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Does Where You Buy Matter? Handmade Venues & Manufactured Goods

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So does it really matter where you buy your handmade goods? Isn’t purchasing a stunning original handbag on one online venue pretty much the same as buying it on another?

That may depend in part on your motivation for buying handmade work in the first place. If you’re just purchasing the work because you like it (a great reason!) then you’d be fine choosing to purchase from the venue that you happen to prefer. Maybe you’re already a member of Etsy and like to keep all of your purchases organized in one place, or you want to pay with Amazon Payments in which case you’d favor a venue that accepts it. Or you just want to get through the process as quickly as possible, so you’re a fan of venues with “Guest Checkout”. All of those are great reasons to stick with the status quo.

But if part of your motivation is to promote handmade goods as a whole, and encourage others to do the same, then you might want to dig a little deeper into your chosen venue’s commitment to the handmade movement. Is your venue a serious proponent of handmade, or do they seem more interested in the bottom line? It’s a question you’ll want to consider if you’re concerned with the bigger picture of supporting independent artists.

Many artists have outposts at several different venues, so you do have a choice when deciding where to purchase a particular product. Few artists would reject a call to list a specific item at another of their shops if a customer requested it. So why would you want to do that?

Venues vary in their commitment to their mission statement of selling goods that are handmade and not manufactured (with the exception of vintage and supplies, which are allowed on most sites but are categorized separately). On any given day, dozens of new “resellers” sign on to venues like Etsy and list hundreds, maybe thousands, of products as handmade goods. As you might imagine, policing this is a huge challenge that requires a significant investment in manpower to accomplish. The different venues deal with this in various ways.

Etsy deletes reseller accounts when they find them, but seems to have a hard time keeping up despite continuous “flagging” of items by members to bring them to the attention of the venue. ArtFire has a flagging system in place that removes an item automatically if it receives a proscribed number of flags from different members and puts it up for the venue’s review. This seems to do a good job of keeping manufactured goods from staying on the site for long and discourages resellers who might otherwise continue to create new accounts to list manufactured items. Zibbet also utilizes a member flagging system, and reviews items as flags occur. 1000Markets has a shop approval process in place that virtually eliminates any manufactured goods, but they do allow artisan pieces to be sold by someone other than the artist who made them.

So how do you think the handmade venues are doing at combating the problem of resellers setting up shop within their domains? As a buyer, do expect them to police and remove resellers or are you just as happy to work around them yourself? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Comments

  2. Great post, Beverly. I only sell on Etsy, but it sounds like the policies in place on the other sites you mentioned are much more proactive in ferreting out the resellers. I hope Etsy can come up with a solution that’s better than having to wade through all of the flagged shops one by one, as that has to be a giant time-suck for them.

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  3. This is a very important question to me. I am a strong proponant of shopping ethically no matter what the item I am purchasing is. It really does matter how things are made, and the connection they have with thier makers is very important. I sell on both Etsy and Zibbet, from my own home studio. and some local galleries. I find my customers are also very aware of the venue, and of the connection to maker.

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  4. The resellers on Etsy generate a lot of frustration – just read the forums on a daily basis! Not to mention the posts which agonize over degrees of resellerism, if you get my drift…
    Since Etsy can’t or won’t adequately police this, then perhaps a system such as the one Artfire has would be more useful. Staff to do this could perhaps have done this in 2007 when I joined, but Etsy is now just too big for this kind of individual attention on the part of the admin.
    My only worry is some of vigilante mindset taking over. Perhaps sellers could flag on a very parttime basis – like jury duty!

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  5. Haha, jury duty, too funny! The AF system does have checks in place that seem to be working to prevent abusive flagging. Obviously the AF community is much smaller than etsy’s but this particular feature might be worth looking in to by the other venues. I think it’s in everybody’s best interests to discourage resellers as much as possible and AF’s system is so fast at getting things removed they rarely bother to come back to try again.

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  6. When I buy handmade, I want to be sure my purchases are indeed created entirely by the real person selling them. Not only am I a merchant who sells handcrafted jewelry, I’m also a big shopper! Venues setting the highest committment to handmade is where I’ll shop, but even with checks and great intentions, re-sellers crop up. When I’m ready to spend my hard earned dollars, it’s my responsibility to make the person to person connection. I hope I’m able to do that for every shopper who visits my shops, whether they’re first timers or already devoted to buying handmade.

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  7. Of course it matters. In a world where the actions of many large corporations have brought about the worst economic downturn since the Depression, it matters more than ever. I can’t say that I’ve never shopped at a Walmart, but I avoid it like the plague if I can because I believe this company has had a big hand in driving smaller companies out of business, not to mention that it’s well documented that their employee practices leave much to be desired. Do I shop at Home Depot or Lowe’s? Sure. But I also am happy to have moved back to the city from the ‘burbs and now there are two small hardware stores within walking distance of where I live. I no longer need to take a bus just to buy a hammer or a can of paint.

    How does this relate to the post above? If one cares about and appreciates the beauty, workmanship and spirit of handmade goods, it’s not hard to take it one step further to think about which sites represent and maintain that spirit best. Money makes the world go round to be sure… but I’d like to think that it’s not ALL about the money and that the owners/admins of the sites mentioned retain a good grasp of why they opened their ‘online doors’ in the first place. Resellers can sell anywhere — artisans of handmade goods are a breed apart.

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  8. Good points Beverly…I am getting no action on any selling sites these days and am thinking of investing some $ into my neglected website and see how I can use paypal on my personal site for direct sales..can’t be a longer shot that etsy or any of the rest. I know it is not my art/craft because it sells quite well in my neighborhood boutique..just the competition is so very extreme on these on line sites and social networking gets so very tiresome. As a shopper I will continue shopping on etsy..and supporting handmade every time!

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  12. Very thoughtful article, Beverly and I couldn’t agree with you more.
    I support handmade in every way I can. And I appreciate those
    venues that really keep an eye out for re-sellers and close them down.

    Reply

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