Etsy sellers strike over commission hikes

Etsy sellers are on strike against the platform, following several controversial moves.

The sellers kept their promise to go on strike. The Wall Street Journal reports that some creator sellers on Etsy are protesting the marketplace’s latest fee hike by putting their store into “holiday mode”until April 18. Movement organizer Christy Cassidy and others are also asking customers to boycott Etsy during this time. It’s hard to tell how many sellers are taking part in this movement, but the petition to CEO Josh Silverman has at least 54,000 signatures as of this writing.

Etsy sellers strike against the platform

The trigger event is an increase in transaction fees from 5% to 6.5%. While this increase doesn’t seem very significant, Christy Cassidy explains that the latter has “more than doubled”in the past four years. She and other sellers also complain about the near-mandatory Offiste Ads program, which adds extra fees for products sold through the system, and the Star Seller program, which forces stores to meet sometimes unrealistic sales targets.

There are also a number of complaints about the hypocrisy of Etsy’s expectations. While the company wants sellers to respond within 24 hours, as editor Bella Stander explains, Christy Cassidy has found that it sometimes takes “weeks or even months”for Etsy to respond to urgent support requests. And to add that Etsy’s artificial intelligence also sometimes closes quite honest sellers, allowing “garbage”resellers to continue their activities.

Decision taken after several controversial initiatives

Striking sellers are calling on Etsy to drop its commission increase, cancel Star Seller, allow those who want to opt out of Offise Ads, and hunt down unscrupulous sellers. They also sell “automatic fast tracking”for AI decision making, which greatly limits their ability to do business.

So far, Etsy has justified this increase in its commission by saying that the money raised will go to its own business, not to increase profits. According to operations manager Raina Moskowitz, these contributions will help “keep the human touch.”At the same time, Christy Cassidy and the strikers do not believe this, considering Etsy “one of the most profitable [tech companies]”. This strike would also be just the first step towards a greater show of solidarity, which they hope will give them more bargaining power.