Etsy sellers protest fees by halting their sales for a week

NEW YORK (AP) — Some vendors on Etsy say they are halting sales of their items on the site for a week to protest a hike in the fees the crafts e-commerce marketplace charges them.

Starting Monday, Etsy sellers must pay a 6.5% commission on each transaction, up from the 5% in place since 2018.

A protest organizer, Kristi Cassidy, said thousands of Etsy sellers — a fraction of the 5.3 million vendors on the site — have temporarily halted selling their items. Cassidy, who has been selling gothic and punk costumes on Etsy since 2007, also launched a petition that so far has garnered more than 50,000 signatures from buyers and sellers. Roughly 20,000 are sellers. Cassidy said it's hard to estimate the exact number of sellers that have actually stopped selling on the site.

Cassidy and others are also taking issue with Etsy’s advertising policy implemented early in 2020. It requires sellers making at least $10,000 a year on Etsy and who have have their products advertised on Etsy's offsite social media and search-engine partners, to pay a 12% advertising fee on sales made through the ads.

Cassidy also said that Etsy needs to crack down on resellers, people selling mass-produced goods that they have not designed themselves.

Raina Moskowitz, chief operating officer at New York-based Etsy, said that the new fee structure will enable the company to increase spending on marketing, customer support and removing listings that don’t meet its policies.

“Our sellers’ success is a top priority for Etsy," she said in a statement.

Etsy, best known for selling handmade soap and jewelry, was one of the few beneficiaries in the pandemic as more people stayed at home and either made items or sought homemade items online.

But it’s now under pressure to ramp up its offerings to compete better...