Below I will outline how the mood music from Etsy is signalling my partial departure from Etsy where I have traded for 12 years. Me and many it would seem are marching with our feet at recent changes at Etsy. Rival platforms have noted up to a sudden 300% rise in new sellers recently. This has been caused by many sellers seeking new selling pastures. Many sellers are outraged at the recent introduction of a  draconian 75% reserve protection legislation that has seen 75% of most sellers funds held up to 45 days by Etsy. The reserve at Amazon is 3%.

It was not just the decision of Etsy to introduce the jaw dropping 75% ‘reserve’ protection.’ This is currently making headlines around the world not just in business sections but in main news sections, three days ago being the fourth main article on the BBC news website, the biggest news website in the world.

In February it also made the headlines ‘Etsy shares fall after research firm says platform showcases fake goods.’ This is of course regarded as industrial poor governance for a, ‘ethical’ trading company.

Two major events that ring alarm bells.

Just as disappointing has been the drift from Etsy from being a lovely site selling ‘handmade and vintage goods’ to one where if you searched ten years  ago for retro mirrors the top 50 would all be old retro mirrors but when I searched last week 35 out of 50 were dreadful poor quality naff Chinese imports for sale at £20. It is going down market,

Let us be clear. Etsy is still a brilliant selling platform. You get great prices from really nice customers. Etsy have a hands-off approach and if you run your store properly it is easy as pie. I intend to remain selling. People complain about the rising costs of an Etsy store. I consider that as they do all my marketing and admin for me that the cost is fair. But holding huge sums of turnover for such a long period of time is crippling for many small businesses who rely on the cogs of proper turnover to operate.

But recognising a slide is an alarm bell. I had this with eBay. I had an amazingly successful store but as more and more competitors came in and eBay began to penalise me for not providing a speedy enough service, even though customers received their goods well within the time I specified, I switched to Etsy and never looked back, closing eBay shortly after joining Etsy. Never looked back until now.

With this in mind.

In May I instructed Sunset Designs to build me an ecommerce store. They built two for me about ten tears ago and they went very well, but I had too many other things going on to give them the focus they needed. Time moves on and I now have that time. This will begin end of summer.

In June I opened an account with Vinterior. This was amazingly simple; they did everything for me and loading product is just pasting an URL from Etsy into Vinterior. Although summer is a poor time for selling vintage items, as customers focus on garden, Vinterior is already bringing in 25% of my sales. Really easy to use too.

These two moves should eventually see 75% of my sales move away from Etsy. Etsy will go from 100% of my online sales to 25%

Etsy has 6 million sellers. Okay a large percentage will be one-off and occasional sellers. But me moving away will have zero effect. It does seem however large numbers of other sellers are doing the same. I do not doubt Etsy will ride the storm. But fundamentally it seems Etsy maybe want to swim with the big boys and challenge the market of Amazon and eBay and what they are doing is laying, painfully, the foundations. Or they have royally screwed up. Essentially, they are tearing up their brand and goodwill and none of us know what the gameplan is, or if there is one. Seems nonsensical, but surely there must be  a plan?

It may just be the board running Etsy are going to be reigned in by the shareholders and moved on as the recent controversy may well have a deathly effect on the share price. Either way it will unravel, and I am not having my eggs in one basket as I do not have the confidence in the Etsy management and uncertainty is something during these tough times traders do not need.

How large the exodus will be, Etsy management must be watching with huge concern.