The Etsy strike, involving about 17,000 sellers worldwide, started on Monday and is scheduled to last for a week
sellers are closing their online shops this week in protest of increased fees implemented by the company they say was built on their handmade and artisanal products.
Ms. Cassidy said the fee increase was the final straw for her and many other sellers. For years, Etsy has been moving away from supporting sellers of handmade goods who built its brand, she said. Alesha Holian, a Rivers, Man.-based owner of TheKnitSide on Etsy, hoped to use earnings from her shop to support a return to postsecondary education after losing employment in December. Instead, she’s yet to make a profit because of Etsy’s processing fees, as well as advertising charges, which sellers who earn under $10,000 a year cannot opt out of.
Ms. Cassidy recognizes the difficult odds the movement faces. “The strike is not the end, it is only the beginning,” she said. Etsy is based on a more co-operative model than a traditional retail company, she said, so leaving the platform isn’t a successful way of improving it. “The sellers aren’t employees, and yet they’re essential. In the same way that an Uber driver isn’t an employee of Uber, but is essential to the operations of the company. And so they’re saying this is a shared space, and we need to do more to share it.
Prior to the new policy, Ms. Robinson said her shop had many cross-border sales. “I chose not to opt-in because Canadian postal prices are really high. And free shipping, it’s just not realistic,” she said. “I lost all my U.S. sales. And I’m not exaggerating, I lost all of them.”
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