The Venderia 100% supports the #etsystrike. Many of the makers who supply our vending machines with fresh, cool, hand-crafted, locally made product are also Etsy sellers. For TWO decades Etsy was main marketplace for buying & selling hand-crafted products online. Etsy was a pioneer & a pillar in the digital craft community. Etsy was awesome for a long. And then in 2015 they went public,
became beholden to dickhead shareholders,
flooded the marketplace with sellers who AREN'T small batch artisans,
raised fees for sellers,
pushed sellers to raise their prices & offer free shipping & more gracious shipping policies,
All while, steadily changing its policies to gain more control over the sellers' creative content like photos & listings.
This is a BIG DEAL. Etsy has started using seller images for online advertisements the seller has no control over & gets no information about.
Let me tell you how fucked that is.
Selling handmade products is not easy. By definition, the product are small batch and made with love. If I giant corporation (Etsy), takes your shop listing and advertises it who knows where to who knows who, your shop gets flooded with orders.
Can you fill all those orders? No. So where does the customer go? To the NOT handcrafted, shitty knock-offer resellers Etsy recently let list on the platform.
This is a mess for so many reasons.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Boycott.
Sign the petition.
Most important: BUY DIRECT FROM MAKERS. Cut out the middleman.
Meanwhile MAKERS, maybe you should start selling your products in vending machines of your own instead of (or in addition to) Etsy & other online retails. Selling in vending machines is great option that more people should consider. Especially for people who do events, having products displayed & available for sale in a vending machine (instead of in storage where they make zero money) between events is an option many more makers may want to consider.
Artisans have options when it comes to selling their goods: tabling at events/fairs, selling/consigning to local stores, selling online. VENDING MACHINES are one of the options too.
For more about using your own vending machines to sell your own products: CREATIVE VENDING REVOLUTION
In addition to boycotting Etsy, you can sign the petition here. See seller demands below.
Shout out to Sarah Epperson for designing these graphics.