SALT LAKE CITY — Cole Crapo, the owner of Stone Fusions, has been selling his onyx lamps and chess sets on Etsy for four years.
“I always thought it was a really good platform to test to see if people liked what I was selling," he said. "And so for me, it was kind of opportunity to be able to test and see whether people actually liked my product. And it's been doing well on there. And so I've just kind of kept it going.”
With Etsy increasing selling fees twice in the last year, including the e-commerce company's recent fee increase from 5 percent to 6.5 percent for vendors, Crapo is starting to consider other platforms.
“To me, I think it does make it so I want to move more of my stuff more on to like Shopify stores and stuff like that," he said. "It gets more and more to the point where it's harder to make a profit."
Kyle Moon, proprietor of Lunar Canyon, has been selling his reclaimed wood pieces on Etsy for 10 years now.
“If they continue, there's a point," he said about the fee increases. "Although right now, it's still less expensive than Amazon. There are a couple of other sites that we've been on, and Etsy still, even with the increases, quite a bit less than they are.”
From wood floors to bed frames, Moon still gets more revenue from selling the big things at his Murray store, but he sees the highest number of sales every month on Etsy.
“That was regular cash flow every week," he said. "Money coming in, and I liked that. I liked having that regular check.”
READ: Etsy sellers on strike as company increases transaction fees
Although Moon did not participate in last week’s strike against the platform, he sympathizes with other vendors.
“Given what I see of a lot of other sellers, I can understand why they're frustrated," he said. "And, you know, they're clearly running on tighter margins than I am.”
At one point, Moon was in the top 10 percent of sellers on Etsy.
“Even at that, I got very little attention from Etsy itself," he recalled. "Doesn't feel like there's any interaction between Etsy and their sellers."
In response to the strike, Etsy said in an emailed statement that the fee increase would help the company "increase our investments in areas outlined in the petition, including marketing, customer support, and removing listings that don’t meet our policies.”
