Etsy accused me of not assembling my synths by hand and shut down my shop

http://wtfbyrne.tumblr.com/post/50437742387/etsy-accused-me-of-not-assembling-my-synths-by-hand

by bmmayer1 • 13 years ago

482 151 13 years ago

wtfbyrne.tumblr.com

martin_• 13 years ago

This is pretty ridiculous. Best of luck to you and I hope you get your store back after the publicity of this post!

Xorlev• 13 years ago

I suppose Etsy had to do something for bad PR eventually.

itsybitsycoder6• 13 years ago

This is actually probably a result of Etsy's last round of bad PR, where one of the sellers they were promoting (Ecologica Malibu) was actually a reseller. Etsy has rampant problems with resellers.

city41• 13 years ago

I don't see how they would not, or how they'd adequately deal with resellers. It'd be like github trying to ensure all people pushing code up to github have the proper rights to that code.

mherdeg• 13 years ago

Huh. I don't remember seeing any other blog posts from anyone dissatisfied with Etsy previously — is this their first negative publicity?

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."

incision• 13 years ago

>Huh. I don't remember seeing any other blog posts from anyone dissatisfied with Etsy previously — is this their first negative publicity?

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...

illuminate4• 13 years ago

"I had no idea "handmade" was such a big deal at Etsy."

Hell, all I've heard about is griping from other sellers how "handmade" ISN'T a big deal from overseas sellers.

volandovengo• 13 years ago

Etsy is pretty aggressive. Try contacting any of their members with a request. They'll shut down your account without warning.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

Seriously? This sounds like an outfit that's in dire need of some (more) competition.

whatshisface• 13 years ago

I don't get why it would be so horrible for someone to not hand-assemble something they sell on Etsy, can someone please explain? (Yes, I know it's against the point of the site, but is it really worth terminating a product? Why not just post a notice?)

Jack000• 13 years ago

The products sold on etsy are valuable because they are hand crafted. That is their value-add, if any mass-production products make it in, their brand is diluted.

That is - they are really selling the hand-craftedness of the items, rather than the items themselves.

tedyoung2• 13 years ago

Etsy should open up a new site that handles businesses that outgrow Etsy. Seems silly to try and squeeze everyone into the same mold and then not have an option to make money on those who are "too" successful to hand make everything.

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

The thing is though, there are many steps in making most products, and where you draw the line seems pretty vague.

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...

captbaritone• 13 years ago

I suppose it would dilute the Etsy brand. Without curation they don't really offer much that eBay, for example, can't.

robryan2• 13 years ago

The market for unique/ handcrafted looking stuff would probably be even bigger than the market for actual handcrafted. Handcrafted takes a ton of time and adds a large premium to price.

grossvogel• 13 years ago

Try sending Etsy a link to your YouTube channel. I don't know if any of those videos feature the device in the dispute, but they demonstrate you're capable of making some pretty cool digital audio equipment.

xiwi_brendan5• 13 years ago

I sent Etsy a link to another device I'd built and it's build process thinking this would serve as a demonstration of my ability and position of assembler.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52082118@N05/sets/7215763303855...

They weren't satisfied.

famousactress• 13 years ago

Wow. Contrast this with the front-page HN post about kickstarter not doing anything about a project that over funded 20x and went silent for a year and a half https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707827

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).

phkn• 13 years ago

Backlash in 3... 2... 1...

jrajav• 13 years ago

Part 2 of this story: http://wtfbyrne.tumblr.com/post/50437619970/etsy-accused-me-...

Submitted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5708307

ricardobeat4• 13 years ago

I'm kind of siding with Etsy here, despite thinking he is being honest. The information provided is not enough to tell if he isn't just buying ready-made products and etching his logo on the back. It's a tough judgment, really, at what threshold does something qualify as hand-made?

fr0sty2• 13 years ago

And who's to say that every other item on that site was not made by some sweatshop that churns out crates of knick-knacks?

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?

droithomme• 13 years ago

I agree there's not enough information to determine how much he is contributing. I see some wood and a soldering iron, but I don't see evidence he is populating the boards himself, or his jig for making the finger joints. He might be but he doesn't show a set up sufficient to determine. I'm also skeptical of the claims that there are trade secrets involved in assembling known designs and boards made by others and putting together a rectangular case. The Bob Moog factory in Asheville has glass windows around their factory floor and customers are invited to watch their entire assembly process. Does Moog have more protection worthy trade secrets in their assembly methods than these designs? Probably.

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.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

I guess he should have should the laser etch in process - or maybe mail them a special "Hello Etsy!" laser etched bit of wood.

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.

D9u7• 13 years ago

In an age of 3D printed firearms how can one doubt what it takes to build such electronics?

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.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Judging by Regretsy, the moment Elmer's Glue gets into the mix.

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.

nraynaud3• 13 years ago

The last time I checked my ethics and fundamental laws, the burden of the proof was on the accuser, and the doubt was with the defendant.

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.

rustybuckets2• 13 years ago

Well, I know that going on an internet stranger's word alone isn't much--but hear me out.

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.

Supermighty• 13 years ago

I see a ton of moleskine cashier notebooks on etsy with nothing more a rubber stamp inked on the front. I know it's different than etching a logo on the back.

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.

beedogs• 13 years ago

Please. There's plenty of evidence in those photos that more than convinces me. And for Etsy to do this while just about everything else on their site is mass-produced sweatshop crap is total bullshit.

highace• 13 years ago

I'm always hazardous when building something on someone else's infrastructure. If they can shut down your entire income stream "just because", that probably isn't a good situation to be in.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

Everyone's in that situation. If you're selling online, your host can shut you down. Your payment processor can shut you down. Your supplier can shut you down. If you sell offline, your landlord can shut you down. Your bank can shut you down. You can set up a table in front of your house and try to sell from there with cash only, and your city/township can come shut you down.

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.

mistercow• 13 years ago

The key is to be able to swap out as much as your set up as possible with something roughly interchangeable. You have to ask yourself, every time you rely on somebody else, "If these people drop the hammer on me, what will I do?"

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.

greenyoda• 13 years ago

Hosting providers' terms of service are usually pretty straightforward: unless you engage in illegal activities or interfere with their operations, they won't shut you down. In any case, it's easy to find another hosting provider if you need one.

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.

gwern• 13 years ago

> Everyone's in that situation. If you're selling online, your host can shut you down. Your payment processor can shut you down. Your supplier can shut you down. If you sell offline, your landlord can shut you down. Your bank can shut you down. You can set up a table in front of your house and try to sell from there with cash only, and your city/township can come shut you down.

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?

AJ007• 13 years ago

This is a major problem for a lot of digital businesses.

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.)

paulhauggis• 13 years ago

This is my thinking as well. I had my entire business shutdown on Amazon a couple of years ago. No amount of explaining did anything.

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.

D9u7• 13 years ago

Have you paid your "Fascist Party" dues lately? /sarcasm

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!

D9u7• 13 years ago

Apparently some take issue with my terminology, even though to classify the USA as a fascist nation is accurate.

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?

D9u7• 13 years ago

Unable to debate the point(s) of contention, they let their silent votes do the talking.

dtp• 13 years ago

For one, Etsy is neither an arm of the US government nor a mega-corporation. It's got a few hundred employees.

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.

jph• 13 years ago

Etsy's a pretty great company, and you happen to be quite nearby in Brooklyn. How about visiting with some of your work to meet them in person? Etsy has a monthly open house too, so perhaps that's a good time.

I've met quite a few Etsy employees and they're all quite nice, smart, and want to do right by people. Good luck!

ddt• 13 years ago

I don't doubt that they're smart and nice. I'd be shocked if they didn't want to do right by their customers. It seems like they have a pretty good track record of being good to their sellers and buyers. My friends who sell on Etsy have nothing but good things to say about them, and the few times I've bought from them the experience was surprisingly smooth for a user-run marketplace.

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.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

I've met quite a few Etsy employees and they're all quite nice, smart, and want to do right by people. Good luck!

Then why are they seemingly taking their customer-relations cues from the PayPal playbook?

sean-duffy• 13 years ago

This sounds very unreasonable of them, hopefully if as some others have said they are a decent and considerate company they will resolve this issue as soon as they realise they have made a mistake, and I wish you the best of luck in this.

ricardobeat4• 13 years ago

I don't know how the fees compare (5% plus CC fees), but Tindie[1] is a marketplace specifically built for this kind of product.

[1] http://tindie.com/

adaml_623• 13 years ago

While reading about this story and looking at the Etsy website my wife made me divert to this page: http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/108070806/felicity-leather-we...

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.

ErrantX• 13 years ago

Yes, Etsy is stuffed with Asian mass production firms. So this is really weird to see.

Just check out "macbook pro" covers, nearly all are mass produced & shipped from China. For example.

itsybitsycoder6• 13 years ago

They've sold 1022 items at about 100GBP a pop over the last two years. That's less than $80k USD per year. I'm not sure how much of a factory you can afford with that in Bali, or how much profit would be left over. (They claim to be 3 people, so before any overhead, that's less than $26k per person per year.)

I would suggest they are resellers but the amount of customization makes that seem very unlikely.

acchow2• 13 years ago

> That's less than $80k USD per year. I'm not sure how much of a factory you can afford with that in Bali

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.

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Per capita income in Bali is under $7700, so $26k/person/year is not too shabby. (COGS on shoes are low - the major costs in most apparel retail are marketing and distribution.)

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...

RBerenguel2• 13 years ago

Making a shoe by hand is a damn lot of work: I know because I also sell handmade shoes in Etsy (and through our personal site, of course) We make custom designs for our clients, let them choose colours and style. Not counting the time spent drawing and exchanging emails and measurements, at fastest speed a pair of shoes takes a craftsman or craftswoman 7 days, with not many stops. Some corners could be cut and do it in 5. To allow for several orders at once and allow a correct mind cleanse between shoes (no-one wants to screw up at the very end!) we take 5 weeks to shipping

itsybitsycoder6• 13 years ago

So given that half their items are bags (some of which look pretty simple http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/95544563/minimo-shopper-bag-l...), would ~4 days per person per item sound reasonable? (They have sold 1022 items in 517 days, and have two people in their About Me listed as "makers".)

mikecane2• 13 years ago

Just looking at all the wires inside the box in one photo, how could they ever think that was mass-manufactured?

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Sub-contract manufacturing will do that.

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.

thejsjunky3• 13 years ago

I don't think the issue is they believe it's mass-manufactured or something. The issue is whether it falls into the niche of what etsy wants to sell.

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.

mikecane2• 13 years ago

>>>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.

Ah. That makes it clearer for me. Thanks.

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

I don't know how long it takes for you to create a synth, but it may be worth making a time lapsed video of your process for two reasons:

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.

film422• 13 years ago

Although he did say he doesn't feel comfortable recording his own manufacturing process as he feels it's an intellectual property violation. A time-lapse wouldn't be as revealing, but there's a chance etsy might reject it, I guess.

xiwi_brendan5• 13 years ago

Depends. These took me about 8 hours a piece. Not including the design process which was a bit more. Needless to say I'm not the faster solder or wire guy on the planet.

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!

Dwolb• 13 years ago

Would suggest checking out Tindie. It's a marketplace for hardware makers.

zdw• 13 years ago

Tindie is awesome, but most of what it sells are parts or subassemblies, not finished products which appears to be what this dispute is over.

bwertz• 13 years ago

I think there is a growing numbers if finished products on Tindie

205guy2• 13 years ago

The real question seems to be "who solders the components to the PCB?" The OP says "The knobs, potentiometers, and jacks were all secured by me. I did all of the wiring as well. Ordered the parts and soldered them all to the board too." The problem is that he makes it sound like an afterthought and does not provide photographic proof of this step (soldering what looks like about 60-80 components to the board in the one picture).

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.

stelonix• 13 years ago

I don't know about you, but I don't usually record myself while working just so I can prove it to my employer[1]. He's not being evasive, Etsy is asking for too much (it's not even in their ToS).

[1] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110487/my-cus...

205guy2• 13 years ago

To expand on your analogy, if a programmer advertized his services on uml-coders.com, he would be expected to show an example of his UML diagrams.

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.

robryan2• 13 years ago

I don't think that getting attention reduces his chances of being reinstated at all. Makes it more likely they will just reinstate the account to make the negative story go away.

wnight• 13 years ago

> going nukular

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.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

It doesn't do the site any good if it gets this sort of publicity, and clearly its doesn't do the user much good.

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.

tedyoung2• 13 years ago

This is why I will always make sure that I know (as others have suggested) what I'd do if I got booted off of a platform. This happened to me with Amazon: I was selling a few used books a month, when one day my email got hijacked. That meant I wasn't receiving the sales emails from them, and, because I obviously wasn't shipping them out, got banned from selling by robots with no process at all for being reviewed by a real human (let alone by one who could understand what happened and provide a satisfactory resolution). What am I going to do, sue them? Even arbitration would've been a waste of money, since I wasn't selling the books as a living (I was selling like one a month). Ever since then I've always made sure I have an alternative (Half.com now gets their cut of all my book sales).

Aco-• 13 years ago

I know some one who works at Etsy, so I forwarded this along to him, he has since passed it along to their support team in hopes of finding a better resolution; it's been reported that a lot of other engineers at Etsy have escalated this post throughout the day.

skwp• 13 years ago

This is crazy. You've got some cool lookin synths. We'd be happy to offer you a home over at reverb.com

whiddershins• 13 years ago

I think there is probably a bias against electronics as being handmade, and I appreciate your frustration. I think this is just a misunderstanding, but this:

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.

gknoy2• 13 years ago

Agreed: The process pictures are not for public consumption, so his competitors would (presumably) not have access to them. Perhaps he can get them to sign an NDA? :D

VLM2• 13 years ago

"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.

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

This situation seems entirely unfair to me and I am surprised that a lot of people here are siding with Etsy. If they had such clauses and information in their Terms and Conditions, then fair enough, comply or leave. But the worrying situation we have here is that Etsy appear to be making up non-publicly stated terms, targeting a guy who obviously hand assembles his own equipment. Sure, the guy didn't provide every bit of info they were requesting, but why should he? He complied with every Etsy request until they started asking for photo's documenting every step of the process which is just ridiculous.

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.

----

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.

----

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.

MBCook3• 13 years ago

> 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.

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.

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

You do make a very valid argument here and while he is definitely assembling already created components, I think by Etsy's own definition of "hand assembled" he is within the rules of the site.

"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.

rwg2• 13 years ago

This Brendan guy just needs to switch to selling "handmade" monogrammed island clutches:

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.)

MetaCosm• 13 years ago

The EDIT here contains a damn fine idea. I would say they are willfully ignorant, but then why crack down on this Brendan? Maybe a complaint was lodged which brought him to their attention?

wahsd2• 13 years ago

Wow! That "woven straw material" is so excellently handcrafted. It shows such mastery and artistry and the needle-work of the monogram is exquisitely consistent. Such great handmade quality.

ma2rten• 13 years ago

Project idea for someone who's bored: Scrape images off Etsy, group items based on image similarity, and find obvious mass-produced items.

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.

jf22• 13 years ago

> Nowhere did I find anything that stated pictures or any documentation whatsoever is required to account for the construction process.

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.

Zimahl3• 13 years ago

Yeah, I don't get the whole aversion to showing some proof outside of the photos. I would find it annoying but I don't think it would be difficult to prop up an iPhone and film the assembly of one of these.

cjh_2• 13 years ago

If you live nearby is it possible for an Etsy representative to come and watch you manufacture a single item?

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.

jack-r-abbit• 13 years ago

One of the emails stated "Unfortunately, we’re not equipped to offer phone support at this time." If they don't even have the resources to have a phone call with the guy, it is highly unlikely they have resources to send a person to his house.

gknoy2• 13 years ago

They likely have no idea where he lives. If he were to say, "Look, I live ___ blocks away from you. I'd love to buy you and a coworker lunch and you can watch me build one -- I'd like to avoid having documentation of my process, as that's a competitive advantage for me", he might get some traction.

Probably not, though, if the emails are that much like form letters.

cjh_2• 13 years ago

That could be due to other reasons, I prefer email correspondence over phone calls as it allows me to carefully think about my reply and documents it 'for free', and in the case of legal matters I can see this as being useful.

But at this point this is all pure speculation.

readme• 13 years ago

This is why you can't depend on such a middleman to run your business. You need to set up your own shop and focus all your efforts there. I understand etsy was probably generating a lot of sales for you, but this is the reality of depending on a middleman.

glesica2• 13 years ago

Sharecroppers have no rights. They didn't 200 years ago. They don't today. Doesn't make this suck any less, but it's something that needs to be discussed more.

ScottWhigham3• 13 years ago

I appreciate the attempt at an analogy but it fails here because of the agreement to the TOS. Both parties agreed to the etsy TOS which spells out, quite clearly, what each's responsibilities are. So yes, Brendan has rights afforded/accorded by the TOS - and those are enforceable rights were he to choose to go that route.

glesica2• 13 years ago

Sharecroppers had rights, too. But when one party can cut off the other party's livelihood, it essentially suppresses the technical "rights" of the second party. Every American has a "right" to a fair trial. But it is well-documented that if you can't afford a decent lawyer, "fair" becomes an unfortunately flexible concept.

javanix• 13 years ago

This is shitty by Etsy. However, AFAIK it is well within their rights.

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.

xiwi_brendan5• 13 years ago

Hi,

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)

xiwi_brendan5• 13 years ago

If anyone is super interested in this hit me up at byrnework @ gmail (dot) com and I'll do my best to answer your questions specifically.

Hit up a few points on this thread as well.

gtani• 13 years ago

Is there currently a site that talks about the synth's features, pricing, etc?

VLM2• 13 years ago

"We are a venue for independent artists to sell their own handmade goods"

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.

Diamons• 13 years ago

If you're looking to sell easily online, check out BOX'NGO (http://theboxngo.com).

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.

ricardobeat4• 13 years ago

You might want to rephrase that :) "No adding up small costs/fees/charges [...] minus 46 cents"

jbruton• 13 years ago

Give Shopify a try instead of Esty. You'll never get this nonsense.

dezinelife• 13 years ago

I think it's unfair. It's not possible to hand-make everything and the definition of 'hand made' can vary.As a graphic designer, the client cannot ask me to give him the copyrights of the version of Adobe Illustrator I used simply because I used the software's installed features and didn't code them.

sjg007• 13 years ago

You should sell on ribbon (www.ribbon.co). List your product for free and directly from your tumblr blog, facebook page or twitter.

(Shamless plug, I work for Ribbon)....

docsketchy• 13 years ago

That sux! I hope you get your store back. You do really beautiful work -- makes me pretty jealous, actually. (My synth DIY is kinda 50s-lab-equipment-esque.) -- Doc Sketchy

Uchikoma• 13 years ago

So you also need to create your wool and are not allowed to source ready-made wool? Or leather? There is a very thin arbitrary line in there somewhere.

neona• 13 years ago

This is really sad and unfortunate, considering how many items on etsy are just reseller nonsense, or unaltered items that someone just found. - Like these http://www.etsy.com/listing/127063284/super-clear-quartz-cry...

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.

pacifika• 13 years ago

I I read this correctly and it takes a day to assemble a synth, instead of arguing the process, why can he not build one that day and document the process?

That would prove Etsy has no leg to stand on and increase his inventory from 0 to 1.

Why is that not possible?

ScottWhigham3• 13 years ago

Brendan replied earlier to someone else:

"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."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5709457

guyniraxn• 13 years ago

You may want to try selling through NoiseFX.com, they specialize in custom pedals, synths, etc. When I think etsy, I think fashion.

informatimago• 13 years ago

1- you're not the boss of etsy, it's etsy who's your boss: you're working to provide something etsi can sell to THEIR customers.

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.

Etsy accused me of not assembling my synths by hand and shut down my shop

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