<story><title>Was Etsy too good to be true?</title><url>https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-shipping-amazon-handmade-josh-silverman</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>a2tech</author><text>Etsy fell apart when they failed to police non-handmade goods. For example I was looking for a picture frame and any permutation of search terms I used returned thousands of results from a handful of sellers that are obviously just Chinese junk I could buy at Wal-Mart (all mislabeled of course--I was searching for &amp;#x27;walnut 18x24 picture frame&amp;#x27; and the results contained frames of all colors, shapes, and wood types). Then to make things even worse when I waded through the results I DID find someone selling a frame like I wanted, but then I looked a bit further down the page and found the EXACT same frame from another seller. They&amp;#x27;re located geographically near to each other (separate cities though) and they used the same pictures. And the prices were quite different. Some sort of scam is going on there but I&amp;#x27;m not sure what--either people are buying from a local craftsman and reselling on Etsy, or the local craftsman is selling his products online at slightly different prices for a reason I couldn&amp;#x27;t quite grasp.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heymijo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;when they failed to police non-handmade goods&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They never failed at this. Moving beyond handmade goods was a deliberate move.&lt;p&gt;FTA&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;But the growth — and yet another round of VC funding — put even more pressure on Etsy. Chief technology officer Chad Dickerson had taken over as CEO after Kalin was voted out by the board in July 2011, and in October 2013, in an infamous town hall meeting at Etsy HQ, he announced that the company would allow sellers to contract with outside manufacturers to help make their products, so long as they designed everything themselves and were willing to provide detailed explanations of their process to Etsy’s Marketplace Integrity team.&lt;p&gt;Much of the community was aghast, fearing the change would ruin the culture of the site forever.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Was Etsy too good to be true?</title><url>https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-shipping-amazon-handmade-josh-silverman</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>a2tech</author><text>Etsy fell apart when they failed to police non-handmade goods. For example I was looking for a picture frame and any permutation of search terms I used returned thousands of results from a handful of sellers that are obviously just Chinese junk I could buy at Wal-Mart (all mislabeled of course--I was searching for &amp;#x27;walnut 18x24 picture frame&amp;#x27; and the results contained frames of all colors, shapes, and wood types). Then to make things even worse when I waded through the results I DID find someone selling a frame like I wanted, but then I looked a bit further down the page and found the EXACT same frame from another seller. They&amp;#x27;re located geographically near to each other (separate cities though) and they used the same pictures. And the prices were quite different. Some sort of scam is going on there but I&amp;#x27;m not sure what--either people are buying from a local craftsman and reselling on Etsy, or the local craftsman is selling his products online at slightly different prices for a reason I couldn&amp;#x27;t quite grasp.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TorKlingberg</author><text>For every comment like yours there is an other saying Etsy fell apart when they started making legitimate sellers jump thorough a bunch of hoops proving they are really hand-making their things. And a story about someone who got wrongly thrown out. I&amp;#x27;m not sure it&amp;#x27;s possible to solve both problems.</text></comment>