The thing is that the monthly fee never even bothered me. I am totally fine and would prefer to pay a monthly fee if it meant weeding out non handmade people. I know where my profit margins are. It really seemed like this platform was going to be something and amazon just dropped the ball.
Ok so maybe I need to be pushed off a cliff and try selling my handmade items on the commercial side? Is there anything specific I need to do? Do I need upcs? I don’t even know where start if I was to switch. Would I use my best sellers and just delete them and make new listings loosing what little rank I have?
I honestly prefer using fba and letting amazon deal with all the storage and shipping, which is why I don’t bother setting up my own website (something I’ve attempted to do probably 6 different times in the last 16 years and just never stuck)
If you are leaning this direction, I would recommend brand registering your “brand” and going through that process. It could be something that you have used for a short or long time, and that would help.
This gives you a few advantages. First you get the protection (sort of) like you have on Handmade where you own the catalog page. Amazon “owns it” but you control it.
Then you can select to use as your Unique Product Identifier your SKU, no need for a UPC. TBT, we use a UPC as our Unique Product Identifier, it is UPC’s we own, not GS1, pre GS1. But that is what we want to do, and never had an issue. Why, you get to pick when you are Brand Registered.
Now one year later… After USPTO registered trademark approval, and you have imbedded brands on your items, and trade dress of your brand you are good to go.
It was not always this way, but required, since Amazon does not want to do much work to onboard brands. Another story, for another time.
Since we came from the dark side, to handmade, we did this years ago in what is now called Brand Registry 1.0. Our handmade items are “more handmade” as in the original artwork we created, to fabricate our commercial art.
IMO a simpler path from yours, due to the evolution to Brand Registry 2.0.
Do know, the rule is you can not sell the exact handmade item in Amazon Handmade and on the Commercial side of Amazon.
Though as we all know, who actually follows the rules on Amazon?
So tired of getting “caught” breaking the rules three times in the last 24 hours when we never did.
They could but that is not all that different from a local store which had its lease expire and was told that the rent on a new lease would be double the past rent.
Or the small store which is told their lease would not be renewed because their store will be renovated to be a portion of a larger space to be rented to a retail chain.
In the past few weeks there have been businesses in our town faced with both situations.
I have known many businesses who survived solely because they owned their real estate, and when they were ready to retire, the value of their business was trivial compared to the value of their real estate, and there were no buyers for the business.
Your list of needed self protective actions is correct but probably incomplete.
Certainly it also needs a business plan, and cash and credit. Having some friends also helps.
I remember making my first $100k+ sale to a corporate customer. I had neither enough cash or credit to buy the product. Not enough time to qualify for a refinance of my home or home equity loan.
I had a former employer who was always half a million into a $100k credit line with one of his major suppliers, and called and arranged to meet him for lunch.
I paid, because when we had finished, I had a plan to use my customer’s credit worthiness to obtain the credit I needed. When I told my mother-in-law what we were doing, she said why didn’t you ask me. It was common for the construction company she managed the finances for to do exactly what we did.
Some folks are immune from Amazon’s changes. Their business aligns with an ideal 3P seller as seen by Amazon. Amazon does not share what that ideal is, but there are clues.
Handmade sellers are not the only sellers with creativity or originality. There are many products and resellers who have both, even if they are selling products created by others.
Selecting inventory for many categories is not always just a monetary decision. Although many booksellers have virtually interchangeable storefronts of inventory, some have a distinctive selection.
My choice of inventory, has always been distinctive, no matter what products my businesses offered. Rarely have I inventory the highest volume brands, or the entire product line of a brand. Nor have I ever had a competitor which went head to head with me on every item.
Thing is since they don’t provide much support for Handmade so we should not be costing them a lot. I would be happy to pay $40/mo for Amazon to get rid of the junk Handmade sellers.
No, I just rewrote mine - Etsy is useless with this stuff. I’ve had this happen a few times in the past. One woman actually named her store almost identical to mine, then created listings almost identical. It was ridiculous. But she’s gone now, thank goodness.
They have been taking down sellers in droves this past couple of week. A friend of mine who does a considerable business there and there only - as her items are handmade, was suspended without warning. No new listings, no changes to her existing listings, just selling as she has for the past 5 years. Poof. She’s suspended. She contacted several others in the community and the very same thing happened to them.
etsy gave no reason for the suspension, no email saying you violated this or that, just shut them down No explanation.
Then a few hours later, whether or not they send an appeal, they get a canned response saying
someone reviewed their appeal and the account has been permanently suspended.
They have no phone support any longer
Nor is there chat.
Email only.
And when the account is suspended they just close the ticket without even looking at the email.
Whether they believe it or not they are headed to hell in a handbasket.
We have sold there for many years and have never had issue with them but after this last “event” we are looking elsewhere. Their new management is very unstable and their “bot” systems are out of control.
My guess is your friend may have been infringing on copyright? Just a guess, not an accusation. I’ve seen quite a few posts in the various subreddits, and it always comes back to copyright infringement (mouse, marvel, swift, styles, etc. etc.). As soon as the lawyers send a takedown, Etsy does it without question.
Yes, and not to be judgmental, we all know this happens every hour of every day.
Our company has done work for Disney, Marvel, and even Madame Tussauds wax museum. You don’t mess with these people. We follow the guidebooks they provide, and build a brick wall between that segment and our own brands.
We have our own style, brands, and themes that we always make sure our artists do not infringe. Even one little bit.
We often have requests, for designs, especially Etsy customers, to “copy” a design. We explain we can do that in our style, but we can not duplicate or be inspired by that design.
Not sure if they get it, or if they just fade away.
She wishes it were that simple. She designs and makes wedding decor.
She thought possibly a disgruntled customer made too much noise. With no communication from them she’s clueless.
I reviewed our store but now realizing any keyword or listing title could trigger these bots.
None of it makes any sense and without any communication from etsy she has no idea what may have gone wrong.
Unsettling to say the least.
He’s an a-hole. He doesn’t know his customer, he comes from Finance/Amex. Most people sure, don’t care if it’s handmade, but there are millions who actually do want real handmade stuff, they know that that shopping on Etsy is has not been a good way to get it for a decade, and is a joke.
That ship had sailed long before Amazon jumped in.
Yes times a million. I would love to pay the fee and weed out the garbage that is here because $40 is a big deal for overseas sweatshops paying their labor 25c to make a bracelet, and easier than listing on the market side.
When I look at page one of handmade, all the items say “10k sold in the last month!” and I don’t know anyone legit handmade who can really do that ,especially not if that’s multiple products. Even a small collective? Maybe. And 4/12 of those are nose rings…a couple are IP infringements. Most are big sellers who (IMO) are too big for handmade. If you can handle making and shipping multiple 10’s of thousands of items every month maybe, just maybe, you should look around your shop and figure out where you belong.
That said, I have built up a somewhat decent part time business, using FBA despite its issues, and if Amazon cut us I’d have nowhere to go - I can’t go regular side with jewelry requirements, Etsy brings in 10% of the revenue I get here, and no website I build myself can compete.
IIRC, Handmage charges 15% per sale, which is slightly higher than the average category selling fee. Due to volume, we decided no to do Handmade for this reason - plus we couldn’t find any meaningful upside to having that designation.
But people do wake up in the morning and want to buy something with a unique design which gives them pleasure. I have a wife and two daughters who do. And those unique designs come with hand crafted artist designed products.
Yes there are still some mass produced products with great design, but a great many are not unique but are derivative of other products.
I think Handmade is a poor marketing approach, but both Amazon and Etsy could not support their artisan based businesses on quality of design alone.
It really does not matter whether someone has strung a few beads in a factory or a studio. Or added a handle to a canning jar in any environment.
Your post was perfect. If I could give it 10 hearts, 10 angry emoticons, and 10 tears, I would.
I, too, have been on Amazon Handmade since Day 1, and on Etsy since 2008. My 3 Etsy shops are currently empty because the pennies I earned do not compensate for the work I put in.
This is a huge issue in the crochet community. I only crochet for pleasure, not for sale or for others, but those who do are trying to educate the public that crochet is the only handmade fiber art that can’t be mimicked by machinery, so when you buy a “fast fashion” crocheted piece for $20, that means that the artist was barely compensated for their time and labor, after the costs of materials and supplies and the “manufacturer’s” profit.
Not only does this facilitate and encourage human rights abuses in the countries where companies’ laborers are, but it also conditions the public to expect that all crochet pieces are significantly undervalued for the time, labor, and material costs.
Instead, the pro-cros are promoting the idea that their items aren’t “overpriced”–because they aren’t–but “out of your budget”. (Seriously, even a small basic crocheted blanket costs upwards of $100 is yarn alone, not to mention tools, time, and labor.)
And I suspect that this is true for MANY handicrafts. Sadly.
Everyone wants the good stuff at the crap stuff price.
So true. We hire artists as interns, I had one that started at age 16 in High School, stayed with us through Mass Art Boston graduation.
In her third year, she had the opportunity to get full credit, while we paid her, and she would not have to pay Mass Art for the semester. They had one catch.
I needed to come up with a curriculum for the summer semester. “The Secret to Making Money with Art!” And off we went. Best summer ever. She did the designs, created the art, ran the machines, interfaced with eCommerce, understood CoGS, Expense, Revenue, Profits, Shipping, etc., etc…
So many “Starving Artists” if we could just connect the business side with the creative side… They could buy food.
