Today we have a special episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast.

I wanted to focus on the Etsy strike and sit down with Kristi Cassidy, one of the organizers, in order to learn how it came to be and the impact it might have. If you haven’t heard about the Etsy strike yet, it’s a petition created by a group of Etsy sellers with a list of demands they want Etsy to meet. These include canceling the latest fee increase which brought transaction fees from 5% to 6.5%. Other demands include cracking down on resellers, improving seller support, ending the Star Seller program, and letting all sellers opt-out of Offsite Ads. As of right now, when we recorded this interview, the petition has 72,334 signatures or just about 1% of Etsy’s total active sellers.

Kristi Cassidy is one of the creators of the Etsy Strike petition, along with fellow sellers she connected with on Reddi. Kristi sells steampunk gothic fantasy costumes that she sews herself in her Etsy shop, Auralynne.

Here is a full transcript of our interview:

Abby:

Hi, hey, yeah, I can hear you. How are you?

Kristi:

Oh, sorry, every interview is always people calling me and I’ve got my phone already. And then I’m like, wait, wait, no, that’s not how it works.

Abby:

So just to get started. Can you tell us a little bit about your Etsy shop and how long you’ve been an Etsy seller and like what your experience on the marketplace has been like?

Kristi:

Yeah, so um, I joined Etsy in 2006 got active selling things on the platform in 2007. I make Gothic Victorian and steampunk wedding dresses and costumes. So the nice unique business and it’s been just it gradually grew and it was a wonderful, wonderful Etsy was a great place to do business. Really, for me, I started seeing a downturn sometime in 2019.

Abby:

Okay, and so, do you have to sell on any other channels? Or is Etsy your only ecommerce?

Kristi:

Um, I have a website, I do. I do sell some things on my website.

Abby:

Okay, and are you using like Shopify or a different

Kristi:

WooCommerce

Abby:

WooCommerce and WordPress? Yeah.

Kristi:

You’re the first person I’ve met since doing this. Oh, yeah.

Abby:

No, that’s it’s a good way to have a shop as well. So, okay, and would you say like the balance, though, on balance your sales over the last couple of years like from 2007 until you know, recently has been more on Etsy or more on your website.

Kristi:

Oh, definitely more on it. Seems like the vast majority of my sales have always been on Etsy.

Abby:

And is that because people are just like searching for you, or?

Kristi:

It’s, it’s a combination of things. I mean, for a long time, the platform was a very good place to do business. And I didn’t at all mind, like even sending all my customers from social media there, you know, it was like, the fees were low enough that I didn’t feel like I was just doing work for them to take money off of me. And, and, you know, I, I could keep growing and I would get some customers from search, it wouldn’t. It would be like, I think it was about a third I fit in, you know, two thirds at the fence. It was what it would wind up being on, on average in the before days. Okay,

Abby:

So they were sending you some good traffic, it sounds like at that. Yeah. Okay. And then it sounds like in 2018, you started to feel like things were shifting. And I don’t know if you can pinpoint, like, what that shift was caused by or? Yeah,

Kristi:

It was, it was just so in the beginning, it was just this feat of if I didn’t understand what was happening, it was like I was trying and try and like, it felt like in 2019, the more work I put into my shop, the less I would get out of it. It’s, and it was hard to like, quantify what was going on why, you know, it’s, it was just kind of this mystery that I couldn’t figure out. And there were some changes on the platform, but it was other people that they affected more than me. So like the free shipping, push for orders over $35, I had already put free shipping on my listings because I heard that it would increase my conversion rate. And I was trying so hard to increase my conversion rate that year. The interesting thing is, since doing this, like the research for this project, it lowered my conversion rate when I switched to free shipping. So it wasn’t like a huge amount, but it was actually better.

Abby:

That’s weird. Yeah. Strange. Okay, so when, when you decided to do this project, which is put together this petition, which calls for Etsy sellers to sign and then if they’re interested to put their shop on vacation mode, starting on April 11, due to the fee hike from 5% transaction fee to 6.5% transaction fee, was there a specific like conversation you had with a fellow seller or a specific event in your mind just reading the news that this was going to happen, or something else that you can point to that really made you decide, okay, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna write a petition, and I’m gonna see what happens here.

Kristi:

So this starts long before the fee increase. For me, it’s just the solid downturn that started in 2019. And every change that they’ve made on the platform, since then, has been very bad for creators. And, you know, also the more unique vintage sellers, you know, it’s just, they’re, they’re not what they purport to be anymore. And that’s, that’s hurting all of us. And I, just gradually, as all these changes are coming through, I’m getting more and more fed up. And with the last change before the fee increase, which was Star Seller was whenever I kind of was like, I’m done, I can’t fight right now but next time, that’s the next time.

And so when the fee increase email came out, it’s just for me, in particular, it’s never been about the fee increase. It’s been about everything. It’s been about how we went from this platform and just 2017 not that long ago, that was a public benefit corporation that was doing all these wonderful things that I wanted to be a part of, and then it can just completely go downhill in a period of like, only a little over four years. And it’s I wanted to fight back. And so yeah, whenever the fee increased email came out, I went to read it. I posted something that said, we need an Etsy sellers union. And there were a bunch of people that agreed with me in the comments. And one of those people was the person who started the Etsy strike Subreddit.

Abby:

Oh, okay. And who is that? Do you know that?

Kristi:

She’s chosen to remain anonymous.

Abby:

Okay, got it. Yeah. She started a Subreddit called the Etsy strike. And you were in that Subreddit, commenting and posting things.

Kristi:

Yes, I was. And then, basically, I offered to help. That was how it all met with me showing up and being like, hi, I can do the graphic design if you need it, and I can build websites if you need it. So I did like a really quick WordPress website for us and stuff like that. So

Abby:

Okay, right. So you were like, Okay, I’m in I want to work together collaboratively with other people who Do we sort of feel the same way? And so is that the strike itself? Did you use a particular off-the-shelf software or something to create the petition I mean?

Kristi:

Yeah, so the petition, most of the wording on that is actually not me. I’m a creative writer, but like that, that, you know, that kind of writing is not my forte. Whatever we were in the very, very beginning of the movement, we were just kind of trying to like narrow down, you know, what do we want to ask for we needed. Everyone has problems with Etsy, what are the most important things to us. And we got it narrowed down to the five most important demands, and we were kind of trying to like just very carefully reach out and find more people that wanted to get in and work. And Maddie was the purse, the first person to join who had enough time to devote to the project to really help and Maddie is an amazing writer for that kind of stuff. So most of the wording on the petition Maddie is the one who did that.

Abby:

Okay, so you guys all kind of brainstormed and they offered to write up the list of demands, and then they put they put their their sort of writing powers to work on that. Okay. Got, yeah,

Kristi:

We made an awesome team for that product.

Abby:

Yeah, it sounds like it. Right. Right. And, and so is this all on WordPress or?

Kristi:

So the website is WordPress. And then the petition is hosted with a gig worker activates active. Oh, my a gig worker activism organization? Oh, wow. Yeah, they’re called coworker.org. And Maddie found them. And they reached out and, and Tim, from there agreed to help us, I was a little shocked that like, you know, we would be allowed to be lumped in with gig workers as far as like activism goes, but it’s like, if you think about it, you know, both me and my Uber driver neighbor waiting on an app to notify us whether we get paid each week. So it kind of makes sense, you know?

Abby:

Yeah. And I’ve seen in actually quite a few of the articles and kind of more mainstream media outlets, a kind of sense that this was lumped together with gig workers’ demands. So that’s interesting that actually, the petition site itself originated there. So yeah, that is interesting. And I wonder what your life has been like, since the strike took off, or the petition took off? Because I’d say, I mean, I’ve read articles in time, the Wall Street Journal, I mean, it’s in Buzzfeed. And I mean, all over the place The Verge. So I wonder how many interviews you’ve done? And have you ended up kind of being the I guess, the face or the press? You know, person for this?

Kristi:

Yeah. I have wound up being the face for this. Even though we are very much a collaborative organization with a lot of people that are like, so mad. He was the first to join me. But then we’ve always tried to, like get as many people helping as possible. So but yeah, I wound up being the face and it is just I have been going from interview to interview to interview and I have lost count at this point. Like, I could not tell you how many over the last three days.

Abby:

Have there been any surprises when you talk to some of the reporters from some of these news outlets who maybe don’t typically cover at sea or aren’t as tuned in to sellers? Have there, you know, been any surprises that you’ve encountered?

Kristi:

I think the biggest surprise moment that I had was whenever I was on live TV for a Yahoo Finance interview, and like from what they had said, to begin with, I didn’t fully like it didn’t register Yahoo Finance as watched by like investors and stuff like that. And then they put up this giant thing of Etsy stock on the screen right before I go to speak and I’m like, This is that kind of interview. moment, but every other interview has been in like that one. I wouldn’t call it unfriendly but they were definitely trying to ask me challenging questions. Every other interview though, we have been kind of careful to try and you know, reach out because it doesn’t make sense to get pressed from you know, spend time with people that you know are not going to support the movement. You know you want to like try to spend your limited time in the areas that make the most sense.

Etsy:

And do you and the group, I mean, as a whole, do you expect that Etsy will give in to any of the demands that Maddie wrote up? Or if you don’t really think they’re going to give in to any of them? What do you think the long-term impact of this movement will be?

Kristi:

So we don’t know. It’s honestly too early in the movement to be able to offer an answer on what we think you know, it’s going to come of it. But we do have plans to build the equivalent of a union for Etsy sellers like what was in my original posts, some kind of solidarity organization, everyone in the core team, and the people that have joined our Discord server to help. We are all gung ho about going forward with this. And we’re, it’s going to be epic. We don’t know exactly what form it’s going to take yet, but it will be epic.

Abby:

And has Etsy contacted you directly in any way?

Kristi:

No, we reached out to them on Monday morning, and they have not contacted us back yet.

Abby:

I think that’s interesting because I saw that Josh Silverman, the CEO of Etsy, responded to investors about this petition itself in the Wall Street Journal today.

Kristi:

Yes, yes. Someone shared that to our Discord server. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at it yet. But I saw that,

Abby:

But I thought it was interesting that he’s responding to investors, but he’s not responding to sellers.

Kristi:

The email, like I don’t know when it went out to everyone. But everyone in our group that received the email, received it 15 minutes after they told investors that we’re increasing our priorities, you know, we kind of have this feeling about where they are.

Abby:

And have you thought about where the maker community would be without Etsy, like, if Rob Kalin had never come up with the idea or had come up with the idea at the wrong time or hadn’t taken venture capital so that it could scale or if it just shut down at a certain point, because, you know, whoever was working on it just didn’t want to work on it anymore. Where do you feel like the maker community would be without Etsy?

Kristi:

So the main thing that I think of with Etsy is it is really, really unique for a corporation to actually be a public, like a benefit to the public. You know, I’m not even talking about like the certification, but just a benefit to the public for a solid more than a decade. And that that is what, you know, we had with Etsy, they were wonderful for so long. And yeah, I cannot possibly downplay the benefit that we got out of the good years of Etsy?

Abby:

And do you feel like resellers are a part of this problem now? Meaning sellers, meaning people who buy and either dropship or actually send out themselves mass-produced goods, and then mark them as under the handmade category?

Kristi:

Yes, yes, I believe that is the most damaging thing to the platform right now. I, a lot of times don’t talk about it as much, because I don’t know how we get data on how bad the problem like it feels like it’s got to be the majority of the items in some category for whatever.

Abby:

I would agree with that. Yes, I would agree with that. I mean, anyone who searches for you know, Boba plush, I will see all the manufacturer Boba plush that you can buy on Amazon, or, you know, Bluetooth headphones, which are really not handmade. Yeah, no. Yeah. And I, you know, I do quite a bit of like consulting with Etsy investors. I’ve done that for many years. And one question that they always seem to ask me, is what the limit is, meaning? How high can fees go? Before we see seller churn? And I just wondered whether you thought you had thoughts on that, like how high fees could go before because you know, the last fee increase from 3.5%, where it had been for so long to 5% in 2018. According to Rachel Glaser, the CFO they didn’t see any significant churn to note. And so I don’t know what’s going to happen this time. They’re not anticipating churn, but we’ll see. But I just wonder what you thought the limit would be

Kristi:

I actually don’t know I don’t want to answer a question with something that’s just me making a guess. You know, I can tell you if they don’t listen to us, I’m leaving. I can tell you that I am out of this platform. If they don’t listen to us. For me, the thing is actually offside ads, unpredictable fees, that’s what my problem is. I cannot deal with unpredictable fees in a business that’s based on customer orders and making you know like expensive items where my entire paycheck for a month can be like two or three orders, you know?

Abby:

Right. And so Offside Ads is where Etsy is advertising your items without telling you. And then when one sells they’re taking a cut of that sale. But one thing I think is interesting about offset ads is, you know, I’ve paid for Facebook ads myself or for my business, and you’re paying for clicks, right? So, with offside ads, all the clicks that don’t lead to a conversion, the bill for those is, is picked up by Etsy.

Kristi:

Yeah, well, the biggest thing with Offsite Ads for me. I actually have not been able to stop continuing to do my own advertising. And like advertising is a set budget every month, it’s not variable, you know. So if you’ve got something where you’re paying for advertising, and it could be, you know, it could be 0% of your income, or it could be really close to 12% of your, of your, your, you know, total sales for the month. And that’s just like, that’s really problematic. And it’s not something you can turn off if you want to maybe slow down your orders for a little while. And it’s just, it’s the lack of control. That’s what, that’s what the problem is, and just the inability to opt-out for quoting people custom prices, your prices on custom made merchandise, it’s like, how do I quote people? Do I charge everybody? Yeah, I think it’s 14% more or the oh, what do I do?

Abby:

Right? Do you feel like there’s this is a sense that I have, and I wondered if you agreed or disagreed, but do you feel like there’s kind of a paternalistic tone? I feel like to the Star Seller program, Offsite Ads, a lot of these things which are sort of like, we’re going to figure out how to run this business for you and not give you a choice.

Kristi:

Yes. And I would, I would specifically call it patronizing. It’s incredibly patronizing the way they talk to us.

Abby:

I would agree with that. I feel like they’re like, Don’t worry, don’t worry your pretty little heads about the money. You know you go play with glitter, you go play with glitter and beads, and we’ll figure it out.

Kristi:

Yeah. Really.

Abby:

And as you know, primarily, a marketplace that’s primarily populated, populated by women, sellers, this definitely has an off feeling to it.

Kristi:

Yes, definitely, most definitely.

Abby:

So you said you’re going to leave if, if Etsy doesn’t change, and it may and changes may not be we reach out to this group from, you know, from Etsy, but it may be that they just change something, and are more than one thing according to these demands, but if they don’t, you said, you you’re going to leave, and where are you going to invest your time and energy in building up that WooCommerce shop?

Kristi:

Yes. Yes, that is the plan. And the solidarity organization that we are starting is open to people who used to sell on Etsy as well. It’s a wanting to kind of be just like a group for artisans and vintage sellers in general, to be stronger together.

Abby:

Right. Understand. Okay, well, Kristina, this has been really, really helpful. Is there anything I should have asked about but didn’t ask about that you think is important to share?

Kristi:

Um, well, we had kind of this moment yesterday, that was like shocking and glorious. Etsy’s founder tweeted in support of us.

Abby:

This is Rob Kailin?

Kristi:

Yes. Yes. Rob Kailin tweeted in support of us yesterday. Like “I support the Etsy strike. This is getting ridiculous.” You know, and something about like, you know, there needs to be a new platform because this is just absolutely ridiculous. So, that was an amazing moment.

I support @EtsyStrike. This is getting ridiculous. Time to build a better marketplace for handmade goods?

— Rob Kalin (@rokali) April 11, 2022

Abby:

And has Chad Dickerson, the former CEO, reached out in any way?

Kristi:

No, not that I, not that I know of. We’re such a decentralized movement. I feel like some of these, like there. It’s a possibility that something could have happened that I don’t know about, but not that I know of.

Abby:

Okay. Wow. All right. Well, this has been great. I know you’re busy. You’re doing interviews all day long. And I really appreciate that you took the time to talk to Craft industry Alliance. So thank you so much, and best of luck with everything.

Kristi:

Thank you so much. All right. Bye.