The reseller frenzy on Etsy is peaking with a fever pitch. If you were to go off the Site Help section of the forums, reselling on Etsy might be a greater threat than climate change/global warming/global cooling/global whatever and that there terrorisms. Resellers will eat your children, set your house on fire, and replace the contents of your bank account with fake Gucci bags.Before you consider me being a pro-reseller, I'm just going to tell you we two lovely ferrets do not support reselling. We don't condone the pushing of knock off junk on Etsy either. It's not good for anyone on Etsy.
With that pesky factoid out of the way, I'd also like to say we really don't give a flying squirrel about hunting them all down and bring them to e-justice either. Maybe we have better things to do. Maybe they haven't come to our door and forced us to buy knock offs yet. Maybe they haven't stole our hard earned money. Maybe I can spot a knock off merchant from 1000 yards away. Maybe we're just jaded.
It's not that these people shouldn't be reported. Go ahead and report Hello Kitty factory junk straight off the boat from China. Go ahead and report people selling Glade candles as handmade. That's the right thing to do.
However, my biggest problem is the people who spend most of their day bitching and whining about resellers in the forum. It's like they're just itching for some sort of crusade. You come into the forums, post page after page of how resellers hurt your business, and spend all day hunting them. It's not hard to see that it might not be the resellers hurting your business there, bucko. It's the fact that instead of working hard at your shop, you're off hunting straw men. You complain it's ruining Etsy's reputation. Maybe so. Frankly, I spend most of the day on my side and resold items barely register on my radar. You have to be looking pretty darn hard to find them. Etsy is NOT eBay yet, nor will it probably ever be. Stop thinking that a tiny handful of bad apples are singly going to ruin everything and leave us bankrupt. That's reactionary junk at it's finest.
So, now the completely competent at everything Etsy administration is asking for our help in fighting the reseller problem. How could that ever go wrong? It's not like history is not filled with activities like that which went horribly and fatally astray. Before I get reamed for comparing Etsy fighting resellers with the Holocaust and the US Communism episode, they're not completely comparable. There are small parallels, though.Mark my words: This won't end where people want it to. As an amateur history buff, stuff like this always goes badly. Always. It won't be long before good, honest shops end up labeled as resellers. It won't be long before good vintage folk come under the long hard gaze of suspicion. It won't be long after that when all supply shops start receiving nasty glares.
The resellers need to be stopped, but having Etsy react the way they did is going to be a serious issue. If you see an resold item, report it. Report it twice. Whatever. That's noble and great. Seriously.
Just don't join the hysteria. Or do go ahead and join the hysteria. I can't force you to choose. Whatever you choose, when things go badly, remember that this little ferret tried to say something. And if I'm totally wrong, and this whole war against resellers succeeds, we a
ll win.So, to close all of this long winded junk up: Choose what you do wisely. Don't let the battle keep you from tending to your shop. Make sure not to hurt any innocent people. And, this is important, do not try and sell your baby on Etsy. That's the kind of stuff that brings bad attention. And a whole trainload of cheesy jokes.
Mark it 8, Dude
The Surly Ferret
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1 comments:
I agree 200%!
Plus, I am so tired of people who lack initiative or creativity or are just thieves who steal the ideas, as well as the titles of other people's creations!! And, they make them poorly and sell them cheaply.
Resale of supplies and creations is a big no-no to me and stealing people’s ideas and using the same titles (!!!) word for word, and then under pricing something that took them two hours to slap together is also a giant no-no. Stealing is very “popular” now on Etsy. And, I don’t know who monitors this or who one goes to get it stopped.
Also, anyone noticing tagging? I found SEVEN Barbie dolls 10 years and less in age being sold as vintage!! Are we now becoming eBay? I have already reported these people three times and they are still on Etsy.
Etsy seems to be losing its focus as it grows. Etsy is for handmade and, vintage (20+ years old), and supplies. We have to keep Etsy pure. We have to. We are the suppliers and the artists.
And...(See Ferrets, you hit a hot button for me) please someone explain to me how Re-ment can be sold as a "supply"? They are undercutting the miniature artists who are artists and create gorgeous HANDMADE food, furniture, baked goods, and the like. Re-ment and no one will ever convince me that it is NOT a supply. Yes, you can make earrings out of them, but that is NOT their company’s marketing plan. They are doll and dollhouse accessories.
If Re-ment can sell on Etsy, well, then let’s follow that logic…Then, I can sell my fashion dolls from last year as supplies if I sell them nude. Remake artists can remake them, right? So, then a 2009 doll nude can become a supply? That dilutes the supply category, as well as the vintage one. As the Ferrets say, watch what will happen… Snowballing and Etsy’s reputation will plummet like … you know whose.
I am proud to sell on Etsy. But, it has to remain pure and stay on its focus...handmade, vintage, and supplies.
Enchanticals
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