Etsy accused me of not assembling my synths by hand and shut down my shop
wtfbyrne.tumblr.com
wtfbyrne.tumblr.com
The seller BaliELF has a large range of shoes available in different colours and sizes and is based in Indonesia. They has a lot of feedback from the last 12 months suggesting that they have shipped a fair number of shoes. I don't know much about shoe making but I'm jumping to the conclusion that they are a small factory 'hand making' lovely shoes.
And yet the email to the OP states, 'Items Handmade by You' and wants him to document his workflow. The emails from Etsy seem quite buttheaded. I wouldn't think that a company with just 300 staff has to be so unwilling to engage with their partners.
Just check out "macbook pro" covers, nearly all are mass produced & shipped from China. For example.
I would suggest they are resellers but the amount of customization makes that seem very unlikely.
You could also sell through multiple channels (Alibaba, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.) concurrently. Etsy would make up a small fraction compared to, for example, Alibaba.
https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZitXdXLKEghtM4FeDb...
And of course, they can spread their already low fixed cost over multiple distribution channels.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indonesian_provinces_by...
Submitted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5708307
This is a "featured item" on the front page:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/88946705/tomato-art-print-lovely...
Does the creator need to send documentation of them creating the original? Why not?
What's happening here is more like he made a stencil from someone else's art and says it should count as hand made because he paints each canvas using the stencil and puts it in a generic frame he made.
If he is putting fully assembled boards into a premade box, is it hand made? In his post it sounds like he is saying he designs the front panel layout and has it cut and stenciled at a facility somewhere, and no doubt he screws in the potentiometers, attaches the knobs, and solders the leads. He says the boards come from China and are designed by someone else. He doesn't say if he populates the boards or if they come finished, ready for lead attachment. If lead attachment and the panel layout this is the extent of his work, perhaps etsy might not consider that truly handmade. Or perhaps they want more disclosure about how much is done. Maybe some consider that handmade, others not. It's kind of hard to say. Let's say I am a customer and someone is selling original "handmade" instrument designs in a wooden case. I very well may assume from this claim that it was their own design and they made the box. I probably would not be shocked if the board etching was done elsewhere. But then what if I find out that all the electronics were designed by another person and the boards are not just etched but populated in a large Chinese factory and arrive at the seller's house assembled. Was I ripped off by the claim it was handmade? Maybe.
He's not getting hammered for using a circuit board, I highly doubt Etsy is concerned about that. What they are concerned about is whether or not the guy is doing the work on these. He hasn't shown enough for me to be able to say that he is putting them together. He has pictures of a workbench, some soldering equipment, some wood and other parts, and the finished product.
How does this differ from a driftwood lamp or a clock with a ready-built clockwork? It's not just semantics. Obviously there are things that Etsy allows and things they don't but it's also the craftiness (is that a word?) of the project. I'll be honest that this guy's project doesn't seem very crafty, whether or not he's putting everything together there's nothing really crafty or unique about it. This doesn't take anything away from what it is or the demand for it, it just might not fit in as an Etsy business.
That's because moog have been peddling the same circuits/sounds for decades, attaching massive markups to Bob Moog's name. Allowing people to see the process is just part of the marketing game.
Not that they don't sound good of course. But the world really doesn't really need any more 2osc monosynths with 24db/oct ladder filters and no interesting features. Especially when they cost $1000 and up.
Half of this argument is rejecting Etsy's unfair demands for more documentation while my shop remains close and my ability to sell if frozen on non-existent grounds. Guilty until proven innocent policy drove me mad.
Moog is an international company. In a way, I'm not exaggerating when I say all other synths are just derivatives of what they do and they have the priviledge to not give a hoot about people looking into their windows. They know they own the synth world. As a small scale assembler you can understand that we cherish our procedures a bit more as it can make or break us. But to be honest, I make everything as open-source as I can, because I imagine it going to kids like me just trying to make weird noises. When I imagine a big company using it, it drives me mad. Something I'll have to reconcile.
The "hand made" issue is almost null to me at this point. I've made a unique enclosure for a device in a batch of three. They're made by hand.
He could have described his process a lot more clearly. He could have said which bits were bought in, and then which bits he did more work to, and then what gets assembled to what.
I especially like the wood casework. I used to work for a guy who built his own hardwood cabinets to house his computers because his wife wanted things to be "pretty." The cabinets were oversize and easy to work on besides being beautiful.
He should have called it a "found electronic objects sculpture", and also glued a uterus to the bottom of it.
When his project is inevitably accepted back onto Etsy, he should make some marketing hay out of this, because his project is so ambitious and well-finished that Etsy thinks it must be a large-scale commercial project.
...probably didn't build actual clock himself, he's just cutting a base for it and applying a photograph. So, that's interesting w/r/t the article. (Edit: Oh, someone below me said that already.)
At any rate, thank you for showing me Regretsy. I didn't want to work today, and this is a good start.
That said, US business customs are hard to grasp for me. The only thing that is certain nowadays is that for everything promised in the advertisement material there is a mangled TOS clause for the company to avoid delivering it.
Heck if you don't have the right TOS you could get sued by someone who never purchased from you in a court on the other side of the country.
That is the case when there is punishment available, and both parties are acting in good faith. When the defendant is a "spammer" then there isn't really any punishment available: eg suing them would be extremely expensive and unlikely to succeed for logistical reasons. And a spammer isn't acting in good faith - they are poisoning the well. If you tell them exactly how your "poison" detector found what they were doing, then you've just told them how to work around it so the arms race escalates with the spammer getting a head start.
Spammers clog the pipes, drown relevant information under irrelevant one and hinder the free-flowing business of innocents, so we are creating procedures that clog the pipes, suck people's focus away and hinder the free-flowing business of innocents. And that get people used to arbitrary decisions and based on no due process.
You're confusing business policy for law.
I know the man. Known him for years; lived with him. I watched him teach himself how to build electronics simply from books he checked out from our college's library. I've been in his workshop and watched him build his devices. He's legit, and this is fucking unfair. He's unemployed and this is one of his few sources of income right now.
He should definitely set up sales in multiple sites like Tindie or Gumroad.
What's the criteria for modification. How much must you change an object before it passes. Maybe if he covered it in fake rhinestones he would have been OK.
I think this would be something that Etsy should clarify. I imagine that if each case was hand painted with a different design it would have been OK.
But what if instead of a real painting, it was just splashes of color? Or a stamp print of your logo?
Sadly, I'm guessing your rhinestone comments dead on.
It'll be interesting to see how they respond. I am reminded of the smashed antique Paypal violin story ( http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27 ), where PayPal adopted the standard PR strategy of "saying nothing at all so that the story will go away."
Not exactly [0].
I had no idea "handmade" was such a big deal at Etsy.
Regardless, the way they've handled this case seems pretty terrible, right down to the aggravatingly detached language used to correspond with him. Something really irks me about humans seemingly trying to be robotic, particularly in the process of performing a subjective review.
0: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/etsy-handmade-facto...
Hell, all I've heard about is griping from other sellers how "handmade" ISN'T a big deal from overseas sellers.
I've met quite a few Etsy employees and they're all quite nice, smart, and want to do right by people. Good luck!
But Etsy's at a point where they're driving people's income that they depend on. The process for remediation and reconciliation shouldn't be unclear until they shut down your site.
I'd also like to see Etsy take on less of a shoot first and ask questions later approach. Especially when something is as grey-area as this. If he's using a factory, he clearly isn't pushing enough product to justify having a factory.
Then why are they seemingly taking their customer-relations cues from the PayPal playbook?
Until some of that happens, it probably makes sense to avail yourself of the most profitable venue and marketing channels available to you; if Etsy brings you exposure you wouldn't have operating elsewhere, use it until you have a problem. Most people probably aren't capable of replicating the entire commercial ecosystem just to avoid being reliant on any of it, and even when they are, focusing on that instead of getting their product/service in front of customers probably isn't the most profitable path. It's better to have contingency plans for unlikely events than to act like they've already happened.
For example, if you develop an iOS app and Apple decides (for whatever reason) not to accept it, you will have a bunch of useless Objective-C code, which can basically be ported to another language and platform, or thrown in the trash.
Conversely, if you develop a web app on a cloud PaaS, and the provider treats you wrong or isn't reliable, you can swap out with another service, or host it yourself. You may have to do some work to get everything situated in the new environment (how much work that is depends on the service, from what I understand), but you do have a backup plan in case things go south.
Landlords can't easily throw you out before your lease expires. They usually have to give you notice in advance that they won't be renewing your lease. Commercial leases are frequently long-term, since no company wants to have to deal with relocating every year. A lease is a contract enforceable in court.
Dealing with Etsy's somewhat arbitrary rules seems quite a bit more precarious. I don't think that anyone who invested a significant amount of capital in their business would want to put up with that kind of uncertainty.
True, but in each of the situations, there's generally a lot of doable options. Hosting is a completely commoditized business with thousands of plausible options. For payment processing, there are many possible processors just for credit cards, 'show online pharmacies stay up, and many options to credit cards (including up-and-coming things like Bitcoin). 'Your supplier' is too generic to address, so maybe not there. There are many houses or buildings on the market to try out if you're able to make the rent in the first place, so that's not a huge issue. Countless banks to choose from, both online banks and mortar banks. And you may well be switching city/township in the first place when you're leaving your current landlord, so as long as you don't have to leave the country (which could be a big issue) you're not terribly badly off unless you're a local business which needs to be in a specific place.
In contrast, how many successful marketplaces for handmade goods are there besides Etsy?
Consider the following platforms that deliver vast quantities of consumer have alternatives which are tiny in market size or severely lacking:
-Google Adwords, Adcenter delivers a fraction of the traffic with continual quality issues
-Google's organic search traffic. Encyclopedias could be filled with stories of companies that built large businesses around Google's targeted free traffic, and flopped.
-Facebook, no meaningful alternatives in size and scope.
-eBay, any other giant auction market?
-Craigslist, I can't think of an alternative to this either.
-App Store, alternative being Cydia, not a great one since all of your customers have to "break" their phones.
-Google Play, a fractured market of disappointing alternatives such as Amazon's Appstore.
It is easy to say, just diversify your source of customers -- but that is very hard to do due to numerous reasons. In this particular case the platform (etsy) user discovered these pitfalls early on. Often companies don't discover this until they've borrowed or raised millions of dollars.
In some circumstances, the product itself is platform dependent (App Store or a Facebook social game.) Irregardless of the dependance, business owners and employees develop expert knowledge about the particular platform by necessity and shear time spent navigating potential and existing shortfalls. If they manage to succeed, that particular platform delivers huge amounts of users in a very addicting manner.
Investing time in an alternative is unlikely to result in the same volume and value users of users because the actual business model of the company was molded around that user platform's uniqueness! iOS users are different than Android users. A user that arrives through a Facebook ad is very different from a user that performed a search on Google. (By the way, that is usually the root of the stories that X platform/traffic/advertising is crap.)
I propose a new executive job title, Chief Platform Dependance Officer.
This is a very critical topic to every start up and internet business requiring a steady stream of mass market consumers (more market dependent for b2b.)
They have automated responses that are made to appear like real people responding to you. They also kept my remaining balance for 90 days. I was lucky that it wasn't my only income stream.
As a buyer, you get all the power on sites like this. I can see why they do this (they want Amazon to be a trustworthy marketplace), but it's unfair to legitimate sellers that get banned because an automated script somehow thinks they are doing something illegal or against the ToS.
Not a day goes past with out some poor user being booted from a website for reasons which are either misunderstood, unknown or unreasonable. So many sites mean a lot to many many people, and to be arbitrarily booted is quite an awful experience, especially if it seems unreasonable or plain wrong. It seems unjust that the issues are decided at the whim of the site, and are often not reversed. Too often the people working for these sites wont back down for silly ego reasons, they make a simple mistake and don't want to admit it, and it is very hard to break past that. There is too often no way back either.
I would like to see some sort of independent arbitration process for this sort of thing. Quite how that would work, I dont know, but there has to be some fair and consistent way to resolve these issues. Right now, it seems the only way a user can solve a problem is to make as much noise as possible to almost bully the website in to taking them back. But in the end, that isn't a "happy" resolution.
Disregarding the fact that having my shop up gains me at least one follower a day, it just so happens I don’t want Etsy to know exactly how I go about constructing my electronics and especially the enclosures. I realized this was an intellectual property issue and that Etsy was making an unfair and undocumented demand of me.
seems like taking a principled stand where a pragmatic one would serve you better. There have to be parts of the process you can document without giving away secrets. Secrets that very very very very few people would even know how to take advantage of anyway.
You have to put effort into telling artists to shut up about their latest newly mastered technique, whereas industrial designers / factory owners / mass producers / operations analysts usually consider the smallest details of the production floor to be their sole secret sauce and source of profit. From the outside "we" may not realize that response is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, from Etsy's point of view. Its not helping his case that he's an artist selling on an artist site.
Its a wood box. If you think you can school Roy Underhill about handmade traditional wood jointery, you might theoretically be right, but you're almost certain to be wrong. AND you think you can also school the recently deceased Mr Bob Pease on analog electronics? Again, yeah in theory maybe, but not very likely. The relevance of those two guys is they are/were both incredibly skilled and also good teachers who I've learned from, and I'm a relative peon in both fields. Something identified as a secret is probably not a secret, but being mis-categorized.
But given that the finished board could be outsourced just as easily as the PCB, the Etsy emails seem to be inquiring about that--without really asking outright, which just adds to the confusion. OP's admission that he is preparing a lot more products without being able to provide photo proof further adds doubt to his case.
I don't know Etsy, their rules, their policies, or what they allow in their store, but they seem to want OP to prove he soldered his boards himself, and he hasn't. I don't know if that's fair or not, but it does seem evasive on OP's part. Also, going nukular and posting the whole thing online (thus knowingly reducing the chance of being reinstated to near-zero) strikes me as something that a dishonest person does when they get caught/called out.
[1] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110487/my-cus...
I don't know if Etsy has fair policies or enforces those policies fairly. But the OP has a hole in his own story, right around a very significant detail. That raises a red flag in my book.
Yeah, I know. Sharing his side of the story when dealing with the corporate wall became too much!
What a jerk!
Non-sarcastically, if you don't want this to happen, don't surprise your customers. Give them actual standards. And don't be hard to reach.
1. It should satisfy etsy's requirements of displaying how it is handmade
2. You and your customers may appreciate the video (a little advertising)
I understand that etsy's request is unreasonable and the conversation with them, unpleasant, but I think this would be a solution. If the video is done well, you hopefully won't be giving away any secret sauce to your manufacturing process.
If all else fails, I suppose it would be time to find another community of craftsmen.
Appropriately and by sheer coincidence, I just got into time lapse photography. Here's my first vid. It's terrible!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMPEb1GEva8
Did I make this video to satisy Etsy's ridiculous expectations (that aren't documented anywhere)? NO! Did I make it because it's fun? YES!
The problem here is that Etsy isn't my boss or my manager. That's the whole reason I sell through them. I want to avoid someone looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm working all the time or working within their absurd guidelines.
This is the question I really want to discuss about Etsy. Obviously, I'm against the radical approach to just closing stores based solely on suspicion!
99% of the supposed hand made goods on Etsy are not hand made, they're outsourced products and drop-shipped goods. Maybe they're trying to crack-down on that, and maybe they should publicly state that and update their terms. Try searching, "laptop bag", "iphone cover" and I can almost say with certainty that most of what you see is not hand made, but rather slave labour or outsourced.
Etsy have bigger problems to worry about than whether or not a guy is actually making his own electronic devices when there are substantially larger stores moving larger volumes of product (like some of the clothing and shoe stores you see on Etsy) who should be questioned first. And if this is indeed the process, maybe letting your sellers know IN ADVANCE before they've already made the product to sell might result in easier compliance.
Just because he is hand assembling a product using already constructed components like a pre-fabricated PCB and perhaps even pre-soldered components, does that make it any less hand made? Do people seriously think every component in the new car they're buying was made by the car manufacturer? No. Do you think Apple hand make every component in their iPhone or Macbook computers? Do you think the artist who painted that portrait made his own canvas and made his own paints? Fair enough that Apple or car manufacturers aren't fobbing their goods off as hand made, but it gives you an idea how reliant we've become on component assembly opposed to the non-scalable DIY approach.
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And the final nail in Etsy's argument is this blog post they wrote in 2012: http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/defining-handmade-on-etsy...
The relevant part of this post is this defining paragraph:
To be clear, when we talk about “hand-assembled” on Etsy, we don’t mean simply putting together a kit where all the pieces are already chosen and provided together. For example, if someone bought a flat-packed bookcase from IKEA that came with all the pieces pre-cut and all the necessary hardware included, and then put it together as directed by the enclosed instructions, that assembled bookcase would not qualify to be sold on Etsy as a handmade item. “Hand-assembled” on Etsy also does not include gathering commercially-produced items and repackaging them in a gift basket.
Which links to this DO's & DON'TS link: http://www.etsy.com/help/article/483 which features these key lines:
On Etsy, the term "handmade" can additionally be interpreted as "hand-assembled" or "hand-altered."
To be considered handmade, the seller must substantially alter the design of an item produced from a "ready to assemble" kit.
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Nowhere did I find anything that stated pictures or any documentation whatsoever is required to account for the construction process. The fact the guy is making his own enclosures by Etsy's own definitions of hand made is deemed to be hand made and not merely commercially assembled. If he was buying every component and merely assembling it, then that is definitely not hand made at all.
I've emailed Brendan directly with a link to this comment, which hopefully helps him out. Maybe those above aforementioned links can help the author get this store restored.
I'm not sure where I fall on this. Isn't the description above exactly what he is doing? He's assembling an object based on someone else's design, from commercially available parts. The cases are made from laser cut parts, so that's not exactly hand made. I gather that he's using the laser cutter to draw all the labels on the case, they're not custom painted designs.
He's put some design into it (and quite a bit of his time), but I'm not sure Etsy is wrong. He's basically made a kit out of someone else's project and is assembling it for the end user. He's nearly into manufacturing.
When I think of Etsy, I think of the crochet patterns or stuffed animals I've seen. If he had designed the device I'd give him more weight, but I'm still not sure he's in Etsy's market.
I also think its fair of Etsy to ask for build photos in case of a question like this. I would say his photos provide the necessary proof (either way). I'm not sure additional photos of him soldering DIPs to the board would actually add anything.
"To be considered handmade, the seller must substantially alter the design of an item produced from a "ready to assemble" kit."
The author isn't buying any ready to assemble kit as far as I know. He's sourced the components and even if the components were in a ready to assemble kit, you could argue the laser cutting of the enclosure is by Etsy's definition a substantially altered version of the kit. But from what I can gather he's not buying the parts in any kit, he's merely purchased a pre-fabricated PCB and putting it into a custom enclosure which is far from a ready to assemble kit (at least for the average consumer) as there is still quite a bit of manual labour involved. Soldering requires skill, knowledge of the correct solder to use and even the correct tip and temperature settings for particular solders. I've seen first hand people overheating and ruining components because they thought they could resolder a wire back onto a circuit board or even replace pick ups in their guitar.
There are people who sell custom guitar stomp boxes and effects like this guy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/GnarHeelPedals — I doubt the boards and chips are being hand made, they're hand wired which is merely another way of saying hand assembled. To me it's the same thing.
It'll be interesting to see how Etsy approaches this and what happens next. I can see why some people are more sceptical than others and realise interpretation of terms like "hand made" and "hand assembled" mean different things to different people.
If someone tells me I am buying a "handmade synthesizer" in addition to it being largely assembled by hand I would assume it contains a novel circuit design (as in, not an exact copy of someone else's design) unless I was explicitly told otherwise. In this case I would consider it to be "from a kit" in that he's taken a freely available plan and done the equivalent of assembling a kit for it.
Between the fact that the design is not novel, and the fact that it's not clear precisely how much of the actual assembly he is doing I think it's fair for Etsy to raise the issue.
I think you might be misunderstanding what the issue is. It's not that he's charging too much for his services or something - the amount of work he puts into it is irrelevant. I could spend quite a lot of time tracking down obscure/rare records from the past 10 years; travelling the country, digging in record shops, etc. That doesn't mean it would be appropriate to sell them on Etsy - it's not Ebay.
Personally I'm ok with such things being on Etsy. As long as it's labelled as an assembled kit or from someone else's design. I would even consider purchasing it. I don't think it's quite clear cut though and I think Etsy should be allowed leeway in deciding what they think is appropriate for their marketplace.
As both a musician and synth designer, I've always put the sound and user interface above all else. If you ever get the chance to play around with an amateur reproduction of a classic circuit you'll know that factors other than the circuit diagram contribute heavily to the final sound.
> If someone tells me I am buying a "handmade synthesizer" in addition to it being largely assembled by hand I would assume it contains a novel circuit design (as in, not an exact copy of someone else's design) unless I was explicitly told otherwise.
This is an unfair assumption. Unless you're buying "handmade" synth modules direct from Ken Stone, Dave Smith, Bob Moog, or one of maybe a baker's dozen others, you're buying an outright copy or hack of multiple circuits. Maybe I'd feel kinda ripped off if Dave Smith sold me a "handmade" AX-60 clone (not his design after all)... or, no wait, that would be a dream come true.
The level of originality being demanded here is unreasonable. Imagine describing to a lay-person how a new library fit like a glove and saved you a couple thousand lines of code, only to have that person balk at your unoriginal, potentially dishonest work. That's what this thread reads like.
You're talking about something slightly different: you're talking about what you use to evaluate the quality of a thing. I'm talking about what is the thing that you are purchasing. There is some overlap clearly; when you buy a synth you want a good one...but what it ultimately comes down to is you are purchasing the circuit.
The point is that in contrast to something like a lamp -with things like synthesizers the actual implementation is important and is in fact what you are purchasing -you are purchasing an analog synth of such and such type. Whereas with a lamp after a certain base level of functionality, you're purchasing entirely based on appearance.
> The level of originality being demanded here is unreasonable
I think you are similarly misunderstanding the issue. I think what the guy in the OP is trying to do in terms of a business is perfectly fine (with the condition that they are open about the fact that they are using someone else's design).
I also think that Etsy is trying to build a certain kind of marketplace...one for artists or crafts people. I think it's fair to question whether this counts as that.
If you're just taking a schematic from somewhere then paying someone to print the board, have them mount the components listed in the schematic, have them solder them, etc....which you then take and stick into an enclosure and wire the up... I just don't think that qualifies. I think you have a perfect right to sell that to people (heck, I'd buy it), I'm just not sure if it belongs on Etsy.
The problem is there's a lot of things to consider. How was he describing his products, was it accurate? How much of the assembling was he doing? Did he have any input into the design?
If on the other hand, he was doing the majority of the assembly, modifying the design, and/or he was using some creativity in sourcing parts (say, tracking down vintage diodes or something)...then I think it does qualify and should be allowed on Etsy.
> Imagine describing to a lay-person how a new library fit like a glove and saved you a couple thousand lines of code, only to have that person balk at your unoriginal, potentially dishonest work.
Right, this is a good analogy and I think you should think about it more. Just like the issue at hand, your analogy has a lot of nuance and things that must be considered.
What exactly was I hired for. If I was hired to write a program to compress a folder of images, sure it makes sense to just throw zlib or something in there and call it a day. That's fine. What though if I bill it as if I had written my own lib? What if I was hired to write a new compression library? Clearly in that case it's not ok to just give them zlib and charge for the work. What if I add a nice wrapper around it though, which adds utility...then it might become ok again since I am adding value. What if I translate zlib to another (programming) language then bill them? That might be ok in some situations, and others not.
It all depends.
What it comes down to is I think it's totally fair for Etsy to question it. It's enough in the "gray area" for me. It also seems the guy has not yet provided enough information to push it out of the "gray area".
I'd like to see stuff like this sold on Etsy, but it depends on the specifics.
The enclosure may be of secondary importance to you as a musician, but from a "hand making" point of view, when I buy a synth, I'm buying many hours of work that went into making a solid, good-looking case around the circuit, applying filters and responsive knobs and patches and all sort of inputs and outputs and maybe a keyboard and other kind of controllers.
If we justify that Etsy is entitled to not consider handcraft a hand made synth because the main source of sound may not have been engineered by the seller, tomorrow they can as well ask any seller of knitted wool sweaters to provide pictures of them shearing those sheep whose wool has been used because users say:
"As a wool sweaters aficionado when I buy a sweater, I am buying the wool"
Vintage fashion is a big seller on Etsy, so your analogy would actually be appropriate.
http://www.etsy.com/search?q=monogram%20island%20clutch%20bl...
(EDIT: Project idea for someone who's bored: Scrape images off Etsy, group items based on image similarity, and find obvious mass-produced items. Actually, nevermind, Etsy should be paying someone to do that for them if they actually care about the "handmade" line they're spouting.)
Actually because an item looks alike does not mean they are not handmade. Many people on Etsy follow instructions. Etsy's 'handmade' actually means more 'self-made'. A lot of mass produced item are made by hand in Asia. Opposite of our home in Thailand there is a small shoe factory in some families home. They make shoes up to spec for some big companies. So, Etsy requires that all items are made by the person that lists the item for sell. However, it does not require an original idea.
Given the cost of an embroidery machine that can actually embroider these items, and the fact that nobody seems to have non-stock photographs of any the items, and the fact that ~90% of the images showing available fonts are completely identical, I'm guessing they're having a third party do the work and either drop-ship the item directly to customers or ship it to the Etsy seller, who then re-ships it to the customer.
See also:
http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=tutti+frutti+cosmetic&... vs. http://www.wholesaleboutique.com/wholesale/monogrammed-items...
http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=tutti+frutti+beach&... vs. http://www.wholesaleboutique.com/wholesale/monogrammed-items...
http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=black+toiletry+bag&... vs. http://www.wholesaleboutique.com/wholesale/monogrammed-items...
Found on blog post part 2 by OP > I’d appreciate a link to the section on your website that states sellers are expected to document their build process and can be asked to supply those photos on demand by Etsy staff.
What kind of argument is this? I can't find any written words describing a thing on your website so you can't do that thing?
I know it seems unfair but almost all ToS's says "we can do whatever we want if we want too" and Etsy's is the same.
Etsy could require you to make out with a fish for continued access to your account and they would be within their right.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52082118@N05/sets/7215763303855...
They weren't satisfied.
This way IP is kept relatively confidential, unless the viewer can remember every single detail and I doubt this unless they are very skilled with building electrical components. You could also get them to sign a non-disclosure agreement if you are concerned.
I also agree this seems unfair, many of the products on etsy don't seem to pass this same test.
Probably not, though, if the emails are that much like form letters.
But at this point this is all pure speculation.
That is - they are really selling the hand-craftedness of the items, rather than the items themselves.
If you pushed hard enough, you could probably make a case for anything on Etsy as being "not handmade." Where did the yarn in that "handmade" sweater come from? Was it hand-spun? Who raised the sheep?! Is the dye from hand-raised and harvested vegetable sources or is it... INDUSTRIAL?!1?!
Given Etsy's touchy-feely narrative I'm betting they're just generally kind of suspicious of anything electronic and being disproportionately harsh in this case...
I'm Brendan! No doubt this thread has lost some steam, but I'll do what I can to answer some of the questions posted here.
About the Synth: The PCB came from Music from Outer Space (MFOS) which is probably the best website on the internet for Synth DIY enthusiasts. I encourage anyone who even knows how to pronounce "solder" correctly to spend a few minutes there.
Ray Wilson, owner of MFOS, has a specific policy that allows for the resale of his designs in the form of completed synths. He only sells the PCBs and makes all the information public. However, It's not an open-source of GNU license. You CAN'T use his schematics to print your own PCBs. I honor this, by purchasing his boards even though there are obviously other ways to bring them into existence. I've emailed him about this whole situation and received his blessing!
What Went Wrong: My guess is that Etsy was trying to prevent resale items. They probably have staff who use their search engine to find duplicates of unique terms. No doubt "MFOS" and "Noise Toaster" popped up a bunch of times and they rightfully became suspicious of me reselling completed synthesizers. However, if the staff member had taken ONE SECOND to read my description it would've become obvious that MFOS is simply a hobby shop that I purchased the board from.
Looking over the emails now, it's so glaring that even the slightest change in word choice could've prevented this situation escalating to the level that it did. If the rep had at any point known a ANYTHING about electronics, it would've been obvious that I had made it.
The one thing that still drives me mad and even now I can't find an explanation for was why Etsy decided to pick on a twerp like me. I had probably 6 items in my shop and hadn't grossed more than $1000 in 5 months. Like many have pointed out, they've got bigger fish to fry.
This thinking lead me to believe that this was an all out assault against electronic artists on Etsy. Perhaps, even part of a larger campaign to remove them entirely from their site now that alternatives like Tindie exists. I reacted with emotion and wanted to defend the community of other electronics designers on Etsy. I thought of them FIRST when I posted this email conversation.
Hand Assembled Haters: Half of synth DIY is designing your own interface. That's what modular means to some extent. This is the exact reason why many designers put their schematics out for free. THEY WANT TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE DREAM UP. And dreaming takes a lot of energy and time. You can bet your ass I sanded this thing to holy hell and watched over it liked a baby when I was assembling it. I love that someone pointed out the issue of wiring in the comments.
Look guys, if there's that much wiring, it's put together by hand. No one in their right mind would outsource that much wiring if they were trying to turn a profit. Printing your own boards with mounted potentiometers would save at the very least HUNDREDS of dollars.
Inexcusable Closure: The knee-jerk reaction Etsy has to possible non-handmade items is atrocious. Close my shop without warning? That is not cool at all, especially when I'm willing to work with you! How about 5 days? And how about removing that specific item and not my whole bleeping store!
Etsy's documentation on "Dos and Don'ts" is lacking for sure. And accusing legitimate artists of being LIARS can only lead to outrageous responses like this from the artists themselves and the broader internet community who support them.
End: I've reached out to Etsy and told them I'm willing to work with them to point out the spots where I think this all went wrong and how they can change their policies to grant sellers the respect they deserve. If things go well, I will stress to no end, the importance of creating a specialized team to work with electronic artists as their discipline requires the special attention that if present would never had lead to this.
Thanks: The support has been incredible and I can only say, I'm completely undeserving of it. I'm truly an enthusiasts who makes synths, because I love them and want the whole world to experience the beauty of weird sounds!
The real designers and electrical engineers out there deserve a billion high fives.
(hope i didn't forget anything)
Hit up a few points on this thread as well.
Do you philosophically consider yourself an artist? Much like yourself, I build/assemble electronic things mostly of other peoples designs using purchased mass produced parts with my own (sometimes substantial) customizations, sometimes wood is involved. The primary differences I see at this time between us, are I appear to tend more toward RF applications and you tend toward analog applications, and I don't sell anything I make. I try to make my work look good as per my own engineering aesthetic and pride in craftsmanship, but I don't consider myself an artist and I do not consider my activity as an art. For some difficult comparison examples, is "Seeed Studios" doing art and staffed by artists, or just a small short run assembly line service? How about hand wired radio amplifiers from the "MFJ Enterprises" factory floor? A guy who hand assembles multiple plain looking beige box generic PCs using components from multiple sources, is he an "artist"?
I believe you can make art using electronic parts WRT jewelry for example or perhaps wall hanging "sculptures", or truly wild/exotic case designs, or ground breaking UI design, but making a conventional appearing tool for an artist to use does not transition the art-i-ness to the dude who runs the factory machinery that makes millions of painters brushes per day, for example.
We seem to disagree, and that's OK. The problem seems to be Etsy and I agree, which is not so OK for your shop. I think thats being missed in the discussion of small details of legal documents on both sides, it is probably the big (undiscussed) issue they have with you. Probably because they're unwilling to have a public "what is art" debate, so instead lets argue about if you PCB or panel mount your potentiometers. Don't miss the forest looking at the individual trees.
BTW your blog does not contain much text, but if you made that PDP-1 panel as pictured, I find that both artistically and technically impressive. Its artistically cool looking as a visual display such that etsy might tolerate something like that "as art" In the 60s DEC always had better aesthetic sense than IBM, although both pale in comparison to 80s-ish era Crays and Connection Machines.
The individual instances where policies fall down can be pretty nutty, but I honestly don't envy companies that have to solve this problem and figure out where to walk the line (at scale, no less).
They'll build it how you like too, so if you want neat and tidy cables they'll lace them or spiral wrap them or cable tie them. And if you want untidy spaghetti mess they'll do that too.
He's admitted that he doesn't actually design the circuits, and there's still some question about how much of the actual assembling he does.
It seems he's certainly doing some amount of work with his hands, the issue whether it's enough to count as "handmade" in the sense that etsy's customers expect.
I know as a musician if I purchased a "handmade" synth and later found out that it was basically just a kit that had been assembled for me, I'd be a little irked. Though if the store was up front about it, I would consider purchasing it to save myself the trouble of assembling it.
Personally I think it should be allowed as long as the seller is honest about it, though I could see why etsy might find it a bit dubious.
Ah. That makes it clearer for me. Thanks.
Or just ridiculous stuff that.. I don't even know, like this: http://www.etsy.com/listing/112833746/increase-breast-size-s...
Either way, Etsy is notoriously rife with resellers, so to see them going after someone that actually makes things is frustrating but unsurprising, given their track record.
2- so the real question is why do you and all the other people who go thru the centralized and censoring etsy entity did so to communicate with other people, your potential customers on the Internet?
The Internet is designed to be a meshed network, with N-N communications, not to be a star network with N-1 communications.
The problem is with you people who sumbit to Etsy, ebay, youtube, facebook, skype, etc.
Set up your own servers in your garage! Set up your own connections with your neightbor and the neighboring towns.
Do not pay with your money or your time for those centralizing and controling entities to develop centralized and controling server software. Instead, pay developers to write freedom software (GPL) that works in a distributed way, on your own servers, and which YOU control yourself.
When you use a service like this, you are essentially paying someone else to manage parts of your business - the convenience/risk trade-off here happened to come out against this particular person.
Full disclaimer, I run it. We make online selling easy by taking a flat 10% fee on all sales. No adding up small costs here and there, figuring out listing fees, or subtracting Paypal charges, simply list and receive 90% of the profit via Paypal or check minus 46 cents.
That would prove Etsy has no leg to stand on and increase his inventory from 0 to 1.
Why is that not possible?
"The problem here is that Etsy isn't my boss or my manager. That's the whole reason I sell through them. I want to avoid someone looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm working all the time or working within their absurd guidelines."
(Shamless plug, I work for Ribbon)....
This is simply disgusting. Is a hand craftsman actually a threat to the MegaCorp?
I just don't see why this would happen.
[edit: I just read part 2] Were I you, I'd start making another one and have a friend photograph the process. Hurry. Time is of the essence!
Perhaps such language has no place here, but I'll not sit by and call a cow a chicken just to please a few geese.
Or, perhaps it is the fact that I actually gave some good advice to Mr Byrne when I said to quickly make a new one & get pictures this time?
It seems to me that the OP probably has an assembled unit on hand. If so, disassembly followed by reassembly while getting some good photos shouldn't be too tough to do.
Secondly, the issue is that they think he isn't making his stuff by hand. They're not somehow persecuting him because he's a handcraftsman. Selling stuff you make by hand is the entire point of Etsy, and they've built a successful business around it.
Politics is beside the point. You're just not making any sense.