Cassidy explained Etsy’s most up-to-date fee increase, which would price tag her all-around $100 for each thirty day period in the course of peak profits intervals, as “the remaining straw.”
“I’ve been definitely upset at every single recent system improve,” she said. One annoyance was the introduction in March 2020 of an marketing system that Cassidy cannot opt out of, but for which Etsy expenses a minimal 12% fee. Since Etsy and not the sellers themselves operate the new promotion application, the service fees come as a “complete shock,” which Cassidy explained has produced it challenging to correctly selling price things in her retail outlet and run a sustainable enterprise. “Do I just charge anyone 12% more or agree to just take a paycut on some orders?” she mentioned. “[It] seriously cuts into your labor.”
Etsy has said publicly that it’s doing the job on much better policing of sellers who violate its principles, which restrict profits to handmade or classic goods, or crafting provides. But in July 2020, Cassidy claimed Etsy introduced however a further new method, Star Vendor, which she claimed rewarded sellers who could ship faster by planning first merchandise and outsourcing output (which Etsy says qualify as “handmade”), though excluding stores like hers. “At that place, I resolved, no issue what is going on in the environment or my life, the subsequent time Etsy does something that hurts me, I will combat back again,” she explained.
So when Etsy declared but one more cost hike in February, Cassidy posted on Reddit, “We Need an Etsy Sellers Union” and observed that dozens of other Etsy sellers agreed with her. She became the de facto chief of Etsy Strike and, in coordination with other sellers through Discord, wrote this week’s petition and declared the April strike.
Cassidy explained her best aim is to “start a solidarity movement” and help sellers get off Etsy completely, but there are hurdles: Her Etsy keep, for example, has 11,000 followers, but the system owns the e mail tackle details. If she shuts down her Etsy keep and moves her entire business to her personal web-site, quite a few of all those lovers and consumers will not know exactly where to discover her.
