The Melbourne-based seller, who manages a local gallery for her day job, says she’s seriously considering her presence on Etsy. “I’m just really quite hesitant about my place on this platform. And I’m really thinking about starting my own website instead of feeding this company.”

Chen is not alone. Etsy’s community forums are rife with sellers and buyers complaining about this issue. A post from a user named Babyweartreasures from September last year, for example, writes: “I make hand-knitted baby items, which take a lot of time. I am being outsold by a shop on Etsy that started up six months ago, selling supposed handknitted baby cardigans for $15. You can’t even buy the wool for that price. I suspect they are being imported. The seller has sold hundreds just in this short time. I have complained to Etsy many times to investigate and I’ve heard nothing.”

Another commenter, writing in November last year, writes from the buyer’s perspective: “Etsy was always my first choice for Christmas gifts but searching for genuine handmade items amongst a sea of resellers is depressing and difficult. I generally only come here to shop now if I am following a link from someone I follow on social media.”

An investigation conducted by UK consumer group Which? in April 2023 concluded that “some Etsy sellers are ripping off online shoppers by charging up to seven times more than other websites for items falsely presented as handmade.” Earlier this month, Crikey reported that AI is being used to create cheap imitations of Aboriginal art that is then sold on platforms that include Etsy.

Etsy has made efforts to curb the number of counterfeit goods on its site. In its annual transparency report from last year, Etsy says it removed 1.9 million listings for violating its terms in 2022 and 468,000 listings for suspected counterfeit violations. Etsy did not respond to a request for comment.

Cara Weinstock, Sydney-based founder of Cara Mia Vintage, has been selling designer vintage on Etsy since 2012, and says the platform has changed drastically in the past decade. As an unknown in the world of vintage, Etsy was the perfect launchpad, with a built-in customer base hungry for vintage gems. Back then, Weinstock says Etsy was “very seller focused”, supporting her through its media centre and with marketing initiatives.

Today, she says, it’s harder to cut through the noise. “I think they’ve tried to become a more mass market platform, whereas before they were very much about vintage and handmade. Now they’re more of an Amazon competitor almost.” Today, Weinstock says most of her sales come from her own website, rather than Etsy.

Weinstock says that some measures Etsy has introduced to weed out counterfeits have been ineffective. The platform uses artificial intelligence to “sweep” the platform for keywords (“vintage Chanel”, for example) that may be used to describe fake designer goods. In the process, however, she’s had products deactivated despite being authentic. She says there have been no real avenues or customer service for her to reach out to in such instances.

The Temu-ification of Etsy? A shifting retail landscape

The trajectory of Etsy follows broader shifts in the retail landscape. Today, marketplaces such as Shein and Temu, both Chinese-owned megastores that offer impossibly low prices on anything from tank tops to televisions, dominate the internet.

And, as vendors Weinstock and Chen point out, it’s harder for independent sellers to stand out – something that’s true not just on Etsy but on the internet as a whole. Earlier this month, a group of German researchers sought out to determine if Google search results really were decreasing in quality. In their report, they wrote, “we can conclude that higher-ranked pages are on average more optimised, more monetised with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality.”

Dr Jason Pallant, senior lecturer of marketing at RMIT, sees Etsy’s shift away from its handmade and local ethos as the almost inevitable result of its growth, which he says has left it vulnerable to scammers and made it difficult to regulate.

Since going public in 2010, the company has continued to grow. Buoyed by a captive market of online shoppers during the pandemic, Etsy’s revenue skyrocketed from $1.17 billion in 2019 to $2.45 billion in 2020, during which it also doubled its active buyers.

“It gets more challenging, the bigger you are because the more producers you have, the more scammers you have, the more resources it takes to track all of them down,” explains Pallant.

Dr Sonika Singh, senior lecturer at the UTS business school, says its also becoming harder for consumers to distinguish between high and low-quality products when shopping online – a key issue artisans face when trying to stand out from the crowd on Etsy. High-quality photography, artificial intelligence and paid or incentivised product reviews are factors that contribute to a more confusing shopping experience, she says.

“A lot of consumers also do not get that authentic experience when they are buying handmade products online because they cannot touch [the product] or know the story behind it,” Sing adds.

The risk of purchasing a handmade product online, as well as waning seller credibility, are also contributors.

The future of handmade and vintage

So does this spell the end of Etsy? Not necessarily. “I do think Etsy will be around for a while,” says Pallant, “but it will just evolve into a more traditional marketplace compared to that kind of bespoke creator.”

As Etsy slides further in the direction of marketplaces such as Amazon and Temu, alternatives have sprung up in its place. Resale app Depop, which Etsy purchased in 2021, has remained largely immune to the problems plagued by its parent company. The introduction of retail to social media platforms such as Instagram also means many small businesses no longer need marketplaces like Etsy to promote their wares.

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Made It, an Australian marketplace for handmade arts and crafts, was founded just a year after Etsy. Leina Broughton, who took over as chief executive of the company last year, thinks there is still a demand for artisan products, although admits Made It is “never going to be a platform that’s for everyone”. She says the platform has a rigorous application process for prospective vendors to uphold their handmade standards.

Since taking the helm at Made It, she says her focus is “the stories and the process in which the artists actually have to make their product” in order to stand out in a crowded market.

“It’s really tapping a lot more into what happens when you buy a handmade product –that you’re actually buying something that’s also energetically charged because of where it’s come from, it’s been made with love.”

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