[HN Gopher] Etsy Strike
___________________________________________________________________
Etsy Strike
Author : KarlKemp
Score : 863 points
Date : 2022-04-11 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (etsystrike.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (etsystrike.org)
| tmountain wrote:
| Seems like there's an opportunity here for a smaller scale
| marketplace to move in and provide artisan makers what they
| actually want. One could build a business around "white glove"
| onboarding of sellers; meaning, you actually have a conversation
| with the seller and confirm they're producing authentic goods,
| build a profile for each seller letting folks know who they are,
| and base the entire marketplace around authenticity. Is this a
| crazy idea? The argument against it is likely, "it won't scale",
| but I think and argument could be made that it could.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > smaller scale marketplace
|
| There were a bunch of them. Most failed...
|
| > The argument against it is likely, "it won't scale", but I
| think and argument could be made that it could.
|
| A curated and authenticated store is a very expensive
| endeavour. They're complaining about hike in fees now, imagine
| how many would be able to accept hundreds of dollars in
| standing fees and cut from sales on top of that.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think the argument against it is that customers actually only
| care about price, despite the virtues they vomit all over the
| place about "supporting small business".
|
| 98/100 will support the idea. 2/100 will pay 2x for something
| because it isn't a Chinese knockoff.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| They are not the same customers. The ones that pay 2x for
| something are eventually replaced by people who want cheap
| junk.
|
| They aren't compatible markets, but a company who values
| profit above all else will start to cater to the lowest
| common denominator and push out people who care about
| quality, locally sourced, handcrafted etc. and become another
| generic retailer.
| mmastrac wrote:
| It's the circle of life for a startup chasing more fees. Older
| startups must die to fertilize the soil of younger sapling
| businesses:
|
| small, handcrafted goods -> larger scale production -> mass-
| market aliexpress/ebay
| ianbutler wrote:
| There's no reason to do this as a startup. Someone could spin
| up an ecommerce site over a weekend and then put in the work
| to white glove onboard sellers without ever taking investment
| and turn this into a _very_ nice business all without outside
| capital. As we 're now seeing, outside capital which _will_
| want a large return doesn 't jive with managing a business
| for artisanal/homemade sellers.
| MockObject wrote:
| I had to read this three times before I realized that by
| "startup", you implied "taking on investment".
| ianbutler wrote:
| Fair for me and I think a lot of people a startup is a
| new business that attempts (and hopefully succeeds) to
| take on outside investment to grow rapidly -- otherwise
| you're just a new small business.
| [deleted]
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Juicero has proved to me that no idea is too stupid to win
| millions of usd in investment capital.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Seems like there's an opportunity here for a smaller scale
| marketplace to move in and provide artisan makers what they
| actually want.
|
| There are two sites in the UK that do this, with slightly
| different emphasis on each:
|
| https://folksy.com/
|
| https://www.notonthehighstreet.com/
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The argument against it is likely, "it won't scale", but I
| think and argument could be made that it could.
|
| http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| The main thing Etsy offers sellers is buyers' attention. My
| wife and I have sold on Etsy for almost 15 years (!!!), and she
| started selling from the first day she opened a shop selling
| bow ties. Over the years, it's very rare we'll open a shop
| offering something and not sell in the first day (and have
| never had a concept not have at least one sale in a week). It's
| hard to beat that kind of visibility with little to no
| investment honestly.
|
| Even as our businesses have grown, the ease of use and
| convenience are hard to beat if you want to keep them to
| something casual. Sure, we could pop up a Shopify, ramp up
| advertising, really grind to get it "out there," but then we're
| spending more time and money to end up at the same spot.
|
| A smaller marketplace won't have that sort of network effect.
| The only way I'd see it succeeding is if they really blitz on
| marketing and making themselves a real outlet for makers (and
| make sure they're perceived that way over Etsy). Their brand
| recognition and entrenchment would be super hard to overcome.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You're right. That's why they know the value they bring and
| are increasing fees - which is reasonable.
| jeromegv wrote:
| They aren't adding any more value by increasing the fees.
| And from the perspective of the seller, it got worse
| because now they have to compete with factories in China.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I didn't say that they are bringing "more value".
|
| They know they provide value and that their fees can be
| higher.
|
| If you think that the value of their service is too low -
| then you will leave. If you leave. - then they'll have to
| address it. Original Etsy sellers have the leverage.
| judge2020 wrote:
| They were just undercutting themselves previously in the
| pursuit of user numbers, aka the strategy of every b2c
| startup these days. Few companies will stick with this
| model for eternity, usually they either raise prices or
| start to rely on Ads (YouTube).
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Do you have a link to your wife's store on Etsy?
| bloudermilk wrote:
| Have you written about your experience launching shops on
| Etsy? A friend and I have a few craft-style products we're
| itching to make as a side hustle and it sounds like you've
| figured out some of the tricks of the trade :)
| giarc wrote:
| Market will just adapt. Resellers will just hire an actor to
| pretend to be a small 'maker'.
| [deleted]
| afarrell wrote:
| https://www.tellmemoregifts.com/ does this for the artists that
| make gifts for their customers.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This is an aggressive moderation plan!
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| If the argument could be made that it could scale, why don't
| you make it? We've already got eBay and etsy as counterexamples
| showing that "smaller scale" marketplaces don't stay true to
| their initial visions, and I don't see this "white glove"
| onboarding being enough of a value proposition vs just setting
| up an eBay store, for instance.
| matt_s wrote:
| > it won't scale
|
| I think that is sort of the point, if someone were to niche
| down to actual makers of things. One could make it an exclusive
| club and spend money to get exclusive items for launch, for
| example get specially made pieces from well known makers and
| they can number them if they want, like 1/100 special thing-a-
| mabob.
|
| Have actual interviews with artisans/makers, slowly ramping up
| sellers. Take customer complaints seriously. Like if its
| reported that artisan_maker_27 started shipping cheapo shit
| from where-ever then they are kicked off the platform.
|
| I think the idea is to do as much as you can without scaling.
| No AI. No ads on the platform (certainly advertise for it).
| queuebert wrote:
| If I understand correctly, our markets are flooded with cheap
| Chinese trinkets because the Chinese government subsidizes
| shipping, making it possible to sell something for 99 cents
| online, send it across the ocean, and still make money.
|
| This could be very easily fixed for every website like this by
| the US government adopting a small tariff on low-cost goods
| shipped from China to cancel out that subsidy. Just enough that
| it is no longer profitable. Something to think about.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| The US subsidizes it actually. (but the program has ended now)
| banannaise wrote:
| Our markets are flooded with cheap Chinese trinkets because we
| have outsourced trinket manufacturing to China to avoid modern
| labor laws.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| I am not an expert or a student of it, but my general
| impression is that it is more about hazardous/toxic waste
| issues than labor cost.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| But people want cheap trinkets.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Such a tariff would have wide ranging impact. Low-cost goods
| are not just finished products going to consumers, it would
| impact intermediate products such as small chips or modules
| that are assembled into final products. We also have come to
| expect many commodity-like products to be readily available at
| very low cost, something that a tariff would hurt. These aren't
| trinkets, we're talking batteries, cables, etc produced from
| reputable Chinese manufacturers like Anker.
| queuebert wrote:
| Yes, that's partly the point. Maybe we shouldn't have so much
| cheap stuff. Maybe we should reuse and repair the stuff we
| have.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure why the Chinese government paying for the
| transport costs of cheap trinkets likely bought by low income
| consumers is a situation that needs fixing.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I thought the ePacket loophole that made shipping from China
| extremely cheap has been closed already
| dangrossman wrote:
| The cost of shipping individual trinkets already went up quite
| a while ago. What you do is import a whole crate or shipping
| container of trinkets, then distribute them from a US
| warehouse. The shipping cost on the crate/container is higher,
| but spread over hundreds or thousands of units inside that
| container.
| hayd wrote:
| I remember buying an audio splitter for PS0.02 including
| shipping from China back in ~2009.
| throwaway-jim wrote:
| Slightly off topic: I frequently hear it mentioned in threads
| like this that Chinese companies are able to compete with native
| sellers even while shipping individual pieces to customers? How
| does it even work? international shipping is not cheap,
| especially when you're not shipping in volume. Is the shipping
| cost included in the product? If anyone can direct me to info on
| how this trade works I would be thankful.
| Nican wrote:
| Planet Money did a podcast on the subject:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
|
| There is a fixed rate between postal offices to ship overseas,
| and it may make the shipping cheaper when coming from China.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| Super! I will join!
| tomatowurst wrote:
| might be unrelated with overall strike but one thing that I never
| understood is their double standards towards sellers in certain
| categories, specifically my friend who saw CBD oil being sold on
| their website, tried to do the same but was rejected because it
| was an "prohibited substance"
|
| then he listed those existing listings and they were removed but
| not all, just the ones he pointed out.
| tpl wrote:
| Honestly all the resellers on the site have driven me away from
| using it completely. Etsy would be wise to listen to these people
| at least for that part of their site experience.
| 0wx wrote:
| My girlfriend is one of you, her account on Etsy has been falsely
| suspended by their AI and can't sell anything there, I think the
| AI also scrape data from other website because my gf also selling
| it on other place, so maybe they think it's not original because
| of that. They really fucked up with their AI.
| FYYFFF wrote:
| The Internet commoditizes everything.
| jdrc wrote:
| Commodification is how human progress works though...
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why don't they just make their own site?
|
| I don't understand why people put their entire livelihood in
| random sites that can change their rules at a whim.
|
| It's easier than ever in internet history to host your own site
| and take payments and basically do the entire thing yourself.
|
| Of course you don't get the visibility Etsy provides, but isn't
| that what you sacrifice?
| acomar wrote:
| it's hard to do (it requires a specific skillset), it requires
| capital investment (servers cost money), and you become fairly
| indiscoverable. these are surmountable problems given adequate
| money but without it, a major platform like etsy has a real
| moat.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > Why don't they just make their own site?
|
| Why don't the buyers just make their own art? Because they're a
| different set of skills.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Most of the stuff on Etsy isn't art.
|
| But also - there are multiple easy alternatives to Etsy
| storefront.
| endisneigh wrote:
| The buyers aren't going on strike and complaining about it,
| though. Not to mention the comparison doesn't make sense to
| begin with. The sellers are operating a business presumably.
|
| From Etsy's point of view the etsy sellers are like the
| buyers from the etsy sellers point of view. Ultimately
| everyone is going to do what they can to maximize revenue
| from their end.
|
| If this strike has any level of critical mass they'd just all
| leave and create their own thing. This is literally how Etsy
| itself came to be to begin with. It's just the nature of
| things. eBay sellers went on strike and all migrated over to
| Etsy. If this is that big of a deal, it's time to do it
| again.
| jdrc wrote:
| Essentially it is what they are doing, except the website is
| still in "very early stages", so etsy has time to rethink
| aphroz wrote:
| Bringing customers to your own website is very costly and
| difficult. You will need to spend a lot in ads and convince
| your customers that you are legit.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Reliability, scale, general operations, security, convenience?
| Putting up a site is easy, yes. _Keeping it up_ while your
| business is based on it, not so much.
| endisneigh wrote:
| There are literally sites that do everything except marketing
| for you. It really is easy if you're willing to pay.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| "Do the entire thing yourself" is what you suggested in the
| GP. Now you're suggesting a site that "does everything
| except marketing for you." Those are very different
| suggestions.
| endisneigh wrote:
| No, what I'm saying is that you can purchase everything
| except marketing, and presumably the folks striking would
| handle the rest, so in sum, yes they could "do the entire
| thing yourself."
|
| You should look up the history of etsy, it literally
| began by a mass exodus away from eBay. I'll never
| understand why people handcuff themselves and then
| complain about it. The question in the end if whether
| etsy is worth it to them after all of the fees,
| restrictions, etc. If so, continue, if not, move. Both
| the etsy sellers and etsy itself aim to maximize profit.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| > I'll never understand
|
| > The question in the end if whether etsy is worth it to
| them after all of the fees, restrictions, etc. If so,
| continue, if not, move
|
| It seems you do understand after all, unless you are
| making the questionable claim that Etsy provides
| literally no value.
|
| I think the crux of the matter here is that these sellers
| were previously happy with the tradeoff, and then Etsy
| changed the terms and they don't think it's worth it
| anymore. Getting angry and yelling about it in hopes of
| changing it rather than just shrugging and moving their
| whole business to another platform seems perfectly
| logical to me. The stuff with garbage resellers does seem
| like a really good point: Etsy is going to devalue
| themselves into the toilet if they don't do something
| about it and there is a mass exodus.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Complaining is worthless, if you're staying.
|
| Businesses understand a hit to the bottom line, not some
| abstract strike manifest. So exodus is exactly the most
| efficient way of voicing your opinion to a profit seeking
| operation
| alecbz wrote:
| Though TBH I wish the infrastructure was there such that this
| could be a viable option. I feel like we're inching our way
| there with "no code" products.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| But apparently all of those things are worth nothing to Etsy
| sellers, as they are complaining about the costs.
| true_maybe wrote:
| A bit of a tangent, but Etsy lost me (and likely some amount of
| other sellers) when they pushed so hard on free shipping. Not all
| products are amenable to this, and we wound up losing money on
| every shipped item under the new plans. Ebay also did this at
| some point in the past, with the same results.
|
| Those two, and this example has me wondering why these companies
| continue to side with the buyers?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >side with the buyers?
|
| Isn't it obvious though? The buyers are the ones transferring
| their money from their account into the coffers of Etsy. If
| they piss off one seller, 2 more will pop up in its place.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Those two, and this example has me wondering why these
| companies continue to side with the buyers?
|
| Because the customer sets the demands. If the demands aren't
| met - customer doesn't give you the money.
| xeromal wrote:
| Consumers just work that way. I've had an ebay account since
| 2006 and I can't count the times I've posted something for 15$
| + variable (3-8$) shipping that wouldn't sell that I just sold
| for 22$ with free shipping instead and it goes.
|
| Funny thing, I totally filter by free shipping too when I buy
| on ebay. It's just easier.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The problem with ebay is the scams where shipping is $50+ for
| something that isn't large or heavy. I always just sort by
| lowest price+shipping to push these off page.
| notpachet wrote:
| To anyone reading the above and thinking "well, just move the
| shipping cost over to your product cost, duh" -- the problem
| is that shipping becomes dramatically more expensive the
| further the package is going. How do you pick one single
| price for an item when 50% of your customers are in the US
| and 50% are in the UK? Which half subsidizes the other?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You can list the same product for different audiences.
| notpachet wrote:
| But there's another sharp corner to avoid: online product
| ad services (Google Ads, Facebook ads etc), tend to
| penalize merchants who list different prices depending on
| where the customer is located[1]:
|
| > Don't change the price of your product on your landing
| page based on a user's location. Ensure that users can
| purchase the product online for the price that you
| submit, regardless of their location.
|
| Which means that (if you don't want your Google ads
| account deactivated) you can't bake in a variable
| shipping cost into the product cost; you can only select
| one amortized shipping cost.
|
| So sellers who want to offer free shipping are really
| between a rock and a hard place a lot of the time in
| terms of not losing money on shipping vs not overcharging
| buyers.
|
| [1] https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324371?h
| l=en&re...
| lg wrote:
| I saw an etsy tv ad the other day. My wife is an etsy seller so I
| thought this was interesting. They pitched it as a place where
| you can find someone to put your logo on a sign. The interaction
| with the seller was minimal, their name was even shown as
| anonymous "etsy seller". This seems like a use case that a bigger
| co could easily support and downplays the value prop of etsy as a
| place to connect with a craftsperson/artist to buy their work or
| commission a unique piece. I guess they are trying to move away
| from that model to more print-stuff-on-signs/shirts/etc.
| ilamont wrote:
| From the petition:
|
| _AI-powered bots shut down legitimate seller accounts seemingly
| at random, while Etsy looks the other way on resellers who
| undercut authentic makers by peddling sweatshop-produced junk in
| clear violation of the spirit of the Etsy community._
|
| AI lockouts are a huge problem on Amazon, too, not to mention
| many of the sites and services used by HNers. I've said it before
| and I will say it again:
|
| How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Or, hear from
| friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been locked out or
| denied access to an important service, either through no fault of
| their own or by an innocent action?
|
| No warning.
|
| No explanation other than "suspicious activity" or "violation of
| [vaguely worded] policy."
|
| No human to call who can help troubleshoot, other than a tech-
| savvy friend or relative.
|
| No recourse.
|
| There needs to be a technology bill of rights, not just for
| people dealing with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, but also
| the myriad other technology operators which can disrupt our lives
| in an instant with some poorly programmed process or
| unanticipated edge case.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Those poor companies can't be expected to be responsible with
| their power, they only make several billion dollars off their
| users every year and putting conditions on their ability to
| remove content they find suspicious is comparable to me dealing
| with a thief in my house.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Seriously. I got shot down on the last Google related thread
| about this issue because "what about the scammers". I get it,
| you need a process for stopping the scammers/psammers, but any
| system you create will make mistakes and so it must have a
| genuine system of appeal and recourse.
|
| At some point on of these companies is going to hit someone
| with enough power to force them to do a better job.
| m_coder wrote:
| >>At some point on of these companies is going to hit someone
| with enough power to force them to do a better job.
|
| And then they fix that one situation and go on about their
| normal business. At least that is what it seems to me. I
| would wish for something more long term to happen but I am
| becoming less hopeful.
| shmatt wrote:
| Claiming (in whatever "official" existence this website is for
| the sellers) anything made in China, or any other non-western
| country, is "sweatshop-produced junk" is definitely not the way
| to fix this
|
| Manufacturing has moved to these places in some cases because
| many customers just can't tell the difference or couldn't care
| less about the difference
|
| Are the people organized under that website all wearing leather
| shoes hand sewn in Maine cottages? Or are they wearing more
| sweatshop produced junk
| raylad wrote:
| Etsy seems generally to have some tech issues.
|
| I bought a couple of things on their site a while ago, but have
| never been a seller.
|
| Somehow I keep getting emails intended for sellers in France
| and other places, trying to coordinate shipments or orders, or
| complaining about issues with orders. This has been going on
| for at least 4 years and I've reported it to Etsy multiple
| times with no follow-up at all on their side.
| ianbutler wrote:
| There are various markets where I'm pretty certain taking outside
| capital will eventually cause you to lose the plot as to how your
| business benefits it's users. This seems to be one of those
| cases. You take outside capital to grow rapidly and take on
| scale, you go public for more capital to do more business again
| at a larger scale. This is all in the interest of a large return
| for your investors and maybe some retail investors and employees.
|
| I'm not sure how this could ever continue to have the best
| interests of artisanal crafters and sellers in mind when that
| market is clearly smaller than the one needed to grow the
| business to successful after-IPO public company. Someone should
| make a competitor with no aims to go public and you'll probably
| wind up with a rather large successful business not beholden to
| anyone except artisanal sellers and more in line with benefiting
| artisans long term.
|
| Not everything needs to be a public company and not everyone
| needs to take on VC money. You have to know your goals and then
| assess different monetary avenues to accomplish them, you can
| have a large private company without diluting the vision, just
| not maybe a multibillion dollar organization but that's okay, not
| everything needs to be that either -- but it will be what your
| forced into an attempt at making if you take on outside capital.
| toper-centage wrote:
| However, there's literally no incentive for the owners and
| investors to protect that initial plot. Etsy is so big, that it
| won't ever fail overnight. As long as it's profitable for a few
| years and everyone gets a fat check out of it, they are happy.
| This will always happen. Never trust cult brands to stay loyal
| to the niche market that made them successful to begin with.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Those smaller non-public competitors typically end up being
| acquired (or destroyed) by the larger, well-funded incumbent.
| Etsy's acquired a number of other marketplaces already.
| ianbutler wrote:
| That's totally fair but at what point are Etsy and <non-
| public-whoever> actually serving different markets -- and so
| not really competitors -- so it's not worth it for them to
| crush or acquire the non-public company focused on what is
| now a minor niche to the larger incumbent.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong, I very much agree that it does
| tend to play out like that but from the strike it seems like
| some vocal segment of Etsy's market is no longer actually
| served by Etsy -- and more importantly (all speculation) Etsy
| has determined it's not in the best interest of Etsy to serve
| them so there is some niche to now be captured.
| wesleytodd wrote:
| My wife is an etsy seller, so I asked her opinion on this. TLDR
| of her response: "it is the people who don't take it as a serious
| business who are having issues with the etsy cut increase".
|
| Basically, the ones who try to compete on price with the mass
| manufacturers (aka already low-balling their prices). The ones
| who make a living already have the etsy fees in their product
| prices so will just bump up accordingly and likely not loose
| customers.
|
| That said, the demands listed are all ones she agrees with. The
| user experience of having to tell if a product is really hand
| made is bad for buyers and sellers alike.
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| Yeah, as someone who sells five figures on Etsy every year, the
| fee increase (while crappy) isn't shocking or offensive. It's
| the other things they enumerate in the demands that are chafing
| us.
|
| I don't even see how things like the AI-powered "trust and
| safety" garbage they implemented or the "Star Seller" thing
| benefit Etsy in the slightest. The T&S bots have nabbed our
| shops a few times and every time it wasn't even anything they
| should have been concerned about. One time they shut us down
| completely for a week because they _thought_ we got too many
| orders (even though we filled them in a day). Like, what? And
| Star Seller basically makes you a slave to unreasonable
| customers. It's almost Uber-esque in the degree of perfection
| it expects in turnaround and ratings, and in a world where "I
| didn't read the listing" ends up in a three-star review, it's
| just untenable (and again, what's even the benefit??).
| dangrossman wrote:
| > I don't even see how things like the AI-powered "trust and
| safety" garbage they implemented or the "Star Seller" thing
| benefit Etsy in the slightest.
|
| Etsy basically tripled its user base in the past 2 years, to
| something like 100 million active buyers and sellers. This
| happened during the pandemic, when Etsy's offices were locked
| down, everyone had to learn to run the business remotely, and
| the labor market tightened up making it harder to hire (and
| then to train remotely).
|
| Almost every change Etsy's made in the last two years is
| about reducing the burden on their staff, which now has a
| much higher user to staff ratio to deal with. Requiring
| sellers respond to messages within 24 hours reduces the
| number of people contacting Etsy's support staff. Requiring
| sellers resolve issues to customers' satisfaction to maintain
| their standing reduces the number of people contacting Etsy's
| support staff. Requiring customers contact sellers before
| they can open a case reduces the number of people contacting
| Etsy's support staff. Implementing AI-powered review of new
| sellers and listings is the only realistic answer to having
| ANY review of new sellers and listings when there are
| hundreds of thousands of them being added every month for
| each employee in charge of enforcing policy on them.
| [deleted]
| fleddr wrote:
| We just keep running into this same issue indefinitely: the
| internet is a winner-takes-all mechanism.
|
| I wish things were more like in the physical world, where you
| might have hundreds or thousands of "etsys". Each having a unique
| vibe, products on offer, and so on. Each of these individual
| stores would have a reasonable and stable margin and relatively
| stable group of customers. They can all co-exist.
|
| No such thing on the internet though. Inevitably you always end
| up with one place to rule them all. Easy for buyers, no need to
| browse many websites. Easy for sellers, reach the maximum
| audience with the least effort.
|
| The model always breaks, and the platform facilitating the
| exchange turns "evil".
|
| The conclusion is primitive. We're all responsible for this.
| Consumers always pick convenience over any alternative, and they
| do buy knock-offs. Buyers will always be attracted to singular
| platforms, want to pay the lowest fee for the largest reach.
|
| We all want "something for nothing", and this is what we end up
| with. It is the accumulated outcome of billions of tiny selfish
| decisions.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Is this a natural property of the internet or is it a
| consequence of how internet businesses are usually funded? It
| always struck me as weird that "predatory pricing" of a product
| at below cost can be considered anti-competitive behaviour when
| done by market leader, but is OK when done by a "start-up"
| fuelled by millions in VC money. This is especially apparent in
| the gig economy space, where local knowledge _should_ give you
| a competitive advantage but instead you 're forced to compete
| with foreign businesses that are happy to sell $2 worth of
| service for $1 of revenue.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I think it's an issue with discovery. Organic discovery on
| the internet does not exist -- you do not pass by a cool
| internet store on your way to whatever else you were doing,
| the only way for you to know it exists is for it to be
| advertised to you.
| fleddr wrote:
| Yes, I'd say centralization of attention/discovery is an
| inevitable force of the internet.
|
| For digital products, say "content", it has been there since
| the early beginnings. When people had their "independent"
| blog, already then they had blog rolls linking to other
| bloggers and over time a class of top bloggers emerged. A
| handful getting all traffic, the other 99.99% gets nothing.
|
| Before search engines, we had directories. Lists of links.
| But there's only so much space, so a few sites get all
| traffic, the rest none.
|
| We democratized it with things like Digg, but in reality 3
| people decided what gets on the homepage.
|
| So yes, it seems to me that centralization of attention is
| built-in. Or rather, it's a human condition. A centralized
| service offers more convenience and people tend to do the
| most convenient thing. Creators do the exact same thing.
|
| ...and then we blame the platform. My point is that WE did
| it. WE created the situation, not the platform.
|
| As for physical goods, I consider that to be somewhat of a
| separate topic. The internet in itself does not magically
| produce and ship ultra cheap goods. Such a thing is only
| possible due to very specific international trade
| circumstances.
| shmatt wrote:
| I shop at many physical world boutiques who also have a
| successful online presence. Etsy is actually the worst place
| for these kinds of things, as the people there are running
| under margins where they could never afford physical world
| rent. A physical world store showing up on Etsy, where people
| with some free time make things at home, would cheapen their
| brand as a physical presence in a community
|
| The place where these physical world "etsys" live is usually
| Shopify
| einpoklum wrote:
| I recently bought a nicely designed coffee mug on Etsy... which
| never arrived. Tried to contact the store - no answer. I didn't
| go broke and go homeless, but it certainly stung. Especially
| since it was supposed to be a birthday present for someone.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I will never use Etsy again after my first experience with it
| recently. I paid $200 for (what I thought) was a full size high
| quality living room rug. What I recieved was a polyester bath
| mat, that was shipped via DHL from Turkey, and took two weeks to
| arrive... I don't know what happened along the way, but I see
| Etsy now as simply an extension of Aliexpress.
|
| No thanks.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Honestly, it might be easier to pivot your business model and/or
| use a different channel. This seems too much like "some one else
| do the work to make my life easier again!!"
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| Anecdotally: I get about 49/50ths of my sales from Etsy. They
| have captured a lot of the virtual storefront at least for the
| stuff I sell (accessories I make for board games and toys).
| It's almost not even worth your time to list on other sites.
| Did they get there through the luck, or genuine business savvy?
| I can't say one way through another, but they're starting to
| really press their advantage to extract as much money from
| their customers/sellers as possible.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| There are no other channels for small sellers. Etsy has spent
| their time on the top aggressively purchasing all viable
| competitors and shutting them down in order to maintain their
| lead.
| calflegal wrote:
| It's wild that one of the best e-shopping techniques is now
| googling "___ review reddit". We find ourselves playing a strange
| whack-a-mole game of trust amongst organizations.
| 97s wrote:
| As an etsy seller. I don't really care about the rising fees,
| they send so many customers my way I am okay with that. What I do
| care about is that their report features don't work. I have
| reported so many shops just reselling commercial items that I am
| shopping for. Literally they don't even remove the branding, just
| straight up reselling a finished good that isn't vintage. So
| lame.
| mincer_ray wrote:
| i will say they are right about one thing, small sellers are
| getting totally run over by design theft and aliexpress
| resellers. as a buyer, its a huge pain to have to sift through
| pages of aliexpress merchandise to uncover interesting and
| original work. make a cool printed design on a game boy shell?
| quickly stolen, mass produced on aliexpress, then sold by all the
| boring resellers on etsy. 90% of rpg dice sellers are selling the
| exact same stuff they got from the exact same bulk deal.
|
| one of the biggest problems for me is im never even sure if im
| buying the original design or a knockoff, which totally sucks.
|
| idk if this is just affecting the retro games / dice communities,
| or if others are also hit. ALSO you can kinda just sell semi-
| illegal "grey" goods on etsy? TONS of sellers just selling
| bootleg game boy games and rarely mentioning that in the product
| description.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > make a cool printed design on a game boy shell? quickly
| stolen, mass produced on aliexpress
|
| I work in this space and can provide a little
| correction/illumination:
|
| The folks selling printed phone cases, gameboy cases, etc are
| generally not shipping these over from aliexpress. They are
| almost all printed on demand from printers local to the country
| of the buyer (there's a half dozen big phone case printers just
| in the US). Nothing is mass produced except the blanks.
|
| The sellers come up with the artwork and
| titles/tags/descriptions/etc. Software like mine creates the
| Etsy listings and processes orders, routing to appropriate
| printers which ship directly to the customer. Etsy provides an
| API for this.
|
| Print-on-demand sellers are selling pure intellectual property.
| They jealously guard their high-resolution images, but that
| doesn't stop the industry from having a big ripoff problem.
| Low-effort ripoffs copy a public low-res image, which makes a
| terrible print but potential customers/victims might not be
| able to tell from an online mockup image. High-effort ripoffs
| involve hiring an artist to make a new work substantially (or
| identically) similar to something else. Both cheat the
| intellectual property of the original artist, but they're using
| the same print companies.
|
| Whether this stuff is "handcrafted" is somewhat ambiguous - is
| a book handcrafted? Is a set of patterns for a dress or a piece
| of furniture handcrafted? Something 3d printed? Certainly
| someone came up with the artwork "by hand", but printing it on
| a tshirt or phone case is pretty mechanical.
| tyingq wrote:
| The volume folks also aren't shy about outright lies in the
| product descriptions. Like pictures of stained glass that
| clearly show real, leaded-joint stained glass, that turns out
| to be a painted plastic copy. Where the pictures are probably
| stolen from a genuine seller.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Back in the early 90's, I visited Santa Fe as a tourist. I
| enjoyed browsing the local shops looking at the American Indian
| art for sale. After a while, I noticed the same things over and
| over in different shops - most (all?) the stuff was imported
| from other countries.
|
| A few years ago I also toured souvenir shops in Malmo, Sweden.
| I asked the proprietor of when where the merchandise came from,
| she said it all came from China.
|
| With a global economy, that's just the way things are.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese
| don't have to respect the system of copyright or patent in any
| capacity at all? It seems like we're converging on a point
| where nearly any novel invention or concept will be quickly
| stolen by the Chinese, repackaged, and sold in the global
| marketplace for a fraction of the price.
| bsder wrote:
| > Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese
| don't have to respect the system of copyright or patent in
| any capacity at all?
|
| Even if these were prosecuted, would it really help in
| electronics, for example?
|
| Since everybody has access to the same chips and creating a
| PCB is cheap and relatively quick, what would you even
| prosecute? Sure, you could prosecute the exact clones, but,
| most people are just following the manufacturer reference
| designs from the datasheet so there's nothing stopping
| someone else from doing that.
|
| The problem is that once you prove there is a market for a
| piece of electronics, somebody in China will now pick off
| that market for cheaper. Is this not capitalism at its most
| raw?
|
| The problem that this causes in electronics is that this
| _trashes_ scaling as well as customer support. You can sell a
| $100 thingit, create a reddit community, and mostly tell
| people they 're on their own with the occasional answer from
| somebody semi-official. Or you can sell a $10K+ thingit and
| actually provide excellent customer support.
|
| In both cases, you will get cloned and ripped off--which
| limits the amount of money you can get from the market.
|
| The current "solution" is to always have a cloud component
| which can't be cloned. This is, of course, anathema to open
| source, but I haven't seen anybody in open source have a good
| answer for this, either.
| com2kid wrote:
| Working at Microsoft, I was not allowed to even read patents
| incase I accidently infringed on one, which would become
| willful infringement since I had read the patent.
|
| So, that means no learning from what others had done, which
| is the entire idea of publicly posted patents vs trade
| secrets.
|
| The patent system is literally causing the opposite of
| innovation to happen in certain technology spaces.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's hard to have respect for the copyright/patent system
| we've constructed in the west when it's frequently abused and
| often favours large industry players over "little guys".
| There are some advantages to the wild-west remix culture you
| see happening with Chinese goods. There are also plenty of
| inventions that are so trivial/obvious that they should not
| have had patent protection in the first place[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
| baristavibes wrote:
| I hear that designers are being steamrolled by Aliexpress or
| Shein all the time. The landscape has obviously changed. I
| wonder if a pioneering designer somewhere used this to their
| advantage to mass manufacture their products while integrating
| a staple design element by which they end up promoting
| themselves?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| I've come across very niche products that get ripped off, it's
| affecting everything. if your tiny custom tshirt shop gets
| enough sales you'll be copied soon enough with apparently no
| recourse.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yea this is hugely annoying now on Etsy - I used to love going
| there for random gifts for people of handmade stuff. Usually
| you can tell the real from the aliexprses BS by asking the
| seller how much they can customize the item. But the
| marketplace is legit flooded with crap
| uuyi wrote:
| I know someone who was selling an electronic module on Tindie.
| One day sales went through the floor. Turned out someone had
| cloned his entire product and was shipping volume on
| aliexpress. He just closed up shop.
|
| I myself have spent weeks navigating the maze of dodgy NanoVNAs
| out there. Even one of the official resellers decided to cut
| costs and ship out poorly functioning clones and try and deny
| it.
|
| Can't win so don't play. Eventually the markets will fall due
| to crap saturation.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Will the markets actually fail? Or will there always be a
| sucker ready to try their luck? I remember seeing this happen
| in the Retro Video Game community with Flash carts.
|
| Independent developer developed a flashcart for the Sega
| Dreamcast and was subsequently ripped off. After he
| complained on Twitter, most of the community sided with the
| cloners. They just want their cheap garbage and they have no
| idea/care regarding the massive effort it takes to develop a
| device like this.
|
| Never mind the fact that the original developer will be
| inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while
| the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen
| all the value.
|
| He eventually walked away from the project from what I recall
| which pissed off his original buyers and now others have
| stepped up with their own devices(And will probably be
| cloned).
|
| Luckily the one (temporary) respite you have in
| software/hardware is DRM. If you can implement a complex
| enough DRM system you can slow down the cloners from stealing
| your software for some period of time. It sucks but this is
| the world we live in.
|
| One tactic that a Flashcart manufacturer is using is some
| sort of serial coded firmware updates that only operates on a
| specific date code of flashcart. It requires the user to log
| into an account and get the specific firmware update that is
| tied to their flashcart. It has caused some complaints from
| the community regarding ease of use + resale
| woes(transferring ownership from one legit user to another)
| but overall this is an interesting solution. It hasn't fully
| prevented clones but has slowed them down somewhat.
|
| I wish there was some way this could be applied to the non-
| software world but you can't defeat the physical layer.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Never mind the fact that the original developer will be
| inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while
| the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen
| all the value.
|
| This seems like an opportunity in disguise. Provide paid
| support, possibly after upselling the crowd to genuine
| product if required. Then word-of-mouth will be to the
| original dev's benefit; few will side with the fly-by-night
| cloners.
|
| DRM makes your product less "hackable" by the customer and
| less likely to sustain a committed community. It's a very
| short sighted approach.
| dendriti wrote:
| The people who are buying Chinese knockoff pirated flash
| carts, are not the same people pulling out their credit
| cards for paid support. Also, retro gamers are a
| notoriously difficult and time-consuming market to
| support.
| after_care wrote:
| It's ironic to me because flashcarts are widely used to
| pirate console games. Someone making a tool for pirates is
| complaining about their IP being pirated.
|
| Yes, I know flashcarts are also commonly used for homebrew,
| and I use mine exclusively for homebrew. I also understand
| that many of the older games have become collectors items,
| and wanting to play backups instead of the original is
| another use case. This doesn't change one of it's most
| common use cases, which is playing illegal roms.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Yeah I get where you are coming from. That does not
| change the fact that these products require massive
| effort to develop. In the case of PSIO(product with the
| serial encoded firmware) it was started by a high
| schooler + firmware developer from Belarus in
| 2012(original concept in 2010) and took years before the
| product was finally in a state to ship. From what I
| gather, their custom menu + firmware system is ~50k of C
| code/MIPS assembly made from scratch.
|
| I watched as this high schooler got harassed for years as
| people did not believe such a product was even possible.
| After he released it, everyone forgot about all the
| harassment that this product was vaporware and impossible
| to develop and now he continued to get hounded for bug
| fixes to fix timing issues with specific games(he is
| emulating the complete CD drive and many games expected
| exact timings to overcome specific undocumented bugs in
| the system).
|
| Now you have to throw in the threat of clones. To this
| day he is continuing to fully support the product despite
| some clones appearing in the wild. A competing product
| has recently appeared that takes a simpler approach to
| emulating the CD drive and likely has not had as
| extensive of a QA process. It remains a question whether
| this other approach is better compared to PSIO(new
| product only supports 3 motherboard versions out of
| dozens + you lose the CD drive altogether) but because
| the price is cheaper a large chunk of the community does
| not care and have moved on. The remaining community are
| now bashing the PSIO team for temporary slowing down
| development to rewrite the firmware to stop the latest
| round of cloners.
|
| You can look at it as theft, but others would see it as
| preserving and promoting software development on a ~28
| year old console. This team also gone into excruciating
| detail to document the system to help enable new software
| to be developed.
|
| Just from the outside looking in, I don't know if it is
| worth the effort to spend years making something like
| this only to be harassed nonstop for years, getting your
| IP stolen by the Chinese and in end still be making a
| product that is a grey market item. I suspect that down
| the road we will have nothing but low quality Chinese
| made junk on the market if anything at all.
| after_care wrote:
| I'm in this space as a hobbyist, a consumer and
| occasional producer (I've done some limited runs on
| simple projects). I'm specifically interested in jp coin-
| op and 16-bit home console. I see your concern.
|
| There's always going to be the originals, which will
| almost definitely hold value for the lifetime of
| millennials at least.
|
| This is always going to be a small market driven by
| passion. If you can write a PlayStation flash cart you
| can almost defiantly make something with a higher market
| value.
|
| There is an active market for extremely high quality
| products in this space. Look at Analogue (analogue.co)
| which is building FPGA reference-quality reproductions of
| classic consoles (NES, SNES, GENSIS, and recently
| GB/GBC/GBA). These machines play original carts better
| than original hardware, they are widely critically
| acclaimed, and the company keeps outputting fantastic
| machines. Many speed running and other competitive
| organizations accept plays running on analogue hardware,
| but not other knock-off consoles.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Is there an easy way to tell the clones vs the original
| developer? Legitimately curious in this Dreamcast item
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Typically they have their own website. Like I mentioned,
| I believe this specific developer has thrown in the towel
| but others are making competing products. Typically their
| website has a list of authorized resellers or sells them
| directly.
| foldor wrote:
| To be fair to the GDEMU situation you touched on for the
| Dreamcast, the reason the community took the side of the
| cloners was because it was nearly impossible to get a hold
| of the original authentic design. He made the ordering
| process as terrible as possible, seemed to have a shitty
| attitude to his actual customers, and the demand
| drastically outpaced his ability to supply the market. The
| retro community is large, but most of the time people would
| rather buy from the original source over a clone product,
| but in the case of the GDEMU he kind of forced people to
| choose a clone instead.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Yeah I wasn't a customer just a follower as I am
| fascinated by the efforts used to create these devices.
| At the same time, PSIO(which I also referenced) has taken
| as many efforts as possible to provide the product in
| sufficient quantities and be as supportive as possible
| but there is a loud portion of the community that still
| berates them for their anti-clone efforts.
|
| The gaming community just seems to suck as customers. You
| see this with all the hate a publisher gets when they
| release something that isn't perfect as well.
|
| There are also people buying the Everdrive clones and
| then expecting support. I have seen these complaints on
| Reddit and in various forums. I don't know how rampant
| this is but its so silly.
| foldor wrote:
| PSIO definitely isn't beloved, I'll give you that. I
| think the main hate of PSIO is because their product
| always felt like a beta to users who expected something
| more polished. I'm not going to say either is right or
| wrong, but it's what it is. PSIO's anti piracy stuff was
| pretty annoying for the end user vs what other companies
| are doing like XStation and others can do.
|
| You're right though, that in general the end users are
| very much entitled assholes in general, and there _are_
| still people buying Everdrive clones, even when the real
| deal was still in stock and available. But Everdrive is
| still successful for Krikzz, and all of the clones out
| there are based on a very outdated design that his newer
| devices are far surpassing in terms of features and
| support.
| xwdv wrote:
| I've decided to protest the issue of counterfeits by simply not
| buying anything at all. Can't trust the source, can't buy.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Any time I find anything on Etsy, I double check Amazon. A lot
| of the time, I find the exact item for sale for less.
|
| Now, I just skip Etsy most of the time, wading through so much
| junk to find something original is too much work.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| And If you go on aliexpress you can trade 50% of the price
| for 2 weeks of shipping.
| [deleted]
| elefantastisch wrote:
| It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay. I used to buy
| from Etsy all the time, but at this point, I have zero trust
| that I would actually be buying something handmade from a real,
| independent creator. Which of course means I just won't buy
| from them at all. I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this
| instead of doing everything they possibly can to fight it.
| cjsawyer wrote:
| Sounds like short term greed overcoming desire to hold onto
| their unique gimmick that made customers initially care
| alecbz wrote:
| Yeah... that may seem naive (to value the "niche" over
| actual revenue numbers), but once etsy loses its original
| niche, I'm not sure what differentiates them from
| Amazon/eBay/etc. => their brand dries up => revenue
| eventually dwindles? What stops this?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >What stops this?
|
| Nothing really. Most people do not pay attention to how
| the sausage is made. They don't care if the car service
| they use was a total toxic fratbro culture using
| unsustainable pricing to lure in users. They just wanted
| "cheap" rides without caring about why they were cheap.
| Just as another comment on this topic suggested they
| don't care about original as long as the thing they want
| is cheaper.
|
| So no, I don't really think that educated populace will
| stop supporting shit practices because they can't be
| bothered.
| nebulous_two wrote:
| Not true. What stops this is the creation of another
| service that comes in to take that space...until they go
| public again
|
| OR
|
| They remain a private business that keeps that long term
| aim in spite of the volatility they are bound to
| experience over time.
| dangrossman wrote:
| What stops that is the incumbents destroying or acquiring
| upstarts in their space. Etsy has already purchased
| Depop, Elo7, A Little Market, Trunkt, Reverb...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why does Depop, A Little Market, Trunkt etc not get
| blamed for "selling out"? Because at the end of the day,
| people start businesses to make money. In fact, it is a
| tried and true model to create a start with the specific
| purpose of getting acquired.
| dylan604 wrote:
| OR
|
| Etsy buys them to prevent a viable alternative to taking
| hold.
|
| At the end of the day, there is typically a number that
| can be written on a check that will persuade.
| alecbz wrote:
| Well I'm not talking about people supporting Etsy though,
| I'm talking about Etsy itself.
|
| Like one possible story is that Etsy does this and it's
| shitty for sellers and maybe a lot of buyers too, but it
| ends up making Etsy successful in the long-run so they
| don't care.
|
| That's _not_ the story I 'm telling though, it's one
| where Etsy chases medium-term revenue at the cost of
| their long-term niche and thus their long-term success.
| If me and GP are right, in theory Etsy itself ought to
| not want this to happen.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But the only way that Etsy can measure any decision they
| make is with the number of transactions from which they
| receive a cut. If they allow mass produced items to be
| sold that increases the number of transactions, then
| that's the bottom line numbers they care about. If they
| force a rule that it has to be small batch hand crafted
| type of items to be sold, then the per transaction
| numbers go way down. Bean counters and stock analysts
| don't like those numbers, and they are after all the
| people any public corp are most concerned.
| alecbz wrote:
| Yes, but the interesting question I think is _why_ the
| bean counters are given free reign to make decisions that
| ultimately lead to the company 's downfall[0].
|
| Like what if you had a fine dining restaurant where
| things are going okay, and someone comes in and is like
| "Hey guys, I noticed we're spending a lot of time washing
| plates. We'd be able to serve X% more customers if we
| just like scraped off the food and did a quick rinse."
| The restaurant tries it, it works for a bit until diners
| see specs of old food on their plates, the restaurant's
| reputation tanks, they lose all their customers, and they
| go out of business.
|
| I think most restaurants are structured such that this
| does not happen. The restaurants correctly see that even
| though it seems like doing this might make some graphs go
| up in the short-term, it will actually make everything
| terrible in the long-term, and so they don't do it.
|
| And again, this isn't about like, benevolent restaurant
| owners valuing the custom experience even if it's bad for
| the bottom line. Washing the plates thoroughly is _good_
| for the bottom line; any sufficiently intelligent
| restaurant owner shouldn 't listen to the bean counter
| even if the owner's just a greedy capitalist.
|
| (This reads enough like a Scott Alexander post that I'm
| pretty sure I might just actually be copying one; I think
| he wrote something along these lines once.)
|
| [0]: Again, all of this is precipitated on the idea that
| actually Etsy will fail once it loses its niche, since
| it'll just get beaten by Amazon/eBay/etc. when it's just
| like any other seller of goods. If what's really going to
| happen is that Etsy will do fine as a company, then this
| becomes a totally different shape of problem: "the market
| rewards things that we actually maybe don't want for
| society".
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did Amazon fail when it opened the flood gates to the
| mass market? Did eBay? Did Walmart? No. I don't accept
| your premise that a company switching from handmade to
| low price mass produced will fail.
|
| Fail means different things to different people, but to
| the stockholders that the bean counters are beholden to
| determine fail/success by stock price and profits. What
| definition the original users of the site expecting
| handmade/small batch type of items have of fail/success
| means nothing to those in charge. It's not really a hard
| subject to understand is it? You have to accept that the
| "leadership" of Etsy is different now than when it was
| created. Their ethos has changed. It happens. You are the
| one that is having problems accepting it, but it will not
| change reality. People still use Google now that "don't
| be evil" is no longer their ethos.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| What's their unique gimmick? Paying for mass produced
| quality weekend project items?.. Tie dyed tees at 3x the
| price?
|
| I bought from Etsy once, but even then the items were
| recommended to me via Instagram. Etsy in 2014 was already
| filled with poorly made "artsy" crap at double the price.
|
| No idea why people are so excited about it.
| troydavis wrote:
| > It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay
|
| That's what Etsy's board chose when they appointed ex-eBay
| executive Josh Silverman to be Etsy's CEO:
| https://www.etsy.com/team/member/jsilverman (2017)
|
| More background: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog
| .pl?/pl/2018/8/1... (2018), https://www.vox.com/the-
| goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-sh... (2019).
|
| Chad Dickerson ran Etsy. Josh Silverman turned it into eBay.
| fao_ wrote:
| As a parallel, I'm not sure how Elon Musk would turn SpaceX
| into PayPal.
| dangrossman wrote:
| You wouldn't hire Elon Musk to turn anything into PayPal,
| as he wasn't a founder nor truly even an employee or
| executive of PayPal. Musk joined PayPal via merger with
| his fledgling X.com online bank. It was Confinity's
| PayPal product that continued from the merger, not Musk's
| X.com product. Musk was appointed CEO of the combined
| business, but contributed nothing of note to it. He was
| only there for a few months before the board ousted him
| from the company, while on vacation: his regular absence
| from the job was one of the reasons. The other was that
| his contribution to the engineering direction of the
| company amounted to "let's stop working on the business,
| and instead rewrite the platform on .NET to run on
| Windows servers", which the organization found so
| preposterous they circulated a petition to the board
| among the engineers to have Musk removed. The board did
| so.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I suppose he could let rando users load their crap into a
| launch and then have people bid on "owning" a bit of
| spacejunk memorabilia orbiting the planet. Think, _"
| Shamrock Beanie Baby, but orbiting the Earth!"._
|
| Probably not great if you want the actual thing, in hand.
| No one spending 3x the price of a Steam Deck right now
| will want that price going towards launching it into
| orbit instead of having it in hand, playing games. Still,
| maybe there's a market for "owning" orbiting space debris
| contributing to Kessler Syndrome? Sort of like buying &
| burning an item to make an artificial scarcity NFT? Only
| this way you get to contribute to the destruction of
| mankind's ability to easily launch anything into orbit.
| redisman wrote:
| I would guess it jives better with SEO garbage and brings
| more sales in the short term
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this_
|
| I've sold on Etsy for a while as a hobby side business. The
| change seems to happen after their IPO. It felt like pretty
| quickly after that there began a trickle of incremental
| changes. A rule that allowed "manufacturing partners" really
| opened a huge loophole though, and in general things went
| down hill rapidly over the last 2-3 years.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| To be fair - you really can't do volume sales without
| outsourcing manufacturing.
|
| There's only so much you can get from handcrafting.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Depends on what you consider "scale". I did 5k+ orders in
| about 5 years. I scaled back a bit after that because I
| had some large projects at my main job, but that's not
| bad scale for hand-made items on a hobby basis. If I'd
| been devoted to it full time & increased efforts to get
| more exposure (which I avoided since I had all the sales
| I could handle already) then even as a solo creator I
| could have scaled to 25K in that time period & earned a
| nice salary doing this FT even after setting aside $$ for
| PTO & retirement funds.
|
| On the other hand, if you consider "scale" to be >
| $300k/year, then yes it's hard to do it without a
| manufacturing partner. And that can be a legitimate route
| even within the traditional Etsy framework! Design
| something, punch out countless copies w/ the "partner",
| and do final finishing/customization yourself. Or a few
| other similar models. The problem is this opened the door
| for sellers & etsy to rationalize keeping all sorts of
| definitively _not_ handcrafted items in the marketplace.
| _At best_ it 's handmade by the "partner" through mass
| cheap 3rd world labor. At worse it's white labelled junk.
|
| Anyway, the entire point of Etsy is that, even if
| "there's only so much you can get from handcrafting",
| _that was what Etsy was for_. The place where true,
| actual, real handcrafters were selling their items. Sure,
| it represents a cap on scale, but that was Etsy 's
| _mission_. Not to become some front end for Aliexpress or
| the knockoff junk you find on Amazon.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Depends on what you consider "scale".
|
| Scale is value and the potential to sales increase.
| Software license sales have infinite scale, Gwyneth
| Paltrow egg sales is high scale and $200 hand crafted in
| spare time earing sales is no scale.
|
| > Not to become some front end for Aliexpress or the
| knockoff junk you find on Amazon.
|
| Yes, it was intended a storefront for handmade junk for
| 2x the price... With occasional interesting things.
| christop1957 wrote:
| That's a little cynical. We don't make the screws that go
| into our furniture or smelt the iron ore that goes into
| the steel pipe fittings or grow the trees or generate the
| electricity that supports distribution of this thread.
| But we do feel like we make each piece that we sell on
| Etsy.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It's not cynical.
|
| I'm saying that crafting community isn't large enough to
| produce enough goods to sustain Etsy. Therefore wholesale
| outsourcing of production is the only way.
|
| These days you can outsource original product
| manufacturing in moderate quantities as well. Doesn't
| mean that you're not the artist behind them.
|
| I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully
| prebuilt by mass manufacturer.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| To sustain etsy? To sustain a storefront, maybe a bit of
| search? I'm sure 8% of sales are enough to cover that,
| regardless of the actual volume.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully
| prebuilt by mass manufacturer._
|
| I don't have a problem with "manufacturing partners" in
| this sense. It's when that loophole is used to justify or
| hide countless sellers simply white labelling items that
| is the problem. If I make a design and have a manufacture
| stamp out copies in the thousands, but then offer
| customization that I add JIT for each order (a hallmark
| of etsy) then that's fine. But if I take a $0.50 beaded
| necklace bought in bulk on Alibaba and resell then at $10
| with not other value added, that does not fit the
| supposed mission of Etsy. Take that to Amazon, Ebay, &
| it's okay. But it's absolutely not within the handcrafted
| marketplace, even when "handcrafted" is loosely defined,
| that Etsy is supposed to be.
| christop1957 wrote:
| Yes I agree, Etsy used to make sure you were original or
| had manufacturing partners. They had some kind of vetting
| for the partners until Josh Silverman(?) came on board. I
| think that is when those rules loosened and AliBaba
| became a legit partner on Etsy. It's been a slippery
| slope. My segment on Etsy is not conducive to mass
| production and I think we have simply priced ourselves
| above it as a way to keep separate . I have started
| seeing furniture made in Turkey and Poland and Romania
| that is now beating us up a little on price, not sure how
| they get the shipping so cheap but that is a different
| issue
| withinboredom wrote:
| Isn't that literally the point of Etsy?
| notpachet wrote:
| It was before the IPO. Now the point is to make money.
| Hence the problem.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Exactly. It sucks because I have bought absolute garbage from
| there. I know the seller matters just like on eBay but the
| trust that I'll be getting a craftsman-made item when buying
| from Etsy is now firmly lost outside of specific stores. It
| is actively user hostile now.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| I started out selling my own hobby stuff on eBay, and then
| switched to Etsy because I appreciated the way it presented
| my products as a storefront. It seemed more "legitimate". But
| with the way things are going, I'm ironically thinking about
| moving primarily back to eBay and just embracing the free-
| for-all there.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Ironically enough Ebay is probably the most trustworthy
| platform atm. It might sound insane but eBay listings are
| usually pretty clear on the origin and condition of the
| items. You know when the seller is from China, or if the item
| is used, and while there are tons of scams and misleading
| descriptions... for the most part sellers are usually pretty
| honest in the item descriptions. I don't mind buying knock
| offs as long as I know that they aren't the real deal, and
| cheap items are at least priced accordingly. Which is not the
| case on Amazon.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The differences between shopping at Ebay and Amazon are
| that on Ebay you're 1) buying from a particular seller with
| feedback that actually refers to their own performance and
| products, rather than "reviews" that refer to a semi-random
| selection of different products purchased from a completely
| unrelated range of sellers, and 2) on Ebay those products
| are half the price of Amazon.
|
| Somebody sent me an Amazon gift card a while back, and I
| still haven't found reason to use it. The only thing I
| still find Amazon useful for is to buy small amounts of
| industrial supplies and parts that are usually sold
| directly from suppliers to businesses in large amounts, who
| often have terrible web storefronts (or only use Amazon for
| ecommerce) because they usually deal with their ( _buy-by-
| the-case, repeat_ ) customers by phone or in person. If I
| only need two specialized bolts or two feet of tubing, I'll
| go to Amazon.
| brudgers wrote:
| For hardware (non-computing) I can't find at Ace, I use
| Mcmaster-Carr.
|
| https://www.mcmaster.com/
| pessimizer wrote:
| Me, too. It's a great site with as good of an interface
| as you could possibly dream of for a company that's
| selling eleventy billion products.
| mbesto wrote:
| Whoever championed (CIO?) and executed that e-commerce
| deserves an award. Serious. I work with a bunch of middle
| market manufacturers and distributors and doing
| e-commerce is HARD for them. I use that site as a
| reference on "how to do it right", every. single. time.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| At a very excessive markup. But for low quantity
| purchases and very high customer-is-king level of
| service, it's unbeatable.
| brudgers wrote:
| In the US, if you buy specialty hardware from Amazon you
| probably are going to pay a markup on the markup because
| McMaster Carr is probably the previous source.
| deelowe wrote:
| Fastenal is another good option as well. Grainger can be
| good for other random industrial things (tho pricey).
| I've found that fastenal's shipping is INSANELY fast.
| Like get it delivered the next day fast. Though that
| could be my location.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Not sure if eBay still does it, but they also let sellers
| recycle old listings' reviews for different products on
| new listings. I experienced that at least once with a
| return.
| vlunkr wrote:
| You've convinced me to try ebay again. It's gotten so
| tiresome trying to identify whether or not you're buying
| garbage on Amazon. I put plenty of time into it and I
| still get burned occasionally.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I dropped my Prime membership over a year ago and have no
| regrets. eBay has made that possible. I've gotten
| consistently fair prices and quick shipping, and ironically
| fewer quality issues. Target and Costco have also become a
| bigger factor as well with free shipping and in store
| returns.
|
| My cloud computing has moved to GCP, DO, and my homelab
| (built from eBay stuff!).
|
| I still use Amazon if I have no other option. I just pay
| for shipping, but surprise... it's usually still free over
| $25.
|
| #cancelprime
| function_seven wrote:
| I think I'm headed the same way you went.
|
| It's crazy how these 2 platforms seemed to have switched
| places. Several years ago, Amazon would have been the
| place to do for scam-free purchasing, and eBay was the
| shady site that you had to do your due diligence on
| before buying.
|
| More and more it's the opposite. I have to wrangle with
| searches and filters on Amazon to try and avoid the
| "fake" brands and knockoff goods. eBay is easier and
| often cheaper to boot.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I think it's because eBay, since it's founding, has had a
| scam problem that it's been actively trying to address.
| They aren't perfect, but they have certainly been putting
| in multiple measures to increase trust.
|
| Amazon, on the other hand, has nearly done the opposite.
| They don't do anything about scammers and have created an
| environment where even when you buy something directly
| from amazon you might get a knock off. You can't trust
| anything there.
|
| Everyone knows the amazon reviews are garbage, even
| amazon. Yet they keep them because having 1000 garbage
| reviews looks better than having 10 legitimate reviews
| (and many of them negative).
|
| Amazon has optimized for moving any and everything.
| twic wrote:
| I also don't have Prime, and buy from eBay where
| possible, but a substantial fraction of the time, the
| things I buy turn up in Amazon boxes. I think there are
| eBay sellers who have Prime, list items at slightly less
| than Amazon's price including shipping, then use their
| free shipping to drop-ship items to customers. They
| collect slightly less than Amazon's shipping fee in gross
| margin, and only have the Prime free as overhead.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Target physical stores still build profiles of shoppers
| using non-disclosed facial recognition? "theft
| prevention"
| bin_bash wrote:
| Do they not deserve to know who is coming into their
| store? Do I have a right to anonymity if I'm on private
| property?
| nebulous_two wrote:
| There is an understanding between shopper and shop owner
| about what is happening on said property. The shopper
| normally does not expect that the shop owner would
| instantly know your entire biography + family lineage
| just by stepping onto the property.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| How can he get that from just a photo?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You collect cell phone IMEIs and sell it to a data broker
| that aggregates multiple sources to pinpoint strong
| associations that lead back to a shopper's home. In
| return you get demographic data on your customers.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From firms like this[1].
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dmkyq/heres-the-
| file-clearv...
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Yes, you do have a right to expectation of privacy. A
| verbal contract is still required for filming you. Open
| ended contracts aren't valid as well.
|
| We don't live in ancapistan.
| bin_bash wrote:
| > verbal contract is still required for filming you
|
| I mean that's obviously not true. Otherwise they wouldn't
| have security cameras.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Those are typically written contracts - as in the sign
| with a camera when entering buildings.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| sure - posted plainly to the public. "caveat emptor"
| While we are at it, where are those records kept? Who
| sells them, to whom? What happens when there are factual
| errors in a private profile on members of the public?
| What other restrictions are placed on members of the
| public due to undisclosed records? What political
| affiliations do the owners of TARGET have, and do they
| use their company assets for political purposes, or
| private law-enforcement activities? Politics and law-
| enforcement are regulated acitivities, for historically
| important reasons, right?
| bduerst wrote:
| One of the alternatives is to just close stores bc of
| excessive theft, like Walgreens and CVS are doing in the
| Bay Area.
|
| I'm not saying Target's implementation is justified, but
| surely there's a middle ground for scaling anti-theft ops
| and using technology responsibly?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| San Francisco closings hit the national news a few months
| ago -- what's the state of it now? Any reopenings?
| bduerst wrote:
| We did the same thing back a few years ago, and were able
| to move about 95% of online shopping on Amazon Prime onto
| other platforms or local BnMs.
|
| There's still a few items that are really hard to find
| elsewhere though, but that was Amazon's core value prop
| originally with rare books.
| bluGill wrote:
| I wanted to do that. But EBay has decided my account was
| hacked (I haven't done anything in 5 years and suddenly
| want to sell something - I understand the red flag). This
| can only be resolved by calling them at a phone number
| they will not give me.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Oh that's a very good point though. Ebay support is great
| for refunds but absolutely useless w.r.t any account
| specific problem. I couldn't buy anything for 2 years a
| while ago and they would never explain why.
|
| Turns out my old PayPal account had a minor issue, and
| that meant I couldn't use ebay even if I didn't even have
| my PayPal account linked to ebay anymore and I was using
| a new credit card. I had to figure that out by myself,
| ebay was completely useless and unhelpful.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| What is the reason to boycott Amazon, but where Google is
| ok?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I also dropped my Prime - had it from the very beginning.
|
| Amazing how Amazon wants to push me back into prime,
| heavy handed or subtile.
| cogman10 wrote:
| What's the point of prime?
|
| Seems like the free shipping and 2nd day shipping is all
| but a thing of the past.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Prime Video, Audible and deals.
|
| A bunch of brands officially sell through Amazon and
| super fast shipping.
|
| If you're in a metropolis - you get a lot of benefits,
| including 1 hour groceries.
| treis wrote:
| Also free full resolution photo back ups.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| I agree that eBay has quietly become more trustworthy than
| most others, and they have more experience with user review
| and trust management systems that just about anyone.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I am not even sure that eBay has become more trustworthy
| - they just kept doing what they were always doing. The
| others have just become significantly more shady.
| vt240 wrote:
| The greatest part about eBay for me, is that it actively
| encourages you to network with a set of vendors, and
| develop a level of trust. That's just something I've never
| got from Amazon.
| zucked wrote:
| I have repeat purchased from vendors on eBay for
| different items based on previous experiences. eBay makes
| that easy - Amazon is the complete opposite. They hide
| the vendor as much as possible.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I also buy (after 10+ years) much more from eBay than
| Amazon. First for trust, second they often have more
| specialized filters than amazon (E.g. cardboard box sizes).
| kingcharles wrote:
| eBay's search gets worse every year, but Amazon's sucks
| way harder. As you say, at least you can filter better on
| eBay (although their price filters are getting vague like
| Amazon).
| bduerst wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| Unless Ebay has overhauled their reputation system
| recently, you will buy counterfeit/mislabeled goods from a
| merchant, and then either receive a bribe (as a partial
| return) to keep a five star rating or you have to open an
| incident to get a full refund, in which you can't leave a
| rating and tell other people to beware.
|
| This allows terrible merchants from all parts of the world
| to push crap on unsuspecting customers.
| slg wrote:
| How much demand is there truly for handmade products from
| independent creators? It is possible that Etsy has decided
| that is no longer a market that is worth pursuing and they
| would rather try to compete with Amazon and AliExpress. It is
| often better to have a small piece of a huge pie than the
| majority of a tiny pie.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There's more than enough demand to support a good-sized
| business mediating such sales.
|
| However, there's not enough to demand to keep the
| shareholders of an IPO'ed company happy.
|
| And there's the problem.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Considering that the strike is complaining about hike in
| fees - it doesn't seem like there is enough demand.
|
| Is Etsy such a good aggregator, that setting up a
| storefront with Square is that hard?
| dangrossman wrote:
| Etsy has somewhere on the order of 100 million active
| buyers, searching Etsy for goods to buy every month. If
| you set up a storefront on Square, you start out with 0
| active buyers, searching your storefront 0 times every
| month. Marketplaces bring tremendous value to small
| sellers.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| So... Let me get this straight - they get a lot of
| customers off other people's work, but aren't willing to
| pay for the increased costs of providing them those extra
| customers.
|
| These Etsy people sound like entitled brats.
| naravara wrote:
| The pattern with these sorts of Web 2.0 companies is grimly
| familiar now. They start promising more access and reach
| for small creators. They get a lot of small creators in the
| door with the ease of use and cutting out of the old
| middle-men. Then they implement a bunch of mechanisms to
| foster lock-in and fleece the small creators in ways that
| aren't much better than the old middle-men (though,
| admittedly, with more reach). It's like one of those fish
| traps you put in a current where the fish swim in but can't
| turn around to get away.
| wtf242 wrote:
| yeah, the last item I bought from Etsy showed up in an Amazon
| box. The seller legit just bought the item on amazon and
| shipped it to me for 2x the price.
| nomel wrote:
| From what I've recently found, the search results have been
| completely overrun with ugly 3d printed goods, most being
| duplicate designs.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this instead of
| doing everything they possibly can to fight it.
|
| They can raise short-term profits this way. The problem is
| that there's only so much rent you can seek before it becomes
| unprofitable for sellers. It turns out that "industrial-
| scale" sellers, copycats and outright scammers have lower
| operating costs which means they can stick around and replace
| the independent creators that have essentially been priced
| out of the market. Of course, in the long-term it will be the
| death of the company, but by that time, bonuses would've been
| paid, raises would've been awarded, stock would've vested and
| lots of "shareholder value" would've been created.
|
| They've also recently bought Depop for a significant amount
| of money and I'm not sure if it's profitable, so they might
| be intentionally cannibalizing their earlier product to make
| money to prop up the next one.
| treis wrote:
| Why can't you build a business around selling "industrial-
| scale" artsy/customizable stuff?
|
| In a different context, someone made a great point that
| your first million users don't necessarily need to be
| included in your next 20 million. Maybe Etsy has or will
| cycle through all their early buyers & sellers. But that
| doesn't matter if the group cycling in is more valuable.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Why can't you build a business around selling
| "industrial-scale" artsy/customizable stuff?
|
| That's essentially what old-school furniture & home
| stores do. There's nothing wrong with that but I think
| that market is already at capacity, competition is fierce
| and margins are low.
|
| I also suspect that a lot of the industrial-scale
| producers & copycats use the artisans as their R&D
| department and only copy their successful designs. In
| this case, the innovation still comes from the small-
| scale independent sellers, which if they are driven off
| the platform would eventually kill off the industrial-
| scale sellers and copycats as they'd no longer have
| anything to copy (and designing in-house might make them
| unprofitable).
| treis wrote:
| >That's essentially what old-school furniture & home
| stores do. There's nothing wrong with that but I think
| that market is already at capacity, competition is fierce
| and margins are low.
|
| Eh, I can't think of a directly comparable site. The
| closest would be something like Pier 1, but there's no
| customization there and it's all sold by Pier 1.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Independent, small scale sellers aren't priced out. Cost of
| doing business includes sales costs - that needs to be
| integral to the price.
|
| What means is that these craftspeople don't produce enough
| value for the markets they are targeting.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Well part of the value is being handcrafted and being
| original. If others lie about the first, and can just
| steal the second, then yes, it is hard to compete.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Brand recognition and originality is value. Making felt
| handbags for 10 years and expecting that no one else
| would copy that - is what drives people away from
| stagnating crafts people.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Etsy makes money on transactions. More transactions = more
| money.
|
| Most users of etsy do not care about source or authenticity.
| They just want what they see for the price listed.
|
| Losing the handmade trinket shops is meaningless compared to
| the full scale China operation doing 100x more business.
| Customers by and large cannot tell the difference nor do they
| actually care too much.
| after_care wrote:
| I disagree. Having a reputable online handmade trinket shop
| was very valuable because it was the largest and had the
| best brand recognition. Being a Chinese factory retail
| outlet is less valuable because _everyone_ is a Chinese
| factory retail outlet.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| We just have to solve which market has a larger space to
| grow in:
|
| Market for cheap Chinese goods.
|
| Market for handmade trinkets.
|
| I have a pretty good feeling that I know which one is
| more profitable. I'm sure investors know too.
| after_care wrote:
| Sure, the market for cheap imported goods is much larger.
| It's also more competitive. Do you really think Etsy is
| going to stand against Walmart, Amazon, etc?
| Aunche wrote:
| Etsy is occupying a niche of semi-customized trinkets, a
| minority of which are hand-made. This isn't a space that
| Walmart and Amazon seem particularly interested in.
| naravara wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. The real problem is that
| people want nice, handmade trinkets at cheap Chinese
| goods prices. Which is why the cheap Chinese good
| manufacturers spam their generic AliExpress-tier wares
| into places like Etsy to fool people as to what they're
| getting.
|
| The websites that function as clearinghouses (Amazon,
| Etsy, etc.) could figure out ways to prevent it but they
| have incentives to play along with obfuscation as to
| which market the consumer is shopping in.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Small businesses have absolutely no obligation to work
| for "investors."
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Is Etsy, a public company with a valuation in the tens of
| billions, still a "small business"?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Every business has an obligation to work for the
| investor.
| ehvatum wrote:
| That really depends on how the small business is funded.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem is that "cheap Chinese goods" is already
| monopolized by eBay, Aliexpress, Banggood and Amazon. I
| don't see how they're ever going to break into it.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| The only reason to go to Etsy is to (try to) find unique
| stuff. If that stuff is diluted 100-1 by Chinese knockoffs,
| there's no reason to go there anymore. I might as well go
| to eBay or Amazon, which probably have even lower prices.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I think the glaring issue with that line of thought is that
| the position of 'rent seeking middleman providing a web
| storefront' is pretty commoditized, and is likely not
| viable long term.
|
| In their niche, they had a smaller addressable market, but
| they had a moat from their brand within said niche. Outside
| of the niche, that moat doesn't exist, and they are
| competing against Amazon, Ebay, and many others.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Cost. Simple as that.
|
| Etsy cannot charge AirBnB commissions, to verify every single
| seller and keep them in check
| impostervt wrote:
| The "easy" solution seems to be - if it's sold on Amazon, you
| can't sell it on Etsy.
|
| But I guess that would still harm the original developers of
| the IP :\
| have_faith wrote:
| I used to visit Etsy to buy gifts and that sort if thing but I
| hardly go there any more because of all of the spam products. I
| can usually tell what is and isn't an independent seller but I
| can't be bothered with sifting through them all anymore.
| naoqj wrote:
| > as a buyer, its a huge pain to have to sift through pages of
| aliexpress merchandise to uncover interesting and original
| work. make a cool printed design on a game boy shell? quickly
| stolen, mass produced on aliexpress, then sold by all the
| boring resellers on etsy
|
| As a buyer it is a massive joy to see the price of some item go
| down when there's diversity of sellers instead of a monopoly.
| samstave wrote:
| I have a few designed items that I have oft been told to sell
| n etsy - I have literally no interest in setting up an etsy
| shop -- however, I DO have interest in finding out how to get
| things I design made via AliExpress for my own desires - and
| dont care if other items crop up so much...
|
| How does one go about getting a product made through
| aliexpress?
| xsmasher wrote:
| What kind of items?
|
| Redbubble lets you upload designs for t-shirts, phone
| cases, etc, and make them available in their web
| storefront. You only get a small slice of the sale price,
| but it's very easy to get your designs "out into the
| world."
| samstave wrote:
| Physical Objects, not art prints.
|
| I come up with mechanical designs as well as "artsy"
| things - which could be mass produced... but never like a
| logo-shirt or something as mentally ephemeral..
|
| ---
|
| Right now I am modeling an 'thing' as a 3d printable (or
| injection molded at scale) attachment to a common house
| hold power tool, but can come in various grades
| (home|pro|industrial)...
|
| I messed up and had a bunch of money in 2020 that I
| should have bought a printer with, but spent on stupid
| stuff like food and living expenses instead...
|
| Other items are home-goods improvements/desires...
|
| Think of me as the SamCo (Like RonCo) of my personal
| universe... but I am hoping some of that bleeds put into
| other universes such as xsmasherCo :-)
| Jarwain wrote:
| Does uploading the model to shapeways' marketplace or to
| thingiverse, or having it printed by a 3d printing
| service not suffice for your needs?
| agmater wrote:
| AliExpress is for consumers, for bulk orders you can use
| Alibaba. You can also get in contact with the manufacturers
| to make things to your own liking, they'll quote you a
| price.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Yep. You can literally get anything on Alibaba.
|
| I bought bulk washing machine motors for millions of
| dollars and audio amplifier modules for a few thousands
| and N95 masks for a few hundred.
| [deleted]
| nerdawson wrote:
| That arguably goes against the purpose of a craft
| marketplace. If you want competition over cheap imported
| products, there's already Amazon and eBay.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Just to make sure I understand your position... are you
| saying that it's OK for someone to copy someone else's
| original design, mass produce it at lower cost, and give no
| credit or royalties to the original designer?
| naoqj wrote:
| Yes. It's better for the buyer, and I'm the buyer.
| mint2 wrote:
| That is a very short term an narrow view that leads to a
| race to the bottom in terms of quality and innovation. It
| leads to cheap mass produced generic fair. In the long
| run it's terrible for buyers.
| fleddr wrote:
| Not if that is what the buyers want. Evidence suggests
| they buy low quality low durability items, also in the
| face of better choices.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Not if that is what the buyers want. Evidence suggests
| they buy low quality low durability items
|
| Low quality/durability items are not what most people
| want most of the time. It's sometimes all they can
| afford, or they think they found a good deal and feel
| ripped off when the item arrives and they discover that
| it's low quality/durability, but either way they aren't
| happy about it. What people want is high quality goods at
| prices they can afford.
| fleddr wrote:
| You're suggesting that people do not willingly buy low
| quality crap, but they most definitely do. Even when
| knowing it is crap, and even when having the budget to
| buy higher quality goods. They'll still buy the low
| quality crap, at massive scale.
|
| I'm from the Netherlands. One of the most successful
| retail stores here is "Action", which in the category of
| low quality garbage sinks to the absolute bottom.
|
| Everybody knows it's garbage. One may buy a pair of
| scissors there and have it break down in 2 months of
| usage. So then people just buy another one. It's not
| strictly a budget issue, most shoppers can afford a good
| pair of scissors, one that lasts 10 years, but they
| prefer the cheap one anyway.
|
| "Alibaba shopping" is mainstream here. Everybody buys
| their small items there. One of my colleagues, whom is
| upper middle class, was proudly telling me how he buys a
| "value" pack of 10 phone chargers every year. They're all
| terrible and soon break down, so then he'll just move to
| the next one. He could just buy a single decent one, but
| no.
|
| I wish you were right, but you're not. People just want
| the absolute cheapest thing, and they want it now.
| mint2 wrote:
| >"Not if that is what the buyer wants [in the immediate
| term]"
|
| That's generally how a race to the bottom happens. Short
| term narrow minded outlooks that barely consider how one
| action effects another. It's terrible long run for
| buyers, employees, and the planet.
| notpachet wrote:
| You just accidentally summarized humanity.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Obviously you're not a creator otherwise you'd possess at
| least some minimal amount of scruples in what is blatant
| plagiarism.
| Kranar wrote:
| It absolutely is. Most of what people are calling
| "original" designs aren't even original. Etsy is rampant
| with copyright or trademark infringement, or just rehashes
| of the same designs someone else made. The only difference
| between Etsy and the spooky Chinese is that China has
| mastered manufacturing and distribution and that's what
| puts a lot of independent vendors out of business.
|
| Plenty of industries deal with this in various ways and
| manage to survive and the consumer ends up winning in the
| end. Restaurants, fashion, heck even app stores all deal
| with this and the end result is better products for the
| consumer at cheaper prices.
|
| No one has a monopoly on designing yet another cute
| bracelet or rainbow lanyard or generic pillow cover.
| duxup wrote:
| I largely quit going to Etsy for this reason.
|
| Had a couple run ins with what looked like good quality product
| only to get what was clearly just bulk garbage.
|
| Etsy was a neat bonus where I could access handmade small
| makers, but now that it is a hassle/ I don't know what I'm
| getting... I just don't go there.
| CommanderData wrote:
| I avoid etsy for this reason. I want original work. Its in
| etsys interest to stamp this out.
|
| They are not another ebay and shouldn't want to be.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _i will say they are right about one thing, small sellers are
| getting totally run over by design theft and aliexpress
| resellers. as a buyer, its a huge pain to have to sift through
| pages of aliexpress merchandise to uncover interesting and
| original work._
|
| At the end of the day, any increase in sales means more revenue
| for Etsy. The company is following the same digital flea market
| model that Amazon does, and it has all of the same perverse
| incentives.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| I've started open-sourcing all the design files for the stuff I
| sell online, because IP protection is very weak (and frankly,
| I've come to think it's basically impossible). It's been a more
| healthy way for me to approach my products: I am a manufacturer
| of this product, and my competitive advantage is my own
| familiarity with the product and my own reputation. Whether
| that's fair or not is besides the point, since it's the nature
| of online sales these days.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Within 45 minutes of where I live lies a little town that is
| known for hundreds of miles around as a place to go shopping
| for locally-produced art and hand-crafted items of almost any
| kind. You know, glass items, wind chimes, paintings, etc. Why
| does this still work, 30 years into the internet revolution?
| Curation. The shop owners choose very carefully what to sell,
| based on extremely limited space. Etsy purports to be the same
| idea on the internet, but they'll let anyone who wants to sell
| on their platform. THEY'D BE LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE IF THEY
| DIDN'T. But for the same reason that I buy less on Amazon and
| more from brick-and-mortar stores, they're finding that the
| CURATION is the key to VALUE. The problem of course, is that
| Etsy, or Amazon, or ANYONE who has a PLATFORM -- like Apple --
| has to be willing to make sacrifices to their POSSIBLE bottom
| line to keep the platform useful and valuable to their actual
| customers. It seems that an easy "gate" to erect on the
| platform would be to limit how many chochkies you can sell per
| month. It would seem to be a fix for people who are trying to
| use volume and SEO to take over someone else's product idea.
| Someone here could probably blow a hole in that idea, though.
| But if it's a site for personal hobbyists to sell something on
| the side, then you have to come up with rules to CURATE the
| content to produce that outcome.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| This is why I buy music related stuff (e.g. cables) only from
| Thomann. Amazon more or less relies on vendors to fill out
| metadata like product type, cable length, plug types and
| communication standards, and the result is that the Amazon
| product filter is often just _horribly fucking broken_.
| Meanwhile, Thomann does all that curation work on their own,
| and it 's just a breeze to use.
|
| Our biggest electronics chain Conrad however... oh jesus they
| have gone really downhill some years ago with their website
| design - the search is broken, metadata for parts are
| (sometimes completely) wrong, and to make it worse even the
| in-store staff has to rely on the website instead of a
| dedicated ERP software which means if you are searching for a
| part with specific specs (e.g. temperature) even the store
| staff can't help you any more!
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Thomann and the like killed my local music instrument
| stores. I don't think Thomann will go away, but it
| depresses me that it is nearly impossible to find an
| instrument I want to purchase to test without travelling 5
| hours. And I live in a capital city.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Thomann and the like killed my local music instrument
| stores.
|
| I think that's a good thing. The business of "holding
| things in a building" that are occasionally purchased and
| don't benefit from last-mile caching should go the way of
| the dinosaur. It will be good to get the space back. The
| thing that's really needed is a community space but the
| economics of it are hard unless you're selling stuff. My
| city tries to promote this stuff with arts council
| grants.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| But Thomann doesn't stock what I want, and the stores
| that carried it died, so now I am no better off.
| verve_rat wrote:
| There is value in being able to check out the thing you
| want, in person, before you buy it for a lot of things.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Thomann started out as a small music/instrument/stage
| tech store, too - but unlike their competitors, they
| fully embraced the future instead of showing the typical
| German skepticism towards change.
|
| I mean, I get your pain. But on the other hand I'm just
| sick about the Mittelstand complaining that online is
| eating their lunch... they have _all_ sat on their wealth
| and glory and thought they had carved out their forever
| niche guaranteeing themselves profits without having to
| do anything any more, and every single one that collapses
| fills my heart with a bit of joy.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| A couple of years ago, I went shopping for headphones. I
| went to a couple of different small electronics/audio
| stores, and none would let me try the headphones!! They
| had them in the plastic packaging and said they are not
| allowed to open them.
|
| What the fuck!
|
| I just left and bought something online.
|
| (I know there are high end hifi shops that will let me
| try headphones. But I wasn't looking for 500EUR
| headphones, I just wanted something that didn't sound
| like shit. Thomann is perfect for that.)
| doublepg23 wrote:
| HiFi shops won't let you try anymore either. People come
| in to try them and then just buy them online.
|
| Record player sales are booming though, according to the
| shop I went to.
| toyg wrote:
| _> People come in to try them and then just buy them
| online._
|
| It still puzzles me how much of a disconnect exists
| between e-commerce and brick & mortar, almost 25 years
| from Gates's "Business at the speed of thought".
|
| Those people who come in the store should be converted
| right there and then, by making it trivial to order in-
| store a home delivery option that is price-competitive
| with non-b&m-equipped businesses. Keep razor-thin local
| inventory that commands a premium for the fact that you
| get it there and then, and everything else can be
| ordered. This should allow you to offset a decent amount
| of showroom costs while still competing with web-only
| operations.
|
| If the price difference is small enough and the friction
| low enough, making the order in-store becomes a better
| option than leaving, sitting down somewhere, searching
| again for the item on some other store, etc etc.
|
| There are still big opportunities out there for retailers
| who can figure out that sweet spot.
| Afton wrote:
| I mean, you could have bought them. Tried them out while
| in the store, then returned them if they weren't to your
| liking. But I'll admit that might be more overhead than
| you were hoping for. But it would also be a great way to
| communicate to the store that their policies are bad.
| "I'd like to return these. Nothing really wrong, just
| don't like them. Oh, and I'd like to try...I mean buy
| these headphones. ... Actually, I'd like to return these
| please [etc, etc]
| ciupicri wrote:
| You're assuming the store would accept the return and
| even if they did, they might not do it for the same
| price; a (restocking) fee might be charged.
| ciupicri wrote:
| Yeah, but who's going to buy them in an opened package
| and at what discount (loss for the store)?
| markbnj wrote:
| I live in the northeast and we seem to still have local
| music stores offering the usual mix of instrument sales
| and service, lessons, sheet music and other supplies,
| etc. If I understand correctly from casual conversations
| with the owner of our local store many of them make a lot
| of their revenue renting instruments to local school
| students.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Just in case you weren't aware, if you surround a word by
| _asterisks_ , you can emphasize a word without YELLING
|
| Eg *hello* there
|
| Becomes
|
| _hello_ there
| 1-6 wrote:
| Honest question though, when is it ever appropriate to
| yell? Have you seen people ever do it? I think the all caps
| could be a useful tool for emphasis. Would I do it though?
| No.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| I think yelling is appropriate if someone says they're
| thinking of building an Electron app. That's the only
| reason I can think of.
| zarmin wrote:
| So! How's your first day on the internet going?
| Stratoscope wrote:
| It's never appropriate here.
|
| > _Please don 't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want
| to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it
| and it will get italicized._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Of course, uppercase is appropriate for an acronym or
| initialism that actually is spelled that way, such as SEO
| in the comment we're replying to.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Thank you, for responding in a more productive way than I
| could have.
| [deleted]
| JAlexoid wrote:
| But... That curation is a VERY expensive task.
|
| Etsy is for artists/creators. If you add curation to the mix
| one side needs to take a hit - and it ain't going to be your
| wallet.
|
| Basically the reason for Etsy to exist is "direct to
| consumer" model, with low intermediary overhead and 0 setup
| hurdles.
|
| (If you ever tried to get a product on a supermarket shelf,
| that's how it is to get onto a successful curated store
| shelf)
| christop1957 wrote:
| Etsy may be compromised these days but it still IS for
| artists/creators as you say. We have a stand alone website
| that gets 2 to 9 visitors a day and our main Etsy site gets
| hundreds every day. That's why we are on Etsy. We are too
| small to hire comprehensive SEO/advertising help (I've
| tried a few) so we let Etsy collect the main slug of
| customers. We employ 4 people full time.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Therefore it should be clear that the rise in fees is a
| reasonable tradeoff, for access to more potential
| customers.
|
| I understand the desire to make sure that goods are
| authentic, but that is the only reasonable argument in
| the whole strike manifesto.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What kind of products do you sell?
| nvr219 wrote:
| Bootleg game boy games.
| nameisname wrote:
| Underrated comment lmao
| christop1957 wrote:
| we make furniture out of old wood
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Curation is expensive, and difficult/impossible to
| automate, but there's value in it, in a world where anyone
| can post anything anywhere. We all felt better using Amazon
| ten years ago, when we could trust reviews, and trust
| products, but now it's flooded with brand names like
| "UZOOG" or whatever. People generally liked Facebook more
| before their grandparents and weird uncle got on it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Look at Reddit as a platform which has many well curated
| 'subreddits', almost entirely for free.
|
| It's totally possible on an e-commerce platform. Just
| nobodies quite managed it yet.
| spacexsucks wrote:
| I would argue that for artists all their work is already
| curated if they built it themselves and hence they wouldnt
| need to curate stuff
|
| But if i am selling someone elses stuff, then i am in the
| business of curation.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You're right. But we are talking about Etsy taking an
| active role in what is available on their site, which is
| curation. Not an easy task as well.
|
| They also decided to be way more lax, than some people
| want it to be.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Looks like Etsy made $160M last year. I think they can
| afford to ramp up their efforts in this area. But, like the
| Apple App Store, people are only going to get satisfaction
| if they can make a big enough stink on social media.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| A) Why should they?
|
| B) Are investors not allowed to make any return on their
| investments in form of dividends?
| giaour wrote:
| > Why should they?
|
| Because otherwise their brand is asymptotically
| approaching just being a more expensive Ali Express.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The brand is established and it's not that heavily
| diluted... Even then - it only needs to keep up with the
| aesthetics and product types, to keep on top.
|
| So no... They don't need to. And curated storefronts were
| many - I knew of at least 5 startups in that space - they
| all folded.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Why should they?
|
| If they do not, many sellers will stop using them. Many
| buyers will stop using them. They will have competition.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You're basically arguing for a monopoly now.
|
| Let them fail.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| As a consumer, I don't want to go through the effort of
| finding the next Etsy. I want to be lazy and have the
| current Etsy be good.
|
| Whatever comes next will be small. They will lack some of
| the things I want for many years.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| As a lazy person I want sixpack abs, without putting in
| the effort.
|
| Also - monopolies are never good.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If shouting at the sky had a chance to convince God to
| endow me with abs, I would make it a daily practice.
|
| Etsy does listen to it's consumers, at least some times.
| The cost of complaining here is commensurate with the
| potential benefit.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Is Etsy paying dividends?
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| That is the cost of doing business. Without the curation
| they risk losing their customer base. Why should I as a
| customer go to Etsy if it's filled with knockoff crap
| rather than handmade things?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Why should I as a customer go to Etsy if it's filled
| with knockoff crap rather than handmade things?
|
| You don't go there. They aren't a curated product
| website, so why do you expect them to be one?
|
| Let them fail. It's baffling to me why so many people are
| so heavily invested into that brand here...
| davidhyde wrote:
| I see an opportunity here. A website who wants to curate
| products could use Etsy to locate sellers and convince
| them to list on their site. That curation website could
| develop a "stamp of approval" brand and grow that way.
| The art seller could include a printed note in the
| delivery saying "find more products like this on this xyz
| site". That way you use Etsy to draw in new customers but
| keep them as repeat customers for other products on this
| curated site. The main idea being that the curated site
| would not have to spend nearly as much money on
| advertising that Etsy does. Might work.
| loeg wrote:
| > They aren't a curated product website, so why do you
| expect them to be one?
|
| They used to be that! At least, a site for handmade
| things. That's what they built their brand on. Yeah,
| nowadays I avoid them like the plague because they're
| just a shitty ebay.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I've bought handmade things on Etsy that are a) very high
| quality and b) obscure/weird enough that I wouldn't know
| where else to go for them.
|
| Enabling this sort of thing is Etsy's pitch. I have no
| particular loyalty to their brand, but in the past
| they've done a great job living up to that promise for
| me, and I have to assume others have had similar
| experiences. If they get filled up by Chinesium knockoffs
| and the quality sellers are driven off, Etsy's product
| will no longer hold any value for us, and they will lose
| our business.
|
| So yes, "let them fail". But before you accuse us of
| blind, unearned devotion to a brand, you might consider
| that there is---or once was---a good reason to prefer
| Etsy over other options.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > It's baffling to me why so many people are so heavily
| invested into that brand here...
|
| Firstly, I never said I am invested in their brand. Nor
| do I have to be to argue that "cost is very high" is not
| a good reason to ignore doing something that your
| business (I would argue) needs to do (keep the knockoff
| "handmade stuff") in order to the accomplish your stated
| goals (connect sellers of actual handmade stuff with
| buyers).
| Spivak wrote:
| Maybe, but Etsy is part of a long line of businesses that
| think they can solve adversarial search. The fact that
| Google can't and is losing the war should tell you
| everything about your chances. As long as you never use
| the "discovery" half of their business and find shops
| elsewhere, IG, TikTok, it's a fantastic experience.
| Basically Shopify but a little more streamlined.
| bdcravens wrote:
| This assumes every customer has that discernment. No
| shortage of potential buyers end up on Etsy because they
| saw something cool, asked the person where they got it,
| and the only answer they received was "Etsy".
| giaour wrote:
| Etsy is _also_ for curators, though (at least a specific
| kind). You have always been able to sell vintage items on
| their platform, and antique sellers are curators and
| restorers.
|
| Before manufactured goods were on the platform, you were
| basically browsing items that were either handmade or hand
| curated. It was a much better experience.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Etsy is really for everyone, but the brand image is that
| it's really artists sales channel.
|
| Based on my experience, curators add an extra 50%+ to the
| price of a product. Which is the cost of well curated
| storefront.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Well, yes it is. And it works just fine on the "mom and pop
| shop" scale. But the whole idea of the post-2008 startups
| is to "disrupt" the industry by replacing the knowledgeable
| people with algorithms and minimum wage employees.
|
| So what is the bottom line? Consumers get to enjoy products
| that are 2x cheaper and 4x worse. Individual makers get
| priced out and have to join the drone ranks. And the
| corporate owners of trademarks and algorithms rake in so
| much cash they don't know where to invest it anymore.
|
| Sadly, this is happening across every sector, and most
| people seem to be just fine with it.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >has to be willing to make sacrifices to their POSSIBLE
| bottom line to keep the platform useful and valuable to their
| actual customers.
|
| This will never happen with Etsy, Amazon, or any other
| publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies have a
| fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much money
| as possible. If the leadership doesn't act in this manner,
| they will be replaced with others that will. If you want a
| platform like you are describing it will have to be privately
| owned.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their
| share holders to make as much money as possible.
|
| There has been this odd trend over the last few years of
| mischaracterizing what this means/what that duty translates
| to. People talk about it as if every CEO has to redline the
| company at all times and _never_ think about longterm
| consequences for literally any reason. Every single cent
| that can be extracted _right now_ must be extracted or the
| investors will rise up in all their anger crying out
| "FIDUCIARY DUTY!" as they drag the poor CEO off kicking and
| screaming.
|
| Companies can think longterm. They're allowed to sacrifice
| short term profits for sustainability/longevity. I don't
| get where people get this idea that they can't. To me,
| "fiduciary duty" has become almost memetic - it's some
| weird hand wave-y line people throw out to excuse
| businesses being short-sighted, as if they never had a
| choice.
| coldpie wrote:
| Whether it's a legal requirement or not, companies
| definitely act as if it is. Setting a company on fire to
| acquire short-term profits with a golden parachute
| guarantee is the pattern for executives of public
| companies under American capitalism.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Oh let me be perfectly clear here, I know that that is
| how things often shake out, especially in the US. What I
| am talking about is the way people defend businesses that
| behave this way.
|
| They act as if they have no choice, that there is some
| legal mandate to just wring out a company all day every
| day and damn all consideration beyond "I can make another
| dollar this second."
| feoren wrote:
| > Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their
| share holders to make as much money as possible.
|
| I feel like this is in semi-myth territory. Yes, there have
| been cases where shareholders have sued company leadership
| because they weren't making them as much money as they
| could. But it's not quite as clear-cut and well-tested in
| the courts as you make it sound.
| mattkrause wrote:
| In fact, the case law goes _firmly_ in the other
| direction.
|
| Management has a _ton_ of latitude to run the business as
| they see fit. The "remedy" for bad business decisions is
| supposed to be divesting and starting a competitor, not
| the courts.
|
| Cases like _Dodge v. Ford_ or _Caremark_ are odd because
| the board was basically not running a business at all:
| Ford flat-out said he was doing something not for the
| business, but in support of his philanthropic beliefs.
| Caremark was so asleep at the helm that they racked up a
| quarter-billion dollars in silly fines.
|
| Anyone can, of course, sue over anything, but if it's
| even vaguely legitimate (and the "facts" in _Shlensky v.
| Wrigley_ are pretty bonkers, IMO), they won 't win.
| tyrfing wrote:
| That meme also contrasts with the rise of modern ESG,
| where a lot of shareholder pressure on management teams
| has been in the direction of making less money. There is
| a lot of _really_ interesting stuff out there done in the
| name of ESG, EXFY being a particularly good example.
| andai wrote:
| >Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668
| (Mich. 1919) is a case in which the Michigan Supreme
| Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor
| Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than
| in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees
| or customers. It is often taught as affirming the
| principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America,
| although that teaching has received some criticism.
| [Wikipedia]
| mattkrause wrote:
| Yup, but the facts of that particular case are tricky.
| Ford refused to issue a dividend to the Dodge brothers
| because "My ambition is to employ still
| more men, to spread the benefits of this
| industrial system to the greatest possible number,
| to help them build up their lives and their homes."
|
| This isn't a business decision; it's an ideological one.
|
| It's been argued that if he said less ("No, just no"), or
| a bit more ("And this will let us recruit the best
| workers/expand our customer base/etc"), he would have
| been fine. This commentary lays that argument out nicely:
| https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/603
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much
| money as possible" No they don't. That's an oft repeated
| myth. The have a responsibility to manage in the best
| interests of the business. That's pretty vague. On purpose.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| In my experience it's just a repeated line to excuse
| companies for not thinking longterm or about
| anyone/anything beyond immediate revenue. It's very silly
| and not what the term means at all, yet as you pointed
| out, we see it all the time.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| There's a "however". Actions that reduce the shareholder
| value without any long term prospects is something that
| will drive down investment and could trigger lawsuits
| imwillofficial wrote:
| A lawsuit does not indicate a breach of law or anything
| really.
| andrepew wrote:
| As much money as possible over what timeline? Crank profits
| now at the expense of the long-term business? Lose profits
| now to improve long-term business?
|
| It isn't a straight-forward call to make. The current
| status-quo with resellers might be making money now, but
| there will be long-term brand damage in exchange. Will
| their business still be viable in 5 years if they develop a
| reputation for being Aliexpress lite?
| peterbell_nyc wrote:
| If you are publicly traded and don't have leverage (e.g.
| different share classes with different voting rights for
| the founders) it's a straighforward call to make.
| Optimize for short term profits or be replaced by someone
| who will do.
| JackFr wrote:
| > Optimize for short term profits or be replaced by
| someone who will do.
|
| No. Optimize for shareholder value.
|
| Amazon shareholders, for instance, are happy to make
| little in way of profit because Amazon management has
| shown an ability to increase the value of the enterprise.
|
| In general though, the market is legitimately skeptical
| of most managers which is not a bad thing.
| notpachet wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted.
|
| > If the leadership doesn't act in this manner, they will
| be replaced with others that will.
|
| This is exactly what happened at Etsy when they fired the
| previous CEO and installed Josh Silverman.
| kareemsabri wrote:
| They are being downvoted because "make as much money as
| possible" is not a clear cut proposition. Apple ran
| (runs) an expensive recycling program and investors
| complained that it wasn't valuable at annual meetings.
| Steve Jobs said "We disagree" but he wasn't replaced.
| Lots of companies don't maximize the dollars out of every
| single thing, in response to a bigger picture / longer
| term vision, and it's up to leadership to sell it to
| shareholders.
|
| Etsy could certainly argue their bottom line in the long
| term will be helped by curating a higher quality
| marketplace and getting rid of junk sellers, if that's a
| problem.
| JackFr wrote:
| Steve Jobs earned the ability to say that.
|
| Most managers are not Steve Jobs.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I had the same thing happen[0], but the point is that
| companies don't have to make _as much money as possible_
| by sacrificing everything else like brand image and human
| decency; anything that goes against obvious profit-
| increasing practices must be properly accounted for by
| the board giving a reasonable explanation. A hypothetical
| shareholder meeting: "Q: why did you reduce your cut of
| sales when still trending upward in user and revenue
| growth? A: we believe higher user growth numbers is more
| important in the long term and envision our revenue
| growth will continue to increase despite this change".
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30893551
| rr808 wrote:
| Most artist markets feel the same as Etsy, the majority of
| stuff is made in China too.
| bduerst wrote:
| >small sellers are getting totally run over by design theft and
| aliexpress resellers
|
| Some friends and I were discussing this point recently: Etsy
| has become _Ebay_ , sans the auction veneer.
|
| Truly frustrating that they can't implement some sort of
| quality control, but that's a hard problem to crack at scale.
| ss108 wrote:
| "one of the biggest problems for me is im never even sure if im
| buying the original design or a knockoff, which totally sucks."
|
| Potential use-case for NFTs? :thinking:
| nerdawson wrote:
| How would an NFT help? I'm not opposed to the concept of
| NFTs, I'm just baffled as to how they in any way provide
| benefit in this situation.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| They don't there are smaller NFT platforms that offer NFTs
| of art by smaller artists and there is a ton of fraud
| occuring on those as well. People misrepresenting
| themselves as the artist etc.
| philote wrote:
| I'm sure I'm just being naive, but why wouldn't it help?
| Aren't NFTs used to securely show unique ownership of some
| item?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The knockoff seller also has unique ownership of the
| knockoff. It doesn't fix anything.
| rdtwo wrote:
| You don't really need a block chain, you can just
| register serial numbers on a legitimate website. This was
| solved early on with cd keys.
| strbean wrote:
| Not an NFT, but blockchain approaches have been suggested
| for proof-of-invention problems.
| circa wrote:
| you're 100% correct. Very similar to Amazon and their 3rd party
| market. There is very little policing of the products being
| sold I feel like. Lots of knock offs and even things available
| for free being sold at a cost. (ie. ETSY USB sticks pre-loaded
| with freeware like Coin OPS X)
| freedomben wrote:
| This is a major problem that put my wife and a couple of her
| friends out of business. Another major problem right now is
| that small blogs/instagram accounts/etc are nearly impossible
| to establish because the "influencers" (the big blogs now) will
| rip off ideas and shameless repost them within hours! Not only
| does this mean all google traffic takes people to the
| "influencers" page instead of the young blog that created it,
| but it makes the young blog look they are _ripping off a big
| blog_. It 's quite despicable. My wife has shut down because
| she got tired of inventing great recipes that are damn hard to
| come up with (ever tried to make Keto desserts, or vegan
| scrambled eggs?) that get stolen right away.
|
| I've been trying to think of a way to use blockchain to prove
| "who posted it first" but it's got a major network problem
| (nobody uses it because nobody will use it because nobody uses
| it).
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I am just going to write it here, having no idea of the income of
| the Etsy sellers, but let's say that someone arrives and builds a
| fair Etsy, then how long until they go the same path? Or how long
| can you be victim of a corporate warlord? And I understand a
| small seller has less visibility and power to build a small
| e-commerce for itself alone... What I was thinking: how much of a
| stupid idea is for like for a bunch of Etsy sellers to put power
| together and create a marketplace where they have full power of
| votes about the marketplace direction and policy? Here seems that
| small players are getting fucked at every step, either on Amazon
| or on Etsy, but can small players fight back by joining forces
| and abandon these big marketplaces?
| kirubakaran wrote:
| In theory a cooperative of craftsman sellers not beholden to
| VCs could develop the marketplace software. But they will need
| to attract, retain, and manage software developers without
| being able to offer them any equity with "lottery ticket
| potential". Managing software engineers itself is not for the
| faint of heart, to put it mildly.
|
| A cooperative of altruistic software developers could build
| marketplace software. Open source exists after all. Then
| someone will need to run this as a company. Perhaps as a non-
| profit?
|
| It sounds possible. But I haven't seen a single marketplace run
| like this yet.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Building an ecommerce website is pretty much a solved
| problem. It doesn't require top tier software engineering
| talent.
|
| Etsy's value isn't the tech, it's the brand giving easy
| access to potential customers.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> Perhaps as a non-profit?
|
| Even if we kept the original 5% fee, and kept it there - and
| kicked out the stupid resellers - we'd be making a lot of
| people happy. It really wouldn't be hard to whip up something
| basic. It would be much harder to attract people to it and
| keep a user base, of course.
| llamataboot wrote:
| There should be some law of good marketplaces on the internet,
| that if they need to grow beyond a certain amount they inevitable
| become a trash heap of crap and end up losing whatever customer
| and seller goodwill they built up in the first place
|
| I have some etsy sellers I know and love bookmarked, and some of
| the more niche areas (like hand built midi controllers) are still
| remarkably free of cruft, but the bigger categories are just
| dropship knockoffs
| KarlKemp wrote:
| The "Law of Marginal Nostalgica"?
| rafaelturk wrote:
| I'm afraid thats not how life works... *End the Star Seller
| Program*? Are serius? Star seller means exceptional service. What
| you're advocating is to reduce the overall quality of the
| platforms so bad sellers can be perceived just as good sellers.
| blintz wrote:
| I have often wondered how close the fees that 'marketplace'
| companies charge are to the value they provide; of course, in a
| perfectly competitive world, they would be very close. However,
| it seems that in practice, the marketplace uses VC money to
| obtain a near-monopoly (probably aided by the network effects of
| marketplaces in general), and then extracts what amounts to an
| economic rent thereafter.
|
| It's interesting to see a strike organized against the
| marketplace. Perhaps this will be an ultimately more successful
| way to apply downward pressure on the fees? I wonder if consumers
| will read this and also participate, ramping up the bad PR for
| Etsy and putting more pressure on lowering fees. One challenge is
| that, unlike a labor union, I don't think there are really any
| legal protections for a 'seller strike'.
| status200 wrote:
| Etsy used to be my favorite place to purchase bespoke artisan
| crafts and products, and it has turned into a cheap tchotchke
| reseller hive full of low quality, print-on-demand and other pure
| garbage.
| artursapek wrote:
| I recently bought something on Etsy and received a package from
| Amazon. I felt sort of cheated.
| dangrossman wrote:
| You may have been scammed, or you may have simply purchased
| from a home business that sells on multiple channels. Lots of
| Etsy sellers are also eBay sellers and also Amazon Handmade
| sellers. If you've already shipped your inventory to Amazon's
| warehouse, it can be cheaper and easier to have Amazon fulfill
| the orders regardless of what channel they come in on.
| paxys wrote:
| Agree with all of them except #2 ("crack down on resellers
| [...]"). There's really no good definition of what a reseller
| even is, and what exact line between handmade and mass produced
| Etsy should draw. Ultimately you have to compete on quality and
| appeal of your own product, not by restricting others.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| It's funny 'cause that is the only one I fully agree with. Etsy
| used to have strict rules that everything posted had to be hand
| made. Obviously, they weren't able to scale that rule as they
| grew, but for me it is the entire appeal of the site. If I want
| to buy mass produced goods I'll can go to any big retailer or
| eBay if I want a deal. That said, I rarely use Etsy anymore
| because all of the hand made stuff is drowned out by all the
| mass market crap and it's hard to even search out unique hand
| made items anymore.
| eatonphil wrote:
| This is a seller strike not a worker strike, just to clarify.
|
| But this made me wonder (since I'm not an Etsy buyer or seller
| myself), who is their primary market/customer persona? Based on
| it being heavily craft-focused my naive guess would be stay-at-
| home/homemaker/caretaker people?
|
| I've tried to use it a few times to shop for used or handmade
| shelves/lights/tables but always ended up going with Ebay or
| AptDeco. I found the UI too confusing and there were too many
| low-quality and super-high-quality pieces when I just wanted
| something decent but not too expensive.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > This is a seller strike not a worker strike, just to clarify.
|
| I found this clarification interesting. If a headline said
| "Uber Strike", I think most of us would assume it was the
| drivers (rather than Uber's in-house employees) striking. I
| naturally thought the exact same thing here.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Maybe I'm getting it mixed up with some other similarly sized
| tech companies in NYC but I thought I remembered Etsy workers
| talking about forming a union and I thought this might be
| related. Maybe I'm thinking of Kickstarter.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I used Etsy a few times to buy art paintings. Back then there
| were certainly a few high-profile sellers who kept showing up
| with the same stuff again and again. Not necessarily anything
| wrong with what they were doing, but I don't need to see it
| over and over again...
|
| But with a little bit of effort I could find some pretty neat
| art to decorate my walls with.
| bradly wrote:
| I'm the primary audience. I sell hand made wooden goods (shaker
| trays, boxes, urns) and most of the listings around me for
| similar items are less than 25% of my prices. I sell less than
| 10 items a month.
|
| It's difficult, though. What is hand made? Can you use a CNC?
| 3D printer? What percent must be hand made? I use a table saw
| and mitered joints instead of truly hand made dovetail joints.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Sorry I didn't mean who's the primary audience of this strike
| I meant who is their customer (persona). I should have said
| market or customer instead of audience.
| coldpie wrote:
| There's a lot of mass-produced crap and plenty of overpriced
| stuff on Etsy, but it's not too hard to find real creators. I
| recently bought some nice wooden guitar wall hangers, made by
| some guy in Pennsylvania. My wedding ring was made by a guy in
| Luisiana. I felt both were reasonably priced for something not
| made in an overseas factory.
|
| Edit: My method is something like, search for what I'm looking
| for, flip through items to try to find things that actually
| look like a person made them (i.e. not made of metal or
| plastic, unless the shop specifically specializes in those; not
| identical to five hundred other listings), then look over
| reviews and search for the creator online. Most creators
| maintain their own web presence outside of Etsy, too. It
| doesn't seem that onerous to me, you'd want to do that research
| anyway for a nice, hand-made item, wouldn't you? I don't really
| understand how people get scammed by drop-shippers on Etsy. Do
| you just click "Buy Now" on the first listed item you like the
| picture of?
| culi wrote:
| I live with a lot of early artists. A ton of people make and
| buy art on Etsy
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I agree, it's usually easy to weed out real creators from
| drop shippers/pirates _if you care to_. The one method you
| left off was to send a message to the seller. It 's pretty
| easy to tell through communication.
| intrasight wrote:
| This is now my approach. Communicate. Ask for more info.
| Customization options. A photo of their shop. ask where is
| there shop.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| For buyers it probably varies a lot but there's a lot of
| anime/video game/tabletop gaming stuff. I know it's the first
| place I look if I want the sort of things I might otherwise buy
| at a con. (Think pins, custom dice, etc.)
| eatonphil wrote:
| Got it, thanks!
| yasabione wrote:
| nonamenoslogan wrote:
| Let us know how it works out.
|
| ~signed, an ebay seller.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| >Crack down on resellers with a comprehensive plan that is
| transparent, so sellers can hold Etsy accountable.
|
| This is very reasonable. Etsy is diluting it's brand and becoming
| a flea-market where I don't trust it.
| pavon wrote:
| I think it would make sense for Etsy to spinoff a separate site
| for used / mass produced goods. While some of the reseller
| volume is sellers trying trick buyers into thinking the
| products are first-sale handmade goods, and others are sellers
| simply going where the market is, I think there are also a
| large number of sellers and buyers that simply like the Etsy
| model better than Ebay.
|
| If they had a separate site the consequences of cracking down
| harder would simply be that sellers need to move their products
| to this other site, not shutdown altogether. This is
| particularly important for the fuzzy definition of used (sorry
| "antique") goods. Thus there would be less push-back and gaming
| from the sellers, and less financial incentives for Etsy Inc to
| be lax with the rules. It would improve the experience for both
| buyers and sellers of handmade goods, without harming buyers
| and seller of used goods.
|
| I think the main objection to this would be handmade goods
| sellers complaining that Etsy Inc is supporting knock-off
| sellers. While true, it isn't within Etsy's power to remove
| these off the internet altogether, and as long as the buyer is
| aware that what they are purchasing isn't handmade, I don't
| think Etsy has any obligation to avoid this market.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| What it reminds me of is Network Decay:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NetworkDecay
|
| Etsy began as a service to a niche market, and was a good
| platform for small sellers. But they're a public company, and
| their purpose is to create more and more returns... ultimately,
| diluting their brand and flooding their site with slop might be
| a money-making proposition.
| jnmandal wrote:
| My etsy store is paltry compared to most but I joined the strike
| in solidarity.
|
| I sell seeds that are collected from my own garden, but I often
| see other sellers reselling seeds from established farm/ag
| operations. Its also clear that some of these sellers are selling
| seeds as a loss leader.
|
| There's no point of a small scale operation like mine even being
| on etsy when I have to compete against such stuff. I assume if
| they continue down this path a new marketplace will spring up for
| handcrafted/original products but it would be nice if we didn't
| have to go through that cycle.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Doesn't NFT proof-of-provenance solve this?
| scblock wrote:
| No.
| thechao wrote:
| A tag or a sticker with a piece of paper with an expert opinion
| attached to the item provides provenance. An NFT provides a way
| to harm the environment.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| What? How do you come even remotely to the conclusion this is a
| problem pop would solve?
| dbcurtis wrote:
| To you down-voters: this was a serious question. I have heard
| that NFTs are used to provide provenance for collectables and
| artwork. So based on cursory knowledge, this would seem to be a
| use case. What am I missing?
|
| A little more education and a little less snark and vitriol,
| please.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I love everything about this! More power to you!!
| junon wrote:
| Went to buy a Ukrainian flag earlier on in the war. Would only
| buy from a Ukrainian or a charity that directly sent proceeds to
| help.
|
| Etsy was absolutely overrun with corporations plastering the
| Ukrainian flag onto everything. Quickly gave up - there's
| absolutely no way to cut through that garbage.
| kyletns wrote:
| So so sad, and was always coming when the investors installed a
| new CEO who dropped their B-Corp status
|
| https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2017/11/30/etsy-gives-b-corp-...
| rkalla wrote:
| This won't be successful - ETSY is a publicly traded company,
| unless corrective action can replace the loss revenue from
| ads/punishing duplication/aliexpress - it's not going anywhere.
|
| This is exactly what happened to eBay for anyone that remembers
| when it was garage-sale mania, then it became publicly traded and
| effectively became Target.com with < 1% of personal things
| sprinkled in.
|
| No one messing with quarterly earnings.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| Whether or not you agree with the demands, it's probably
| disingenuous to call this a strike.
|
| It's much closer to cartel conduct, and a flagrant
| antitrust/competition law violation.
|
| While the "number of small labourers team up against large
| employer" narrative sounds superficially like the actions of a
| labour union, what this appears to be is actually a number of
| small businesses forming a cartel to influence the prices for
| their goods. Probably blatantly illegal in much of the developed
| world.
| marcinzm wrote:
| They're not working to change the pricing of their goods but
| rather to force a service provider to change its pricing and
| behavior. They're not asking to restrict competition or to
| prevent each other from lowering prices. So not sure where you
| get cartel from.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| They're openly demanding a lower fee, backed by the threat of
| collectively restricting output. That's _textbook_.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist...
| [deleted]
| postsantum wrote:
| Etsy, just find other sellers, right?
| jdrc wrote:
| Or just, the free market. I doubt anyone would call a very
| large number of buyers not buying a service a cartel. at best
| it's a boycott.
| jpollock wrote:
| Not saying this is right or wrong, or if it even matches up
| with the case, but this is what I found on price fixing.
| Businesses are (from my training as an engineer) generally
| not allowed to coordinate any behavior related to pricing
| with a competitor.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
|
| Quote:
|
| Example: A group of competing optometrists agreed not to
| participate in a vision care network unless the network
| raised reimbursement rates for patients covered by its plan.
| The optometrists refused to treat patients covered by the
| network plan, and, eventually, the company raised
| reimbursement rates. The FTC said that the optometrists'
| agreement was illegal price fixing, and that its leaders had
| organized an effort to make sure other optometrists knew
| about and complied with the agreement.
| malkuth23 wrote:
| I know you are getting downvoted and a lot of gaff, but I
| do think you propose an interesting question. I am not sure
| what is illegal and what is not, but I am confident I
| support the strike.
|
| So, let's say you are right. Would that make it illegal for
| all Uber drivers or strippers to strike? They are
| independent contractors, not employees. It also seems to me
| that these laws are created specifically to protect the
| consumer. Without damages, where is the crime? Even the
| example of the optometrists includes some theoretical
| damage to the consumer as the prices of their insurance
| could go up or the consumers had less access to eye care.
|
| In the case of Etsy sellers though, I can not see how this
| could hurt consumers. Sellers are striking to lower the
| price of fees, which should help consumers and only hurt
| Etsy. I don't know the law, but I do feel like the law
| should be written in a way that these government agencies
| only act to prevent non-competitive activities that could
| hurt consumers.
| jdrc wrote:
| This is not a group of competitors, etsy is not 'the
| market', and sellers have not agreed anything to each other
| alecbz wrote:
| > This is not a group of competitors
|
| Why do you say that, just because things sold by Etsy
| merchants aren't sufficiently substitutable for each
| other?
|
| I think Etsy sellers are certainly less in competition
| with each other than say, idk, oil sellers, but I do
| think there is some degree of substitution between the
| kinds of things sold on Etsy, and so to a degree they are
| competitors.
|
| > etsy is not 'the market'
|
| So? It's a significant part of the market. A cartel
| influencing just one seller doesn't necessarily make it
| not-a-cartel.
|
| > sellers have not agreed anything to each other
|
| Have they not? Isn't that the whole point of the strike?
| Communicating to other sellers "hey how about we all do
| this thing together? if only a few of us do it nothing
| will happen, but if all of us do it we can influence
| Etsy".
|
| ----
|
| If you replace the many small Etsy sellers with a smaller
| number of larger sellers, this starts to look very much
| like a cartel "bullying" a buyer. Like OPEC refusing to
| sell to the US unless they abide by certain policies, or
| something.
|
| Like GP I don't think this is bad or anything, but it's
| interesting to note that cartels and strikes are kinda
| similar in shape, and it's more "sliding" properties (how
| many sellers? how big are they? how strong is the
| competition between them?) that differentiate them.
| jdrc wrote:
| I think they are obviously very substitutable And surely
| many of them are selling elsewhere and consumers aren't
| being forced to pay more. there doesn't seem to be a
| conspiracy behind it, this is a very public petition ,
| like boycotting russia . It would be quite a stretch if
| this falls anywhere near anticompetitive. What's next,
| banning uber drivers from boycotts?
| jpollock wrote:
| Wouldn't that depend on the result of the various anti-
| trust suits against Amazon/Apple/Google that define the
| market as their marketplaces?
| jdrc wrote:
| Who knows, but etsy should be very low in that list.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| This is a capital strike:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike
|
| Though, many Etsy businesses are sole proprietorships or family
| businesses, in which case capital and labour are the same, and
| it's also a labour strike.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| "Capital strike" tends to be used in situations where this
| kind of behaviour is spurred by an unfavourable government
| policy, and enacted by firms that have some form of market
| power (or political power).
|
| These are small businesses with no market power agreeing to
| collectively price squeeze another player in an
| upstream/downstream market. Textbook cartel behaviour.
|
| Edit: typo
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Capital strike is a strike by capital. There can be typical
| cases, but fundamentally that's what this is - though under
| platform capitalism, I think platform residents hold a much
| more precarious position than traditional capital because
| they answer to more than just the government and the market
| - the platform forms a second government for them.
|
| A cartel is a group of businesses who collude to take
| market power as an oligopoly. That's not what this is,
| because these sellers are striking for platform changes,
| not consumer domination. You can keep saying it's cartel
| behaviour, but you're working with a different definition
| of cartel to the mainstream one. They're colluding yes, but
| they are not warping market forces the way a business
| cartel does (the typical example being the lightbulb
| cartel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Etsy sellers could become a cartel. And banding together
| to force some third player to only play with them, to the
| exclusion of others, is classic cartel behaviour
| beaconstudios wrote:
| they weren't forcing Etsy to only play with them, it's
| not like they're striking for Etsy to become a closed
| shop with only those sellers.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| They absolutely are warping market forces - that's the
| whole point.
|
| We can argue about whether or not this is good (by the
| sounds of it, probably?) but the _entire purpose_ of them
| agreeing to restrict their output is to influence the
| cost of their inputs /outputs.
|
| In the absence of market power, individual firms can't do
| that!
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I wouldn't describe it as market forces when the
| organisation they're opposing is a platform with monopoly
| power. Etsy has fiat power over anybody on their
| platform.
|
| If we're talking about the generic concept of a cartel
| that encompasses basically all special interest groups,
| then yes they're a cartel - but they're not a business
| cartel in the same way that Phoebus group were. The power
| imbalance puts them in a position more comparable to a
| labour union.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Collective bargaining is always a weird line between bad
| anticompetitive behavior, and well... good anticompetitive
| behavior. We needed a minimum wage, for example, because labor
| dynamics meant some other worker would generally bid lower than
| that. Labor competition drove wages too low.
|
| While you're right in your categorization, you aren't
| necessarily right in calling it bad, because that category
| isn't always bad. Particularly because of the asymmetry between
| actors. In this case, that same asymmetry is there (like with
| uber's "contractors"). You might be right, but I think it's
| less blatant and more nuanced than you're giving it credit for.
| maccolgan wrote:
| There's no such thing as "good anticompetitive behavior".
| milderworkacc wrote:
| You're right, which is why I didn't call it bad. I called it
| a cartel.
|
| In fact I probably agree with their demands, but on its face
| this is a) not a strike and b) in need of authorisation or
| similar mechanism under completion law.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Let's assume you're correct. What exactly is the crime here?
| You went on vacation for a week? You're not allowed to stop
| selling your goods?
| milderworkacc wrote:
| Of course you are allowed to change your output - but
| independently and in reaction to your own circumstances.
|
| Collectively agreeing to simultaneously stop selling in order
| to force a change in the cost of your inputs is in most cases
| not legal.
|
| The easy test is to ask yourself if it makes sense for an
| individual seller to reduce their output in the absence of
| any other changes. In this case, the answer is no. Only when
| they all collide to do it at the same time does it work.
| md_ wrote:
| Where'd you get your law degree, Mr. Hutz?
| gruez wrote:
| >It's much closer to cartel conduct, and a flagrant
| antitrust/competition law violation.
|
| >While the "number of small labourers team up against large
| employer" narrative sounds superficially like the actions of a
| labour union, what this appears to be is actually a number of
| small businesses forming a cartel to influence the prices for
| their goods. Probably blatantly illegal in much of the
| developed world.
|
| Aren't labor unions (especially closed shop ones) basically a
| cartel for labor?
| maccolgan wrote:
| They are.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| A union is explicitly a labour cartel. But we as a society
| decided that giving workers more money and better conditions
| is good, and that they should be allowed to collectively
| bargain for them.
|
| At the same time we for the most part decided that businesses
| best serve society when in the absence of market power, hence
| competition law enabling unions and outlawing cartels.
| lostgame wrote:
| The fee increase literally only harms the sellers. I use Etsy at
| least about once a month - I'm a huge fan of custom knick-knacks
| such as this lovely 'fix your hearts or die' 'Twin Peaks' pin in
| support of transgender equality:
|
| https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/542366240/fix-your-hearts-or...
|
| There's a lot of cosplay items, etc - Etsy is an incredibly
| unique market that looks like it needs a replacement with
| accountability towards it's community.
|
| Sounds like maybe my next project, tbh. :)
| dangrossman wrote:
| The fee increase does not "literally" only harm the sellers.
| Fee increases are necessarily passed on to buyers (as are all
| expenses; buyers are the only source of funds moving in the
| marketplace), so if you feel that a fee increase is a harm,
| it's also harming the buyers. However, the fee increase does
| not only harm anyone. The increased funds going to Etsy will be
| spent, and some of that money will be spent on growing the
| number of buyers on their platform, which puts money back into
| sellers' pockets. Potentially growing their business by even
| greater than the 1.5% the fee is going up. After the increase,
| Etsy still has the lowest fees of any major marketplace --
| cheaper then eBay, cheaper than Amazon Handmade, etc.
| sprkwd wrote:
| Am totally buying that. Thanks!
| darkstar999 wrote:
| I would love to see an Etsy alternative that is verified handmade
| goods rather than reseller junk.
| 8note wrote:
| I'd like to see an Etsy alternative that is owned by the
| handmade creators. What Nebula is to Youtube
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >I would love to see an Etsy alternative that is verified
| handmade goods rather than reseller junk.
|
| Pretty ironic that if you replace "Etsy" with "eBay" in that
| statement, you have the original value prop for Etsy. The
| circle of life, I suppose.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I feel like Etsy should have done this from the get-go. The
| problem I think for them is without all those re-sellers, they
| would have a fraction of the sellers they have now.
| chucky_z wrote:
| This was how Etsy used to work and they were really strict
| about it. It changed about 2 months after they IPOd
| Karsteski wrote:
| I've seen the private -> public transition ruin many
| companies, and it makes me sad. I'm holding out for Valve
| but I imagine that if they ever go public that'll be the
| end of my game purchases, unless a worthy competitor
| arises.
| chrisan wrote:
| Valve barely makes games anymore. Are you referring to
| the steam platform in general somehow getting bad/worse
| than competitors?
| Karsteski wrote:
| Yep I'm referring to the platform itself. I wish Valve
| made more games, but I'm happy with the direction they're
| going in, i.e. working to make SteamOS3 and their Steam
| Deck a success, since this will also be a win for Linux
| gaming.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| That's called a brick and mortar store. Try visiting one and
| check out the opportunity cost price, while you're at it.
| toper-centage wrote:
| How would you verify that?
| capableweb wrote:
| Make each seller verify their account by sending one of the
| products to the business hosting the platform in order to
| open the storefront. And if in the future, that store is
| receiving complaints about "reseller junk" or similar, either
| via your marketplace customer service, or from reviews of the
| seller, make a order via a fake name to review it again. If
| they break the rules, throw them off the platform.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| I work with a lot of Etsy sellers and the parts of this I am
| familiar with and can confirm are:
|
| * resellers - I see lots of sellers with thousands or tens of
| thousands of products. These sellers are obviously not making
| craft items. Etsy does nothing to limit this from what I've seen
| and experienced. And come on, I'm sure Etsy makes more money from
| these sellers, so what's their incentive to stop them (other than
| killing their platform).
|
| * extreme AI actions - If you build an app to connect to Etsy's
| API, you'll need to test it of course. Except that Etsy's AI will
| ban your account for performing any testing. I hope you don't use
| that app to support hundreds of Etsy sellers, because they all
| get screwed. Wait several days to hear back, and then they tell
| you some silly tricks to avoid getting caught by their AI when
| testing next time. No real test environment and no promise they
| won't turn around and ban you again tomorrow for the same thing.
|
| It feels like they're slowly building another Amazon, and haven't
| learned any lessons other than that's where the money is.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Genuine question, why is the fee increase such a big deal? I
| assume Etsy assumes this will just get passed along to the buyer.
| And if there are less sales as a result of items becoming more
| expensive to cover the fee increase then Etsy would feel that
| too.
|
| The other items make more sense about not wanting ads and wanting
| fairer representation between creators and resellers. I just
| don't follow why fee increases are such a big deal for sellers
| since they can be transparently passed along to buyers.
| errantmind wrote:
| Because sellers cannot always raise prices to cover the fee
| increase. Demand is varying degrees of elastic
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The problem is how you define the "acceptable" goods.
|
| If I design a t-shirt, and then farm out the manufacturing and
| shipping, is that okay? How about if I also hire a designer?
|
| What if I'm just clicking "go" on a laser cutter etching things
| onto other things that I ordered on aliexpress? Or 3D printing
| designs that I bought somewhere else?
|
| Are these handmade goods?
|
| This isn't just a problem at etsy, btw. Every single craft fair
| is also dealing with this. Just endless seas of people selling
| what looks mostly like MLM "nutrition" and "lifestyle" products.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, how does Entsy enforce the farmer's market feel that it
| used to have?
| MassiveOwl wrote:
| Has anyone tried buying art from Etsy recently? It's very
| difficult to find something that is actually original. Etsy is
| full of super hero Chinese knockoff poor quality shite
| pnathan wrote:
| As a buyer, I don't even know if I can find actual small seller
| goods anymore. its all existing shops having another sales
| channel. Sometimes horrible quality trinkets from industrial
| shops.
|
| The unique value proposition of etsy is almost invisible at this
| point. Just like shopping Amazon these days...
| dfdz wrote:
| > End the Star Seller Program
|
| I did not know exactly what the star seller program was. It
| requires that in the last three months of shop data [1]:
|
| > 95%+ of first messages in a thread are responded to within 24
| hours.
|
| > 95%+ of orders ship on time with tracking
|
| > 95%+ of orders receive 5 star reviews
|
| > minimum of 10 orders and $300 in sales
|
| In the petition [2] they explain the Star Seller Program as:
|
| >Passive aggressive efforts to influence seller behavior are
| counter-productive and result in a worse customer experience.
| Rather than making us mad at buyers who leave glowing 4-Star
| reviews, or making us feel that we can no longer offer letter
| class shipping on items like cards and stickers, Etsy should
| leave us to individually do the best we can for each and every
| customer in each and every situation.
|
| [1] https://www.etsy.com/starseller
|
| [2] https://www.coworker.org/petitions/cancel-the-fee-
| increase-w...
| Beltalowda wrote:
| That 24-hour response time seems easily gamed by just replying
| with just "we'll get back to you ASAP".
|
| Indeed, Etsy even helps you with that; from their FAQ:
|
| > What happens if I can't respond to messages on weekends and
| bank holidays?
|
| > If you're having a difficult time responding to messages
| during certain time periods, consider setting up an auto-reply,
| which counts as a response.
| efsavage wrote:
| 95% of the ratings I leave aren't 5 stars, so that number
| triggers my fake-reviews alarm. I'm generally far more
| suspicious of a 4.9 rating than a 4.2.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > 95%+ of orders receive 5 star reviews
|
| This is going to be subject to Goodhart's law[1]. As soon as
| buyers are aware their favourite sellers on Etsy are evaluated
| like this many of them will _always_ leave 5 star reviews,
| while others will try to use the threat of a < 5 star review
| to get special consideration from the vendor.
|
| This is the same reason many people leave automatic 5 star
| reviews for gig workers unless something goes grotesquely
| wrong.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| traverseda wrote:
| > 95%+ of orders ship on time with tracking
|
| They actually hide some stuff in there. Tracking is _expensive_
| , if you add tracking to all your orders than someone else will
| offer a lower price and out-compete you.
|
| Buuut, if you buy your shipping labels directly from etsy that
| counts as having tracking, even when there isn't any tracking.
|
| So the actual effect of this is just to force people to buy
| their shipping labels through etsy directly. I presume etsy
| gets a bulk discount and keeps the difference.
| notpachet wrote:
| > So the actual effect of this is just to force people to buy
| their shipping labels through etsy directly. I presume etsy
| gets a bulk discount and keeps the difference.
|
| Yes. A lot of ecommerce companies (Etsy, Amazon, eBay,
| Shopify, etc) have a labels side-business that works in this
| way. Volume-based discounts from carriers.
| atrus wrote:
| I don't think so actually. The prices of the labels on Etsy
| match the USPS prices for volume labels exactly.
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| The first two bullets are fairly reasonable (especially
| shipping on time...24 hours response isn't great but whatever),
| but expecting that high of a 5 star rate is almost unheard of.
| I see shops that do it, but we get 4 stars quite often for
| things like "Oh it was smaller than I expected" even though the
| listing says the exact measurements like 4 times.
|
| Also note that it says "95% of _orders_ " not "95% of
| _ratings_. " We get feedback, maybe, like 40% of the time if
| we're lucky. If you're not begging for ratings, you won't hit
| that number.
|
| They aren't overtly doing much with the Star Seller program
| yet, but I can almost guarantee that they will in the future.
| I'm 99% sure it's already influencing search rankings (since
| they influence them in other ways already, such as prioritizing
| listings with free shipping). I understand some of that is to
| promote sales which benefits the seller and Etsy, but if they
| are or start using Star Seller to tweak results, that's not
| really benefiting anyone that I can see.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Seems to me they should offer at least 2 tiers of this rating
| system. Star sellers for organizations that can give out free
| product in exchange for 5 star reviews, and ~Premium sellers
| for those who can't.
| mdoms wrote:
| I ordered a bunch of stickers from AvE, my one and only
| purchase on Etsy. It seems ridiculous that he should have to
| package my stickers with tracking to get them to me, and I
| live on the other side of the world in the midst of a
| shipping crisis so I don't care one jot if it takes him a few
| days to pop my stickers in the mail. Consumer expectations
| these days are so ridiculous. They're stickers.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| It effectively means that a 4 star review has the same impact
| as a 1 star review.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Programs like this also encourage bots to come review or even
| buying reviews to game the system and if there is not a good
| way to combat this misuse, it can get out of hand pretty
| quick. Most reviews I look at on Amazon are pretty useless to
| me nowadays because I can't tell what's real and what's not.
| jeromegv wrote:
| You seem misinformed, this is 95% of ratings.
|
| https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/your-star-
| selle...
|
| https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-
| sta...
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| Perhaps it's all ratings then because we've shipped 100% on
| time, pay someone to respond to customer messages within 8
| hours, and we still somehow don't meet the criteria.
| nanidin wrote:
| 95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down style
| rating systems. Too many people treat 5 and 10 star rating
| systems differently to require 95% 5 star ratings. Etsy and
| others should disclose the downsides to leaving a 4 star
| review at the time the customer is leaving the review. For
| me, 3 is OK, 4 is good, and 5 is PERFECT and is rarely ever
| given out on any system.
| kbenson wrote:
| > 95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down
| style rating systems.
|
| Maybe for average of ratings, not for average of all things
| that could be rated, whether rated or not. Those are very
| different things.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Exactly. Even more so when having anything other than the
| top 5% or 10% is functionally as bad as having a 45%
| rating.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| As a buyer, there are so many ways to get screwed on
| eBay/Etsy, I am 100% with these requirements.
|
| eBay has had super sellers for 20 years now. Not as stringent
| but it is beneficial to customers.
|
| Meanwhile, Amazon continues to dilute their store with no
| control over review authenticity. Not saying Etsy isn't prone
| to that but Amazon's entire business model is to let these
| things slide. Etsy is at least doing something.
|
| I really don't care about sellers. I want a place for high
| quality products. Period.
| lkbm wrote:
| I'm definitely skeptical of dinging people for 4-star
| reviews, but each of these bullet points are encouraged by
| Etsy because they improve customer satisfaction and sales.
|
| The petition does make a good point that some products may
| be better just shipped dirt-cheap without paying for
| tracking, but overall Etsy is pushing sellers to provide
| better service and do things that bring in more revenue,
| both for them and the seller.
| vitaflo wrote:
| My wife is a star seller on Etsy and it hasn't been hard for
| her to maintain at all (and she's never asked for ratings).
| But she's also never had even a negative comment made about
| her product after thousands of sales. I wonder if some
| product types are more open to criticism than others.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > we get 4 stars quite often for things like "Oh it was
| smaller than I expected" even though the listing says the
| exact measurements like 4 times.
|
| It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just
| measurements. One thing that often annoys me about product
| pages is that have a bazillion images of the thingymabob, but
| don't actually have a bunch of images where it shows the
| thingymabob in perspective; e.g. somehow actually holding it,
| a wider-angle picture of it in regular context (e.g. a
| painting actually framed on a wall in a regular living room
| or whatnot), and that kind of stuff.
|
| Anyway, just an aside.
|
| I also see a 4-star review as "excellent", but many of these
| platforms seem to see anything less than 5 stars as "bad".
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| I agree, but we've really tried everything to be honest! We
| put comparative photos on there, mention comparative sizing
| (e.g., "This is about the size of a normal business card"),
| and so on. Still, people get it and think it's going to be
| bigger/smaller and somehow that's a defect? It's just part
| of working with retail customers of a physical product, but
| unfortunately minor things like that have an outsized
| impact in a sales ecosystem like this that expects
| perfection in these interactions.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| As a customer, it's really hard to write these kind of
| reviews; people may still end up expecting something
| slightly larger, because even with the best of efforts
| it's just hard to judge these things from a picture or
| video. This is not anyone's "fault", it's just that
| humans aren't really good at judging these sort of
| things.
|
| So what review do you leave? 5-star because the product
| is "as advertised" and otherwise good? Or 4-star because
| it's not _quite_ what you were looking for? I think both
| options are reasonable.
|
| The Real Problem(tm) here is thinking you can automate
| these sort of things without any human judgement and
| expect to somehow end up with a reasonable response.
| There will always be outliers that any human would judge
| as "yeah, that's just silly" but computers don't care.
| capableweb wrote:
| It seems pretty simply. If you get whats advertised, you
| rate it good. If it isn't, you rate it worse. If it was
| what was advertised, but you figured out that wasn't
| actually what you were looking for, the rating for the
| product should still be good, even though you made the
| mistake of buying it. That's not the sellers fault in any
| way.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| But isn't a review at least partly subjective, based on
| how much _you_ like the product? Or at least, it seems to
| me that 's how it _should_ work.
| capableweb wrote:
| Yes, that is true. But I think it has to be compared to
| how much you liked this product VS others who do the same
| thing. Not "I thought this product did X" (but it was
| never specified for example) and then leave a 4 star
| review after returning it, or similar cases. Maybe I
| ordered this thing and thought I would like it, but
| because of something _not-the-fault-of-the-product-
| itself_ I ended up not liking it, I don 't think the
| seller should suffer from it.
| mosseater wrote:
| A 5-star review should be left. If you are given
| measurements and the product matches those measurements,
| the only one at fault is you. A measurement is literally
| a definitive answer to the size of something. Get a ruler
| or measuring tape out and visualize it for yourself.
| Humans aren't good at judging things precisely, that's
| why we have tools!
|
| My ex was a clothing Seller on Etsy. A 4-star review
| because something didn't fit right was super stressful
| for her, because it meant her average rating went down
| and her seller status might be demoted.
|
| I think a better option is to contact the seller directly
| if you are dissatisfied with the product. That way you
| aren't transferring your problem to them.
| wincy wrote:
| So it'd be super stressful if you run into people who are
| like "yeah they did a pretty good job I'm satisfied. Not
| the most amazing clothes ever but I'll wear them. 3
| stars"?
|
| That's exactly the type of person I was before I became a
| dev and learned about these insane algorithms. As someone
| else on this post said 3 star - good 4 star - great 5
| star - absolutely amazing perfect service! went above and
| beyond
| pcurve wrote:
| Cheap stuff on Etsy is never going away. Misrepresentation on
| Etsy is here to say, as long as there's cheap labor offshore, if
| not China then in other countries.
|
| Even if something is born as a small batch small creation, if it
| sells well, then Chinese will copy it and sell it.
|
| And guess what? If the quality is decent enough, majority of
| buyers will _not_ care.
|
| The problem is also on the buyer/demand side.
| mcdonje wrote:
| >We will put our shops on vacation mode April 11-18. Those of us
| who can will strike for the whole week, and some of us are
| striking only for April 11.
|
| The reality that many (most?) sellers can't afford to strike will
| significantly limit the scope and impact of the exercise.
|
| This is exactly why unions have strike funds.
|
| It may seem weird for a bunch of small business owners to form or
| join a union, but that's what they should do.
| giarc wrote:
| I think that most sellers won't "strike" simply because there's
| likely a financial incentive not to. For that week, you can be
| the only "custom sticker maker" on the platform and increase
| your profits. What can the other sellers do about it?!
|
| The reason why workplace strikes work is because you are
| visibly seen 'crossing the picket' line and so majority of
| workers comply. Other Etsy sellers can see you continue to
| sell, but what does it matter, you don't work with them. They
| are all independent of each other.
| hayd wrote:
| There's always a (short-term) financial incentive not to
| strike.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Something to keep in mind now that workplaces are going
| remote-first.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| OK. You realize that they can move to eBay and Shopify.
|
| If their complaints are true, then Etsy is already unusable and
| using Instagram ads is clearly a simpler way of doing business.
| abeppu wrote:
| If sellers are willing and able to organize a change to their
| business operations, and put up a public site and social
| media/marketing push to raise attention ... then how much further
| would they need to go to just splinter off Etsy?
|
| Is there room for a federated or coop model, where the sellers
| own+govern their own marketplace?
| samstave wrote:
| Etsy is a Tech/Data Company which gathers data on all the
| sellers etc...
|
| Sellers are artisans, to think they are going to handle setting
| up an actual clud hosted marketplace and hire a savvy tech
| staff with devps, eng, support, cloud arch etc...
|
| Nope.
| imwillofficial wrote:
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