Hey Gabi I have a question. Do you have a set posting schedule or is it more like, posting whenever the video is finished? I use youtube on my laptop not my phone so I don't get post notifications so I'm trying to figure out when to look for new videos. Love your work! Have a great day

Gabi, I'm a disabled jewelry artist. I (actually) handmake all of my jewelry and use properly hypoallergenic materials, and I would love to send you a PR package with freebies! Etsy is an absolute warzone unfortunately.

Love your videos but not your choice of sponsors. Factor is owned by Hello Fresh and to say they’re a problematic company is an understatement.

qq00

I. F. S. M. I. T. I. L. M. I. A. M. N. I. F. sounds like an instant KZfaq classic. When you make the merch for it, go a pair of teeshirts for a couple, starting on one shirt and ending on the other.

once i find a real shop on etsy i save it immediately. The number of times my ass tried to just get 3 yards of linen like my god.

Literally! I stopped shopping on Etsy once I saw that my entire purchase history was straight off of Temu!

There are some extensions which tell you where a company is based, where the seller is from, and if there are similar products out there. The one I use is called Cultivate, but I'm sure there are more out there.

I guess we need a new Etsy. Then the cycle will start again

It's absolutely infuriating. It's also Not Just handcrafted Things, Vintage items are also really difficult to find now. A few years ago when i searched "Vintage Ring Art Deco" i would get alot of those and a few abspired ones, now i only find cheap Rings that have nothing to do with what i search for and all Look the same

Nooooo :(

Fuck dude. That's rough :(

I’m so glad my mom is forced to use technology at work to keep her sharp on these things. I’d be so upset if she spent a crapload of money on one of these sites.

A lot of it is illegal to sell, there's just so much going through borders now that nothing gets checked

It's the thought that counts? I tried. Sorry.

That isn't a $3 ring. It's only $3 if you buy 50. Do people not understand buying in bulk? $27 is only a little bit high for those earrings. 20 bucks is an actual reasonable price so these complaints are pretty meaningless. Making a fraud about handmade is a legitimate complaint but outside of that nothing is. That's a small thing.

@@GearSoundsso that’s not true. I just found those earrings and was able to go through the whole process with free shipping. So what tf you talking about?

​@GearSounds That's not how it works only thing they're paying at most is shipping. That's literally how average Joe's drop ship

​@@GearSounds What you're referring to is wholesaling, not drop shipping. Drop shippers don't even actually buy the item

@@Hobosdkcheese Even if you get free shipping do you not understand how buying in bulk works? You get more when you buy more. It works that way everywhere. Go to costco, you can get more if you buy more. That isn't a scam... it is quite literally 10th grade economics.

Open source plans! Those bad actors are the reasons we can’t have nice things 😡

YES I JUST MADE A POST ABOUT HOW IF YOU TRY ... They can , even if forced to stop sales during the proceedings (unlikely) they can fight you with the funds they'd continue to receive from buyers who bought from them on credit , who would be able to continue to market their copies of your goods indefinitely, even if you win & shut down the manufacturer or the ' thief ' corp , IF the actual ' thief ' can even be traced! Sadly enough im sure that sometimes the first ' passing off/ handing off ' of the pertinent info required for the theft to become a done deal isn't actually' spies ' but rather a friend or associate offered $ for the info or an item although it is easy for them to just buy one to copy as well if the material & process is basic enough.

If you had a clause for personal use only and not commercial, you can actually go after them legally since it's your intellectual property. Also, whenever making anything such as toys get a patent and/or trademark, that way if it's ever used in the future you can go to the legal system and be like "This is actually mine. Here's proof. I want those taken down and/or royalties from all sales, thnx"

Dream on, almost nobody can make money from plastic toys, certainly not in the first-world countries. Only a few well-known brands can more or less survive (Lego etc). Anything that has the slightest success will be copied or a tiny bit modified to evade copyright issues. If you really think you have a good idea, keep it for yourself and try to sell it to a large brand or maybe sell it as hand-made in local shops. Once it finds a minor success on the internet you will have lost.

Hey @SnowieShiba ! Op just said they can't afford lawyers, which is what you need to uphold set clauses. And getting a patent is not something a lot of small businesses can do, because of the huge cost.

Yeah, etsy doesn't really do anything to regulate. It seems like all you have to do is say "it's hand-made" and they are cool with it. Etsy had it's peek in the 2010s.

I agree. People are flocking to cheap sites bc you get them for less than at the dollar store. With free shipping...

i cant even find normal stuff that isnt these drop shipped brands. even when i am intentionally trying to filter them out. examples: hand vacuums, darts, thermal printer. 3 things i recently tried to buy and didnt mind spending a little more for a quality product. i literally couldnt find unless i went to brothers website and bought a super expensive thermal printer, or bought like 100$ professional level darts. there is no in between. its either the absolute shittiest chinese knockoff, or super premium name brand

As someone who can handcraft everything from a chair to jewlery I can assure you that youre very correct. Competing with robots and machines that take minutes to craft something is nearly impossible. And most of items that were handmade just vanished because makers just realized its easier to sell something from china and make a whole lot money. Plus its nearly impossible to make unique pieces because that price tag will be in hundreds or thousands

It's consumer demand. Only a ludite or an authoritarian opposes competition, innovation, and efficiency. The problem is fraud is involved in many cases with the product not being as advertised, or claims of quality being false, but that can happen even with individual producers and artisans. Fighting the fraud is very hard, because of governments getting in the way of private accountability being able to engage the same way in different places.

youtube shows you related ads, so like, lets say your watching some video about an IT subject, you'll get an ad about a vpn, so its not really all that baffling to be honest.

@@blackstar9481 It is baffling how they're still relying on failed strategies. Those algorithms pushing "related" content clearly aren't sophisticated enough to tell whether the content they're relating something to is supporting, or opposing to the thing they're pushing. And then they blame the users for blocking ads.

Its the irony that is baffeling ​@blackstar9481

This just happened to me

Omg this just happened to me!! Was he ginger with a UK accent? It started around the 4 min mark 😂😂😂

This is big brain thinking. Thank you!

That’s a great idea. I’ve messaged Otto ask if they craft the piece themselves or if it’s outsourced and that also has worked.

First off you can't blame the sellers on Etsy. It's Etsy who caused this by going public. Now they have shareholders and they wanted more money so Etsy opened it up to that because they had no other choice!! Etsy sucks today even handmade is garbage and not worth the money!!

100%, but the system we built is made to glorify profit above all other things.

And to actually enforce anti-trust laws for places like Amazon

Yeah Etsy and their BS policies and stupid bots shutting down vintage stores and truly handmade items for stupid reasons!

What do you make?

I’m interested in what you make? What’s your store?

what’s your store?

This is so sad, really. Etsy used to be such an awesome way to support small businesses selling *authentic* items. Now it’s all the same cheap Chinese things you see on Amazon 67 times in a single scroll.

I relate I remember thinking I did a good job purchasing an handmade item and supporting small business...just for me to see the exact same jewelery pieces on Shein for way less than what i paid for 😪😪😪😪 Now I stick to purchasing indie perfumes but even then, I'm still cautious

Etsy really ruined their site when they started to allow this.

Etsy is the worst!! A lot of these shops will make their storefronts look like indie brands or a one person homemade shop but then it’s drop shipped :/ it’s hours of sifting through junk. Gotta be even more critical these days

@@AC-rb9rlshein also steals small business designs as well. So the actual business suffers because people think it’s dropshippig too!

Please don't turn your back on Etsy! Those of us who are genuine handmade artists are here struggling to be seen among the rampant drop shippers. And Etsy knows there is a huge problem and is implementing ways to weed them out. Sadly. it will take time and I can only hope we will be able to hold out long enough to still have a business when they finally rid the platform of them.

Good

This just made me grateful I wasn't working my mail sorting job during this craze, sorting 90k with our dinky lil warehouse 😭

If you don't offer free shipping, your items won't even show up in the first 3 pages of search results. Etsy takes a % of the total cost. They don't care how much it costs the seller to ship. They encourage you to add the cost of shipping to the selling price so their % increases.

I remember when Etsy was born. I was selling vintage lingerie, really gorgeous nightgowns, on eBay. But eBay started making life very hard on vintage sellers. Etsy came along promising to be a comfortable place for vintage and handmade sellers to thrive. And it was, until the company went public. When that happens, the only thing that matters is shareholders.

I feel like it's been this for a while now. I once looked for antiques and got page after page of brand new stuff from a single seller. I feel like it's doing what eBay did: prioritize high volume sellers at the expense of everyone else, essentially dooming itself to stagnancy and mockery.

enshitification FULL STEAMER AHEAD

Closed my store there.

Why is it a bad thing that there are small businesses selling boutique products on etsy?

"People were pissed, etsy didn't care" seems to be their slogan these days

Are there websites/apps that exclusively sell items from actual small businesses?? It's really sad to see all this mass produced garbage

@@pemex23 I’m curious about this too. As a small buisness, my shop gets no sales and barely any views because of the insane amount of wholesalers on Etsy now. I’d love to be able to just sell on a site that is HANDMADE only. It hurts that I have to price my items so low that I get paid less than minimum wage, for the sake of having the prices be some what understandable next to the wholesalers.

Regretsy died far too early.

​@@TheTundraTerror RIGHT? April, you abandoned us when we needed you most!

Yes! I love seeing crafters and artisans actively working on their crafts at fairs. If it's something particularly unique I even like chatting with them about their techniques, it's so nice to talk to passionate people.

ONG one time when I went to a an area where small sellers had booths and I saw a ring that I had bought on Amazon a year earlier likely from a dropshipping type of business

Handmade ANYTHING is so expensive 😢

Specifically, it's labor intensive. I've had people ask to pay me to design and knit them sweaters or gloves or what have you, and I turn them down because I couldn't charge them a price that would pay me a fair wage, and charging less hurts people who are trying to make a living at it by training people to think 'this is what this should cost'. (BTW, other knitters: You can thrift yarn by finding sweaters in thrift stores that are machine knitted as separate pieces and then stitched together. I have a couple of different sweaters that cost me about $5-10 in materials to make. There is more work involved because you have to unravel them, but if you're on a budget, you can make sweaters this way.)

@@kaylakthulhu8623yes, because you have to pay for a living human’s time and living is notoriously expensive.

​@@purplecat4977great advise!!

My mom makes jewelry are her margins are super thin and she’s always working

Ghost kitchens!

What the fuck, I’ve never noticed that! Is it illegal?

​@caranook Eddy Burback has a deep dive into ghost kitchens. It gets worse when ghost kitchens avoid a bad reputation and/or bad health inspections.

@@caranook Yup, some of the cute sounding little boutique restaurants are a actually IHop, Chili's or Outback. You Buy from 'Milano's Pizzeria' , it's Dominos in a different box.

Make sure to wash it down with Brawndo.

Or for when your ' bro ' is giving you bad vibes,' dude , take a bronax & relax ' lol

Im sure these names are generated by a dropship company name generator, sold in these bullshit courses. These fuckin lowlifes aren't even able to create a creative company name.

Genuinely, one of the only things tiktok is good for, imo. I like finding smaller artists on tiktok because a lot of them actually film their setup/ creation process.

That’s not what dropshipping is. Dropshipping is specifically when people sell a product through a website without owning any of the product. A dropshipper will go on cheap wholesale websites like alibaba or aliexpress. They will find a product on that website they think will sell well. Lets say they picked a mug and that its price is $2. They will then take the images and information from that listing and post it on their own website at a markup, lets say $20. The KEY here is that they never ordered stock of that item. He will then advertise that item, and when someone buys the item from the dropshipper’s listing, the dropshipper is basically a middleman and buys the item for $2 and sends it DIRECTLY to the customer. He never receives any of that item. He makes $18 off of this. What you’re talking about is just people buying stock of certain items and pretending they made it themselves.

​@@andreat6882yes this is a very important distinction to make! Too many people don't make this distinction online. Dropshipping is when there is a middleman involved and the seller you bought the item from is NOT the one sending the item. Dropshipping has to involve literal shipping, which wouldn't apply to a live in-person market or fair. I totally understand what they meant though. It's a huge issue where some sellers at fairs are actually selling cheap crap from Aliexpress amongst genuine vendors.

@@andreat6882 There's also an entire industry of get rich quick scammers, encouraging people to buy courses to teach people how to drop ship , and they cherry pick examples of like one guy making a mil per year from dropshiping when the vast majority of people buying these drop shipping classes won't make it big

Yeah, not drop shippers. They don't physically have anything, they order off Alibaba or whatever and have it mailed to you.

The problem with the way Etsy works is that they profit more from fast drop shipped fake stuff, and so they can deprioritize actual artisans in search or punish them for taking a while to handcrafted custom products.

Simultaneously raising the fees for all sellers, to the point that it's less worth the trouble of selling on Etsy! And gamefying the algorithm, making more hoops to jump through just to be seen.

Sorry to put this on a top comment but I really want people to see this: is gage beasley a dropshipping site? I brought this up with other people and they got extremely mad at me for insinuating it but like. A bunch of stuff in their store isnt from the same manufacturer and can be found on Alibaba. So wth. Why doesn't anyone talk about them bc theyre literally like, kinda huge? Theres ads for them everywhere and theyre always the first results for plushies of any weird creature or arthropod.

Back in the early days, Etsy actually did verify business addresses and went to some lengths to ensure you were ordering from small businesses. I don't remember when but Etsy abandoned all that one day and it absolutely flooded the website with cheap goods. I think Etsy was having a hard time verifying business information and decided to just give up.

unfair competitiveness, isnt a thing lol

Same 😂 Shopify

@@bbyjscx Literally same haha

At least you can still find deccent things on Amazon. You have to really pay attention, but you can definitely get through and find actual stuff.

Hit it right on the nail.

But expensive as shit. At least aliexpress has nice prices

I remember when Amazon was a great way to get and sell secondhand books and DVDs. Sigh

@@tanianeira9532None of that money goes into the workers' pockets. If you're not paying, someone else is

just sort by price 🤣

@@pondy1 good luck!

So much THIS

@@pondy1 the pont: . Your head: 👄

@@pondy1 no leave him to think he's clever with his comment

That sounds dangerously close to MLM.

why did you have to listen to them?

school assembly id assume @@smalltime0

​@@smalltime0 it could be part of a 'career course'

There was this thing called “SMC” about 20 years ago, where it was advertised on TV how to make money at home. You could build a website and sell product… it was all drop ship crap basically. Everyone was selling the same cheap stuff from a catalog.

I feel your pain, I can’t wear any fake jewelry because of allergies and it is so hard to find a legitimate jewelry source

Is that a thing you could sue for?

There’s a way to do dropshipping that involves some bit of creativity Ex. Designing notebook covers, creating graphic design for shirts/ totes

I mean it is if you're trying to sell unique designs. Not everyone can afford to set up production and shipping lines.

​@@kiannasadeThat's not drop shipping. That's make on demand, or print on demand. One requires work to at least come up with original designs. The other is just a low margin middle man.

@@randomcharacter6501 To be fair. I've seen both terms used interchangeably.

Etsy would probably need to increase fees to be able to really fix their site.

Check sales numbers and/or reviews. Or flip a coin.

What's really crazy is I didn't know if your comment was legit or just a bot

I'm not sure about other countries but when I see a generic white background photo of the product (or a bbl model for clothes) on a cheaply designed website with hefty prices it's 100% dropshipping.

Dropshipping has nothing to do with being a "scam". The two are not really connected. Dripshipping just means you can't guarantee the quality or safety standard of a product you buy domestically. It also means you are paying more for something you could get cheaper direct. Scams are not usually linked to drop shipping.

​@NadezdaBeka in Brazil there is one of the biggest marketplace sites, both in terms in online traffic and actual marketshare numbers, that let people sell used goods (or as new but in small quantities), but straght up DEMANDS that the seller provide the main photo with that generic edited white background. That will be the thumbnail and first image of the product in your listing, and you can actually choose one that other seller already provided, so that your listing will be as close to everyone else's as possible. The big data driven online marketplaces of today just want sellers to provide the most generic and identical information (and actual products) as possible, so automated tools can deal with the listings more efficiently, they can rank sellers (and actually deal with them) as easily as possible, pool up reviews for the "same products" and make them seem to apply to every listing of the "same" thing for every seller, disregarding individual care, quality, handling and/or delivery issues that different sellers might have. Even in this dropshipping world of ours, there are a lot of original and great products with decent quality, in spite of being mass produced whitelabel stuff, that is cloned by other factories across the street with worse components, tooling, parts, finishing or whatever else, and the marketplaces force sellers to make their listings as if those products were the same thing, and compete in price with even the same reviews applied to both.

Also sorry if there’re some spelling mistakes, I’m spanish

What’s your name on Etsy ?what do you sell ? :)

@@lizahcjsk beadedbyblondie! i sell cute handcrafted jewelry! thanks foor asking!!

I need to know your Etsy! Might not be able to buy any time soon but I’d love to check it out and support you!

My shop has been 'on vacation' since Christmas. I hate to shut it completely and lose my feedbacks, but I'm tired of spending every waking hours in the workshop, doing the photography, packing and shipping, for the sake of Etsy's profit over mine.

Plus a lot of those kiosks are drop shipped items too

@@snail8672I was walking around my normal mall today and I was thinking of this. The phone case booth there can literally only be profiting by getting them for cents on the dollar

I was trying to commission art and I had to spend hours checking listings for Ai use. It’s like 90% Ai now

@@Evelyn_Rose1151as an artist myself, it’s encouraging to hear that people who value actual art are still out there!

Etsy has sucked for a long time 🥹 it sucks.

@@Evelyn_Rose1151I draw cartoony styles (furries especially) if you want to check me out ^^ @panpanillustrations Not for the sake of purchase, I just like talking about + showing off my work without the stress of porting it on social media ;v;

I think you go better selling locally and advertising in your town and area if you make handmade stuff. then people know that its really handmade and high quality

And report them

Can you at least give them a bad review?

@BlueberryDragon13 no, it just gets removed

Both of those make a lot of sense.

Etsy is a Wall Street traded company. The shareholder profit comes from the mass sellers. They aren't going to do anything to lessen their profit.

That’s just so disheartening

Pretty much that and MLM tables now. Very rare to see people selling their handmade things now. Last time I went to one there was only three tables of handmade things and the rest were dropshipped items and MLMs like Pink Zebra. Makes it so I don't want to go to them anymore.

Ever since we legalized it here our farmers markets have been pretty wild.

And yet, the booths that I see frequented and bought from are those very same ones. Buyers don't have discernment or care about it either, sometimes. People will often ask me as an artist if I make my work and compliment me, but will often buy from people selling stuff you could get at Walmart. I don't get it. Why come to a farmer's market for Walmart stuff...? And why the coordinators let them in to begin with is beyond me. Well established events have no excuse.

I see them in shopping malls a lot. Like those pop up stores in the middle of the centre

LOL. It's been like that for decades. All stores sell products that are made in China

​​@@nerychristian LOL no, selling stuff from China is not automatically dropshipping

I think stores like this often just look temporary. Blank walls, cheap looking shelving, and a bunch of junk inside

And bulk. Plus when you guve it more than a goance you can see the poor quality of the products and then you cant stop seeing it in every aspect of the store. It's so obvious they threw this all together in less than a week and BAM, they're gone ​@Zuzu22322

its unrelated but there is a pizza place in my shoop that changes ownership and name litearly every 6 months to a year *eddit: the menu and the inside of the restaurant stays the same with no changes

It reminds me of something I heard that was like, being in your 30s is realizing that you would, in fact, pay $800 for shoes, so long as you could buy them from a cobbler! I spent a small fortune on some very nice black formal shoes when I started working, in a simple style that's held the test of time and will go with most outfits. The difference between them and the $30 sneakers I grew up wearing was so jaw-dropping I couldn't believe it. It's completely different from the materials to how it's crafted to the mentality that went into it. The shoes are designed in such a way and with such materials as not only last long, but be completely possible to repair by another person in 100 years.

They never had that sense in the first place, this is something artists know from early on.

If they say something like this then they are not your target customers anyway...many ppl are just happy with cheap functioning stuff. It would be unrealistic to say that they can't tell the difference between quality items or cheap items. They often do.

@@solitarelee6200 You don't need to be in your 30's to learn that, you just need to have access in your daily life to quality stuff. Coming from a small town with a proper butcher, multiple bakers, fish shops, former european champion of cobbling, tailor, and quite a few other small scale shops you notice quality difference quickly, on top of that it's generally not notably more expensive. Most of which are still the default shops to go to (thank fuck for my extremely conservative town where most are family ran business'). Having lived in a few major cities however I've notice that finding quality products is extremely expensive in major cities, probably due to finding people that can actually do the job becoming rare. And a lot of people simply buy goods based on sticker price rather than lifetime price. Here in the Netherlands we have a saying (poorly translated): "Cheap is expensive". To give my own example I've had the same 200 euro leather jacket for 15+ years that I only recently replaced and not because it was worn but simply because I got fat and didn't fit properly anymore. Meanwhile I have friends that swear by cheap primark and aliexpress jackets they buy for 50 euro and last a few months at best. The amount of money I saved by not buying cheap jackets is probably in the thousands at this point. On a side note, it pisses me of to no end when people say "aliexpress/chinese crap sellers makes it so poor people can afford products". You can't tell me people can't buy 20 euro for a good quality socks that last half a year or longer but can shell out 5 euro's every 2 weeks for socks that almost fall apart when you look at them funny. Those products help poor people to stay poor.

How do you respond to those people?

No joke. I have found my fiancé’s art being printed on stuff and resold on Amazon and on wish, shien, temu, what ever it’s going to be in the next 2 years. We tried to file a dispute on Amazon since we are a small business of two people selling on etsy and drawing stuff to share with other fans in fandoms being turned into someone else’s profit without even crediting the artist. Amazon just blocked me from seeing that seller but they still out there printing our art on coffee mugs, blankets, posters, phone cases everything. They even pay for my fiancé’s patreon to steal the art for their personal profit. So it’s tarnishing our work and names while also blatantly stealing and making us look like we may not be the original artists too since the artist is NEVER credited.

Id consider it a cyber attack at this point 😅

yes!!!! and then it makes the actual seller look less credible since “it clearly must be dropshipped”!!!

I know it sucks but girl, you GOT to watermark your images. I know it takes from the display, but it's better than having scammers use the photos of YOUR products to steal YOUR potential customers.. don't let them win! Edit: maybe try to come up with a way that your products are always real. Like engraving tiny initials or a star into a product. Something a cheap manufacturer would never notice. Or maybe use a specific color in your photos that signify is YOUR product. For example, there's a baker on youtube who often has her videos stolen. So she started using bright lime green cake batter, so you always knew it was one of HER cakes being made. The batter is covered by the end of the video, but it's a permanently ingrained "watermark" of sorts

@@chattycatty3336 we water mark them all the time. Thieves will seriously crop it and or blur it that the watermark fades

my pinterest feed is 60-70% ads. i don’t even get on there anymore because it’s gotten so out of hand

And so much counterfeit! Don’t say that in a review though or they take away your ability to leave reviews. Most reviews are fake. Just look at the 3 stars

the natural outcome of capitalism. need people consuming! oh, and everyone needs to have a job regardless of how good automation gets.

@@Cara.314 think it has less to do with capitalism than it does the fact that so many people are willing to accept it. Even quality in stores like target and Walmart has dropped pretty drastically.

@@DJDrLandWhaleOfficial this is the function of capitalism, everything is about profit and beat out the competitors until you’re a monopoly. Literally like the game. We created antitrust laws during the progressive era to prevent this, but some of those laws have been relaxed or not enforced. We are basically in a second Gilden age, where we have a lot of unchecked capitalism.

Then why did sears go under?​@@Cookie-nq9vv

And if you’re a woman just buy a man’s razor because pink tax is real.

​@@iagas9Store brand food items come to mind. Oftentimes comes from same place the brand name ones do.

Or just buy safety razors. Much better shave at an even cheaper price.

Had a similar experience with those Estrid razors. I actually used them and found them rather poor in quality and their customer service wasn’t too helpful. Found the same blades in the men’s section in a drugstore for half of estrid’s price. Quality of the razor itself is much better, too. Immediately cancelled the estrid subscription and never looked back 😂

@@iagas9She doesn't claim that it's dropshipping though, she claims it's white labelling, which is what it is

I have seen this happen with some plush and clothing I liked on etsy from actual small, independent artists. After they started to have success, someone in an overseas factory stole their design and their photos and started selling the same item for much cheaper and end up out-competing them in search results with a stolen, cheap, unethically made version of their own item. It's so messed up.

What the fuck

Remember Segways? Those futuristic two wheeler things that would read your body's movements and turn it into motion? The Chinese clone of that sold so well that when Segway tried to sue them the Chinese just bought Segway, which is crazy

Bernadette Banner has an AMAZING video entitled something along the lines of "Buying my own dress--an educated roast." It's hilarious, because this is exactly what happened to something that she made (though she wasn't selling it, just showing how she made it).

Safiye Nygard has a whole video in which she ordered the same floral dress that influencers were wearing from a bunch of different sources and it became clear they were stealing the high-end manufacturers photos, and stealing influencer pictures as well, and selling really bad, cheap copies of a high quality dress.

She mentioned that

I wonder if there's a way to have a hidden water mark or not so obvious. To help with this

@@asantepauwelsI feel like a big obvious watermark would be best at this point lol

I can’t stand that!!! It’s so obvious too

Yes I have seen that happen to another jeweler

how is that even legal? that’s literally gambling

@@icymajai would guess because theyre free and theres no way to ‘lose’ since youre not putting anything on the line

Where are you even shopping? What could you possible need that someone would need to spin a wheel for a discount

@@cheeseballs9579non eu countries thing, I moved from the uk to the us and started experiencing it, it’s mental. All it does is ask you to give it an email address afterwards too lol

@@cheeseballs9579Temu, AliExpress, hell even fashion nova has the wheel. And it’s not just online, 12 years ago Shoe Carnival (a in person shoe reseller like Payless) had a legit spin the wheel in the store that had all types of “deals” that incentivized you to buy more.

Yeah, BUT it also has to be acknowledged that corporations dedicate BILLIONS to encouraging that mindset. *And they will NOT stop unless they're made to.* *NOR will they stop making cheap, disposable, and plastic products.*

In the United States only, Oxfam research reveals that a person in the top 1% emits 25 times as much carbon pollution as a person in the bottom 50%. - it isnt just "people"

Both comments so true.

This is a really important comment, and I appreciate someone raising this. It's really upsetting to see this. A small ray of hope: many large companies are being pressured to go Net Zero by 2050 by China, and they have a compelling initiative in place. I work quite extensively in this field and am impressed to see clients very rigorously working to achieve this (I work in HK and China). And with this pressure they are rapidly hiring energy and carbon consultants to help them achieve this.

OK zoomer

Do you mind sharing your shop name? :)

​@@kuru4467 I second this. I am interested

It’s Graveyard Art Designs on Etsy I’m on vacation rn though, so my shop is closed this week

A good friend of mine is in simillar spot as you. She makes crotchet things and jewlery selling on Etsy so she has to market heavily on other platforms since swamped by dropshippers.

I do too and the reality is that AliExpress and Temu aren’t just coming up with these ideas out of nowhere. I’ve created several trends and am the top in what I do and getting knocked off is just a reality these days. Patent and Trademark office in the Us takes nearly a year while I’m knocked off within just a couple months. I’ve seen my stuff for sale across the internet. It sucks but you just have to keep innovating and it’s exhausting.

My handmade soap business flopped because my product wasn't pretty enough, and since I made it from lye and expensive oils like olive and used essential oils for subtle scents, I couldn't compete with melt and pour crap scented with overwhelming chemicals and wrapped in that perfectly aesthetically pleasing manner people seem to prefer over actually decent soap. Maybe I should have just ordered ten or twenty kilo blocks of melt and pour, added chemical scents, and paid someone minimum wage to wrap it all pretty and nice. I found out that consumers preferred pretty soap that smelled nice to the options I offered like completely scent free 100% olive oil soap that contained only two ingredients: lye solution and olive oil. If I showed it to someone, they'd immediately sniff it and get immediately turned off by it, not understanding that some people need that kind of soap because usually "unscented" isn't at all unscented, and "hypoallergenic" does not mean it won't cause an allergic reaction in the highly sensitive.

Exactly! Same with me. It's been absolutely terrible since that started happening.

​@briancrawford8751 Is there a chance you can try selling your soaps on markets? Like farmer's market, renfairs, bazaara, flee markets etc? I know the fees for stalls and booths and the time you need to spend there are quite high and long. But I've seen more and more soap makers and medieval markets and some local markets during the last years. I don't know if it's just a European thing or easier be done here than the US. But I know from personal experience and peiple around me that they actually really like those self-made, traditionally made soaps.

@@briancrawford8751 I would definitely recommend doing local farmers markets and trying to get your products carried at mom and pop shops in your area. That is the best way to sell something like that. Also, reality is that looks matter. I'm sure there are ways you can brand and upscale your presentation without altering what the product is made out of. There is a market for artisan soaps of specific formulations, but you have to go to your customers and make the sale, they will not come to you. I hope you can still make your dream a reality. There are people out there doing it. Just look into your options and watch some video guides on marketing. You can do it.

This sucks. I love buying unique gifts on Etsy but it can take hours of browsing to find proper stuff, especially in jewellery

I thought that they were competitors, that’s really bad.

@@caranookHello Fresh has been making quite a few "competitors" as of lately

Hello fresh owns like 5 or 6 "separate" meal in a box programs

I looked it up and you’re right. But seriously, are there any ethical companies advertising on KZfaq? I’d wager no

@@dontgivetwothwips3615​​⁠​⁠I mean most businesses that advertise on here aren't the greatest, but Hello Fresh is one of the really bad ones. Considering the fact that Gabi seems to be pretty passionate about worker exploitation, I think its fair to let her know that her sponsor is well known for exploiting its workers, so she can do some research and decide whether she feels comfortable working with Hello Fresh brands in the future.

It’s so annoying. I bought my boyfriend what I thought was a beautiful handmade / bashed copper bracelet from a small local business to replace one he loved for decades. It’s obviously mass produced. So disappointing and a huge waste of money 😢

Etsy should have never gone public. It’s the opposite of the original company.

The word you're looking for is "enSHITtification" and it's something we are now seeing everywhere. Companies have amassed so much wealth and power that they they know they can reduce the quality of their products while raising prices. Because they know there aren't many alternatives.

As a seller, I was unable to remove the handmade mark from my listings. Etsy forcibly adds that and would not let me remove it. Basically, I had a limited manufactured production of some particular designs of mine turned into Enamel pins, since that's not really something you can handmake. I added the manufacturing info and everything, but Etsy still says it's handmade. And when I contacted them, they refused to do anything about it. They are in on the scam.

Yep. Some of the shows actually are limiting the number of MLM people they allow now. I guess too many people were complaining that everyone was selling the same MLM stuff at every show.

Don't forget farmers markets where it's clearly produce from Costco and Sams for sale.

@@DanC Oh yeah, I’ve seen that too! UPC stickers still on them. 🙄

If you go to the higher-end shows, this is very much not allowed, and you can be reasonably sure you’re buying from the maker. I sell my art at art festivals and some craft markets and everyone there is legit, as far as Ive seen

I went to a flea market recently and was telling my husband that they used to be so cool. Market space for small local craftsmanship. Now? It's all this type of drop shipping junk.

If Gabi is willing and so are you, both of you guys should collab.

Ah, someone i recognize! 😄

Holy fuck athenap

Well said!!

OMGG ATEENA HIIII I LOVE YOU

Not to mention AI crochet content that’s been ruining the fiber arts space it sucks

Watermark your photos. Put it directly over the product, with decent transparency. Ppl can still see the product, but for crooks and frauds the picture is worthless.

@@lVideoWatcherl It's insanely easy to remove a watermark with photoshop. If you are actually willing to go the legal route to protect your copyright, you do it by putting things in your photos that wouldn't be obvious to a thief, but will allow you to indisputably prove in court are yours. i.e. Just recently there was a start up company that made phone cases based on the schematics of the guts of the phone they were designed for. On the inside of electronics the PCB's memory chips etc will have serial numbers etc. on them. Well this company changed those numbers to have meaning to their particular company (like some of the numbers were their company founding date, binary for their company name etc.) Any way the MASSIVE phone case manufacturer CASETIFY. Released their own line of phone cases designed to show the guts of a phone, some customers noticed the designs looked awfully similar to this startup. Some people accused them of plagiarism and they responded with "our designs are 100%" original. Then people looked closer at the phones and found the little "easter eggs" the start up put in their designs that only have meaning for their company, were also on the Casetify phone case designs. When this was pointed out, they immediately took that case line down despite claiming earlier they were 100% original. They stole and were completely unaware these seemingly random numbers and stuff on the designs actually had meaning specifically for the company that made them and weren't just random numbers simulating serial numbers etc you would find on electronics parts.

@@kiereanm3254 God, yeah, I recently bought a pattern (I'm new to the crochet scene) only to realize it was AI generated and the finished product looks NOTHING like the photos in the pattern. It's garbage compared to the ones I've bought via Ravelry (the only place I will go for patterns now, may the bots never find it), just based off of repeating the same magic ring concept for every single part regardless of whether or not it really works.

If it is mass produced and crochet, it was slave labor

Theres an entire industry of scammers selling drop shipping courses, a lot of dropshippers spamming Amazon are victims themselves of a scam, they wasted a lot of money on courses and they make Amazon banning them pointless as new dropshippers will just pop up and fill in the gap and start making profits

how do children even legally sell stuff? Don’t you need a bank account 😭

@@KingOfGaymes if your parents sign you up you can get a bank account

@@KingOfGaymes idk. i think that his dad helps him with it, so like maybe it's some sort of crappy allowance???

​​@@KingOfGaymes children can have bank accounts tho?

The other problem is the a lot of creators who sell printed products (greeting cards, books, playing cards, etc. ) have them printed in China and then shipped to the US for them to sell. Meanwhile, the manufacturer in China rips off the item, packages it in a cheaper format (thinner paper or whatever) and sells it directly for cheaper. There are lots of items on Etsy that are being sold by the creator and the same item in a cheaper format is being sold on Etsy for cheaper by the company that stole it. I used to report these to Etsy but they don't allow me to anymore. Now they only accept complaints from the creator.

But it is happening even IRL!!!! I was visiting some fairs this fall/winter and about 80 % of stuff there are the same sad chinese fakes all over again, marked as "handmade". I dont remember it being that bad even 5 years ago :(

​@@robertawalsh2995Yeahh this. So many artists out there who sell cheap plastic keychains and stuff and like. I love supporting small artists whenever I can, but not when their merch is cheaply produced plastic waste with a character drawing slapped onto it lol.

Yes! It's heartbreaking. I handmake my earrings. But with these drop shippers it makes me want to leave etsy.

@@amandasdesignsss I feel like someone needs to make a website that shows sellers on Etsy who sell verified handmade/vintage stuff and are not dropshippers. Because Etsy won't do it themselves.

Do you do commissions?

Sadly, selling on etsy is not worth it if you can't move the volume. Slow to make stuff like that just doesn't cut it.

Saved you on Etsy! ☺️

Please do not buy Fan Art. It’s illegal to sell and can land the seller in a lot of legal trouble as well as get their shop permanently shut down. There is lots of intellectual property theft on Etsy with many sellers unaware of the laws and oblivious to Etsy’s Terms of service. The number of times I’ve seen IP infringing sellers complain about drop shippers breaking the rules could fill a novel.

It breaks my heart to see crochet items in large quantities at stores like forever 21 or tjmaxx. It hurts my soul and can't bring myself to use/buy it. I crochet too! My specialty is plushies and sweaters and the amount is strain on my wrist on my larger projects makes me wonder how much pain the workers making mass produced items are.

And do you think every manufacturer has an IT department and engineers and webfarms? It all goes to the same place. Some smarmy company who hosts websites for smarmy companies who sell things that they actually get from smarmy places manufactured in china.

@@PhilDietzwhat are you talking about 😂

I agree same! Even name brands I buy in store or from the original manufacturer

We''ve come full circle

It’s usually cheaper directly off the website now too

A lot of it boils down to "shipping things is too cheap" so it rarely makes financial sense to produce anything locally... it is depressing.

Because morons buy it

@@KjetilSeimHaugen Moving product cannot be _too cheap,_ that's just a great feature to have. The reason we get things from across the globe is more to do with labor costs, cheap labor in far-away counties.

Nice that we never factor the environmental or social costs of these products and business models.

@@kindlin it's really not a great future because the reason shipping is too cheap is that oil and even coal are subsidized to hell and back. which is also why it's so hard to move to energies with a better margin between production and productivity. everything is being cannibalized for the benefit of oil and coal producers, including the future.

For pin designs (assuming it’s enamel pins), sadly the culprit is most likely your manufacturer, or another manufacturer you reached out for quotes for Best way I’ve seen is to always send and post with watermarks until you finalize stuff

@@Fragamitakeunfortunately most watermarks can easily be removed nowadays using simple AI 🙁 I’ve seen with my own eyes an artists genuine piece (with watermark) and then the exact same image being used by these scummy sites without the watermark, they just edit it out

I never buy off of temu, and I die a little on the inside when people recommend it or show off cute items they got on there. Sadly design theft is pretty common :(

Hopefully you at least reached out to the comic store! If you haven't, I'd recommend doing so. Temu won't care a whit about selling stolen designs, but an independent comic shop might, especially since the artist in this case is local to them. At the very least, you alerting them to the stolen design might get them to stop selling the knockoff version.

It's the same for EVERYTHING and I hate it so much. I like buying quality Items I really do but it has become so damn hard to find them. I used to buy a ton on amazon. this year I made ONE order when usually I ordered atr least once a week.@@rat_in_a_bucket

Late stage capitalism, innit? Whatever comes next'll be better, it'll just take a tonne of pain before we get there.

😂😂😂😂😂

@@jack-a-lopium late stage capitalism, things get to be $0, everything is shit, you can have everything at all, but its all trash. end game of capitalism = communism

Even entertainment has been affected

​@@jack-a-lopium 😳

That’s so annoying, I’ve found the same- I only want to buy from on normal people getting rid of their unneeded things. I want second hand items that means less waste and normal people get some extra money! No way am I giving my money to drop shippers

Google estate and garage sales, you can get great items for such a low price.

right, or "small businesses", you ain't doing your own items, you buy in bulks? why would i spend money on them?

On Ebay sorting your search results by "distance nearest first" can be a tremendous tool as long as you dont live anywhere near "city of industry" CA

Not sure if you got your answer but on ebay you can filter by condition/ pre-owned !

What's a little cancer for children, why all the fuss.

@@TheNewton no, it's not that there are cancer causing things. It says "it may have" because legally they have to say that because the cost to test for the very expensive tests are not financially feasible for most companies, especially small companies. These tests are above and beyond the normal testing that companies actually do. For example, the one company I worked for made a batch of 500 pins and the ambulance chaser lawyers claimed there was one of these "possible cancer causing materials" in the product (it's actually wild what this list is in CA, citing out of date and not really conclusive testing). Their claim was that we didn't warn the public. Man...they're gunna have to go after all the Comic Con Artist Alley folks too! I have yet to see the same warning on their packaging and I know a few of those artists who make pins from the same factory. When you do a deep dive, you'll be surprised that there are literally lawyers and private individuals with lawyers who make millions chasing products like this. All they gotta do is buy the item, have it tested, send a complaint to the courts for damages, then profit off the court order.

Thank you so much for explaining this, not enough people know this information and lose their minds over how “toxic” and “cancer causing” every item is, regardless of how one google search for a reputable source will prove otherwise

@@TheNewton Actual braindead comment

And when everything is “known to the state of CA to cause Cancer”, nothing will truly be known to cause cancer 😂

Ah screw them and do you

@dmo848 thank you. I learned to focus on my brand and building a good reputation with my company.

People just want a product to be honest most of people don’t care for strictly hand made items. They just want a quality and a good price

Don't worry. I was talking to a designer named Andrea Geer about pricing. I was saying I am afraid to charge what I want for my items. She told me people will buy what they like, the right crowd will have NO issue pay the prices! :) I am one of those people don't mind if I like it and it know its a good quality. Wishing your more wonderful customers in the future as well!

Welcome to capitalism...

Yes!!! So important to talk about!

Yes it’s something that should be addressed! They steal designs and make them out of crappy materials. Then the original designer is accused of selling crap! Ask me how I know.. 😢

The best way to avoid being accused is to show your process. If you don't actively post on social media showing your process, I'll simply never believe you handmake things. It's unfortunate but that's how it is.

I see this a lot! A lot of people who design pins will see their art / pin on these sites, but if you order it, it is a very low quality version of it. I even had a friend who designed plushies show a site using her unique design/ even the photos she took herself and if you ordered it, it was just a completely different plushie.

I came here to say this. I have had my jewelry photos stolen by Alibaba. Even other Etsy sellers have used my photos.

Try doing image search on google, you can find the location of the image

Safiya Nyggard did a video on that recent enough, in buying the "same dress" at a couple different price points. She went out of her way to find the original item that is being duped, often with the original pictures and videos being used for the cheaper knock offs.

i've bought some super cute stickers on aliexpress and it's so sad that i have no idea who the original creator is :((((

@@axdonat the reverse Image search she explained in the video should be able to help 🫶🏽 I think ;v;

And don’t even bother if you have to return the item. You’ll never get your money back!