If you’ve ever sought homemade charm at affordable prices, you’ve probably been on the Etsy website more than once (and maybe even bought a few things). If you’re into making things and selling them to others, there’s a very good chance that you have an Etsy shop.
Either way, there are some changes happening to Etsy that will impact both people that shop on the site and those that sell things on the site.
Manufacturing Made Easier
There’s now a manufacturing service available to those people that make things and sell them on Etsy. The service is called (quite unoriginally) Etsy Manufacturing, and it aims to connect Etsy’s most creative folks with small manufacturers for the sole purpose of helping those people that sell through Etsy create more goods faster.
This new service will help people that want to sell more items build and create things with the help of a manufacturing team (a team that would otherwise be very expensive to source and difficult to find). It will also help small time manufacturers generate some business. Today, manufacturers will be able to create profiles on Etsy.
From there, the Etsy team will screen the manufactures to make sure that they are using good products, not creating products with cheap labor, and are a good fit for the Etsy crowd. Nobody from Etsy will actually be touring manufacturing plants, but the company has prepared some strict rules for manufacturers that want to be a part of the process.
Manufacturing Guidelines
Etsy is seeking small manufacturers that are completely transparent when it comes to their practices and things like scale. So, major manufacturers are not welcome on the Etsy platform. But, it’s going to be tough for Etsy to monitor the manufacturers that do apply to be a part of the company’s new setup. Unless representatives from the company are physically checking out every manufacturing setup, some larger and faceless ones are bound to fall through the cracks.
Some are concerned that setting up sellers with manufacturers means that the small Etsy shops people have grown to love might become massive companies creating items by the truckload - though Etsy claims this is not what the company wants or is after.
Time will tell just how many crafters wind up connecting with major manufacturers and creating hundreds of the same items. Many hope that Etsy will remain what is has always been - a place to buy and sell handmade items that can’t be bought in bulk.
How to Sign Up
Right now, Etsy Manufacturing is in beta mode, so you’ll have to connect directly with Etsy in order to find a manufacturer. You will also have to have an existing Etsy account. If you want to apply as a manufacturer, you can do so through the company’s site as well.
Just be prepared to provide detailed information about your manufacturing setup. Etsy does plan to comb through all manufacturing applications carefully at the start, so only a few applications will be accepted to begin with.