Amy Love 

Opinions Editor

aml7458@psu.edu 

In February, popular sales platform Esty announced their fee increase. Displeased with this announcement, sellers that use the app communicated through platforms, such as Twitter, to organize a campaign. 

Their goal is to have Etsy return the fees to what they were previously, as well as reexamine their core values.

Sellers have stated that fees increased 30 percent. According to their petition, they are requesting that Etsy remove this new policy and let the fees be what they were previously. 

On the petition, it reads: “Increasing seller fees by 30% after two years of record sales is nothing short of pandemic profiteering. After the planned increase, our fees as sellers will have more than doubled in less than 4 years.” 

According to Buzzfeed, over 5,000 people have signed. Individuals who signed vary from small businesses, sellers, customers, and others who support the fight against Etsy. 

Sellers on Etsy are already having a tough time dealing with customers, with many already demanding they sell their products at lower costs. With the fee increase, the price of products will rise more, which will lessen the amount of customers they could potentially have. Increasing the fees will only give Etsy an increased profit for a short amount of time. Sellers are going to lose customers or are more than likely going to pay more for fees than what they earn. By keeping these fees, Etsy is essentially ruining their platform. 

The petition also stated the following: “Even though it’s the hard work of Etsy’s sellers who’ve made it the massively successful company it is today, we have fewer rights and less of a voice in our workplaces than ever.” 

Without the sellers, Etsy’s company would cease to exist. Their purpose of the platform is so that small businesses, or just anyone who creates products, can sell their products to customers. There is an understanding that the company also needs money but there should not be a need to increase their profit. There is no need to be greedy. With the setup of the company, sellers should be the ones making demands. 

The sellers are beginning to make their demands clear now. Starting on April 11, those who are protesting are organizing a “strike” against the company. They will stop selling their products for a time being. 

They are also calling on customers to boycott the company until April 18. 

According to Buzzfeed, “a spokesperson for the company said the fee increase would help “expand our efforts around marketing, customer support, and removing listings that don’t meet our policies.” 

This may help them just a bit more, but it hurts the sellers on the platform more. Most of the sellers on the platform make their living off of the products they sell, so increasing the fees is going to significantly lessen their income. It will come to the point that sellers will either have to move their business to another platform and hope the customers are able to follow or to stop selling. For either of these solutions, Etsy has created a scenario that their sellers are going to leave their platform, rendering their company useless.