Etsy loses its ‘handmade’ and ‘vintage’ labels as it takes on Temu and Amazon

Etsy has long sold items that fall into one of two categories: handmade or vintage. Now, this rather narrow categorization is changing.

A policy update announced today creates four new classifications for items for sale on Etsy: “made by,” “designed by,” “handpicked by,” and “provided by.” All products need to fall into one of the four to be eligible for the platform.

Vintage items – the backbone of Etsy’s offerings – will be classified as “handpicked by.” Craft materials such as beads or clay are considered “provided by”. A vase handcrafted by a potter would be in the “made by” category, while a digital illustration would be considered “designed by” the seller. These categories will be visible in Etsy product listings.

The company says this won’t change anything in practice — things that were previously Prohibitedas well as the resale of items made by third parties, will still not be permitted under the new policy.

“The consistent theme here is that items are given a human touch, because that’s what makes Etsy, well, Etsy,” CEO Josh Silverman said in a video message. The goal of the new categories, the company says, is to provide more details to buyers about how an item is made and how the seller was involved in the process.

Etsy has differentiated itself from other marketplaces like Amazon or Temu, standing out as a place to find unique pieces made by an artisan or selected by a curator. But over the years, the company has loosened the rules on what exactly is considered “handmade.”

In 2013, the company announced that it would allow sellers to use outside help in production. Vendors selling fabric masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, could hire apparel factories to do the actual sewing, and graphic designers could use a print-on-demand service to make T-shirts featuring their art, in instead of having to print on screen. themselves.

The expansion has brought a wider range of creatives to the platform, but frustrated shop owners say it has also opened the door to scammers and consignors — sellers who buy cheap, mass-produced goods and pass them off as handmade on Etsy. The rise in mass-produced items was a central complaint during the 2022 Etsy seller strike, with manufacturers saying the company didn’t do enough to remove stores that violated the law. artisanal politics. Etsy is also trying to fend off the rise of ultra-cheap online retailers like Temu by introducing new features to the site and a brilliant Super Bowl ad to try to do this.

Keeping the human handmade part has been Etsy’s calling card for years, and this is a pivotal moment for the company. Etsy, like other online platforms, has seen AI-generated synthetic content hack your product listings, listed as “handmade” despite obvious traces of AI tools. The introduction of new categories is a way of trying to assure consumers that they are buying something created or selected by a person. It is also a way of trying to calm the concerns of real artisans who have long complained about being forced out: first by dispatchers and now by robots.