businesses from Etsy, a move that will prove challenging since Etsy owns the customer data, hindering a seller’s ability to continue to connect with loyal customers if they leave the site.
For their part, Etsy’s official statement on the fee increase is that the money will be used to “expand our efforts around marketing, customer support, and removing listings that don't meet our policies.”
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