I'm Bringing Etsy Back
It’s a tale as old as time: a great business comes along that truly adds meaning to the world—in this case, by giving hand-makers, creators, and vintage curators a place to make money off their art, and making it easy for those who want to support small entrepreneurs to find entrepreneurs worth supporting. Unfortunately, businesses can’t just be great under whatever stage of capitalism we’re in: they have to constantly grow so that people who have never made anything with their own two hands and certainly don’t have to depend on their own labor to survive can continue to profit year over year at the expense of the people laboring away for their fortunes. And now, Etsy sucks.
Ask any previous Etsy-lover and they’ll tell you what the problem is: too many dropshippers—that is, people who simply “source” products from some random manufacturer (usually in Asia), and who rarely, if ever, see or have these products in their possession. When you place an order with a dropshipper—usually based on stolen photos—if you receive anything at all it will be shipped to you directly from the manufacturer, rather than the “small business” you ordered from, and it may or may not be anything like the thing in the picture.
As an avid Etsy shopper, I see these dropshippers all the time, but, I also see so many actual creatives that I just don’t feel right discarding the platform altogether. So, how do you find the legitimate sellers?
Product/Photo Consistency
Whenever you search for anything, even after adding the necessary filters, you’re gonna get a lot of diverse results, and plenty of them are gonna be super cute. As a general rule, I suggest never, ever using an Add to Cart or Buy Now button without checking out the product page, first (more on why later), but, on Etsy, even just the product page isn’t enough to know whether a seller is legit: You have to go to the actual shop page.
I searched for a “hand knit cardigan” and clicked on one of the first results, which lead me to a shop called “Vorondolo Knitting.” Look at how…different every product photo looks—different from the last, that is. Different models, different backgrounds, different styles: this is a big indication that these photos are stolen from many different sources and therefore not representative of whatever they’ll send you if you place an order. There’s also simply no way someone—or even a small team of people—is knitting all of these, let alone the other 279 other listings this shop has, which is also, like, a lot of f*ckin’ sweaters (and also a red flag).
But, sometimes, dropshippers do have consistent photos: maybe they’ll order one piece and model it for photos, or, hell, maybe they just tend to rip off one brand and steal their photos. Time to put on your trench, your loafs and your hat (just so you’re lowkey) and get to some detective work.
Social Media
I don’t know about you, but as a millennial who grew up seeking validation on the Internet, whenever I make something I’m proud of: I post it. Not to mention, as an entrepreneur, it’s kinda in my best interest to put both my stuff and myself out there. Which is why an Etsy shop with no social media presence is one of the biggest red flags.
But it can’t just be any social media presence.
Vorondolo Knit’s Instagram page has plenty of pictures of people in “their” sweaters, as well as the same stolen product photos from their Etsy page. It’s not enough to just have a page, you have to feel like there’s really a person behind it. Like the Instagram page for WhimsyKingCo, which not only tells you who’s making this stuff, but also shows her prominently with her own products (which you should check out because they are utterly adorable). Sometimes, you’ll even find videos of them making the products!
But, okay, what if this dropshipper is so sophisticated that they also have an Instagram page that links to their personal Instagram and shows off “their” products?
Product Info
I’ll never forgive Amazon for popularizing the “Buy Now” button. Not to be dramatic, but it quite literally feeds into not just overconsumption but also the extremely wasteful returns industry (this video on that topic is so fascinating) by encouraging you not to actually look at the product you’re buying and just, you know, buy. But product info is a useful tool in more ways than one.
This product description on a Vorondolo sweater reads like you asked ChatGPT to write about sweaters and include as many SEO keywords as possible. And while that’s not a sure sign of dropshipping on its own (we all have to do the SEO thing as Internet-based businesses), check out what’s not there. Like, nothing about the actual sweater, the materials used to make it, care instructions, or anything actually useful. Compare it to this product description from WhimsyKingCo.
While Vorondolo’s does include sizing info (which is easy to get from a manufacturer or, even worse, to fake), and is much longer, it doesn’t seem written by a human at all. WhimsyKingCo includes care info, a social media handle, and also mentions the possibility/availability of customs (something dropshippers can’t offer).
You know what else has similar problems to Etsy, in terms of dropshipping and questionable business practices? TikTok Shop. I can’t really tell you how to navigate TTS because, well, it’s not really worth it: either you only buy from creators who you literally see making things or you open yourself up to scams and/or potentially dangerous counterfeit products. What I can do, is rant about how TikTok Shop is basically a mall kiosk for a generation that doesn’t go to malls anymore for 20-30 minutes and that’s exactly what I did on this week’s ICYMI podcast. For those who listened the last time I was on ICYMI, don’t worry: I didn’t compare Taylor Swift to Shein this time.