Etsy sellers call for strike to protest commission hike

Last week, Etsy released its record fourth quarter and 2021 earnings . Subsequently , the platform increased its seller transaction fee from 5% to 6.5%. However, sellers expressed strong dissatisfaction with the platform's actions , and now many Etsy sellers have begun calling for a strike to protest the fee increase and other issues affecting the platform market .

To this end, Etsy sellers organized a website called Etsy Strike to express their dissatisfaction. According to the content of the website, sellers' dissatisfaction with the platform mainly involves the following aspects:

First, the unreasonable cost increase

Sellers on the platform said that in 2018, Etsy increased transaction fees by 42%. In return, the platform promised to use the additional funds to "improve the seller experience" and bring new buyers to the platform.

However, the opposite is true . According to data from Etsy's quarterly earnings report, the platform's focus seems to be on attracting new sellers rather than improving the experience of existing sellers. Now, after a significant increase in profits, Etsy plans to increase seller fees by another 30% while making similar promises. Many sellers say this is unbelievable!

Second, many Etsy sellers don’t sell handmade items.

Etsy has always been a platform for selling handmade goods . However, until now, many of the sellers on Etsy were not selling handmade goods. Many of them were reselling goods produced by Amazon factories or other channels . This damaged Etsy's reputation as a handmade market and had a negative impact on stores that specialize in selling handmade goods . Although Etsy has repeatedly promised to crack down on resellers on its platform, the problem has not been solved.

At present, the Etsy Strike website recommends that sellers be encouraged to close their shops and use Etsy's sales announcements and promotions features to convey strike information to shoppers between April 11 and April 18. It is understood that on the subredditr/EtsySellers, some sellers enthusiastically support the strike, while other sellers have taken a more pragmatic attitude.

In fact, in addition to Etsy, the commissions of other platforms have also increased to varying degrees. Take Amazon as an example. The fees charged by the platform to sellers will increase every year. Especially from last year to this year, the platform competition is fierce and the price war has continued. Coupled with the increase in platform fees, many sellers’ profits have dropped significantly or even suffered serious losses, which has had a serious impact on the sellers’ operations!

Etsy sellers said that their strike is not intended to harm the platform's operations, but rather to hope that the platform will pay attention to these issues and that Etsy can make relevant improvements to achieve better development. So far, Etsy has not officially commented on the strike threat.

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