(a WTF alchemy request)

There’s only one website that I check compulsively. I’m fairly certain I’ve read single every post, most of them several times over, and my favorites when I need a good laugh. Nope, it’s not boingboing or the Oatmeal, the HuffPo or the Onion. It’s Regetsy, and lately I’ve been asking myself why.

As an Etsy seller myself, I’ve been frustrated countless times by the ups and downs of trying to sell there. I was one the first one hundred (#85 to be exact) to open an Etsy account. I should be rich right? Nope, my sales have always been pretty tepid. One person can only knit so much, and I’ve always done better at trunk shows and consignment shops. I’m somewhat embarrassed by the items I first sold as a fledgling entrepreneur, and though I’ve honed in on my niche and have cat-hat-knitting down to a science, I’m still baffled by selling stuff on Etsy. And there are so many things that infuriate me because they make things even harder.

And Regretsy nails them all on the head.

My Etsy shop had been up nearly a year when my knitted cats got featured on the front page. I had learned to make them from a friend and did not yet know the etiquette of selling items knitted from someone else’s pattern. I had sold over a dozen when the designer of the knitted cats caught wind of me and asked me to stop selling them. Since I’m a decent human being, I did (after finishing up the orders I had already committed to). Little did I know that dozens of other sellers were also making and selling them, and still do. After I filled my shop with original designs, I noticed people were now copying ME, some of which even hearted my shop. I wanted to eventually sell patterns, but was terrified of having scumbags purchase and resell my patterns. I do sell patterns now, but only because I’ve grown thick skin to it- perhaps like musicians who don’t mind being torrented because it’s exposure, but dammit, at least they get to keep their name on the music. They say the imitation is the best flattery, but that’s little comfort when people are making money stealing your ideas. My strategy now is to keep things simple, and reassure myself that others may come up with the same ideas I have, I just need to be really good at making them, and making customers happy. And I still don’t mind if people sell the items they make with my patterns, as long as they’re not selling the pattern itself.

Now enter Etsy and their not-my-problem attitude towards rip-off artists. I’ve heard horror story after horror story of Etsy doing absolutely nothing to stop shop owners who are blatantly stealing, not even so much as SUSPENDING suspicious activity. Talk about disheartening. A recent post on Regresty showed a clear case of copyright infringement, and Etsy’s only response was “please stop flagging artists and read our policy”. I read the policy. It basically says “fuck you, you don’t know what you’re talking about” and “if it’s really that bad, get a lawyer”.

If you want an unfettered example of laissez-faire capitalism, look no further than Etsy. It’s a marketplace that is barely monitored, has very few rules (except for zero tolerance of criticism against itself), and now that it’s hit critical mass, anything goes. And as you might expect, the people who cheat can easily get ahead. This goes for resellers, frauds, and rip offs. And there’s nothing to stop floods of substandard crap from being listed. In fact, the easiest way to make a quick living on Etsy is to relentlessly list things for weeks at a time, which doesn’t bode well for true artisans who take months to finely craft a piece. And once you list an item, you’re not even really selling that item, you’re selling the photo. Apparently, the photo is everything.

I feel this is a casualty of hipster culture where image is held above quality or genuine value. I see it on tumblr and ravelry as well.

This is why we NEED Regretsy. April Winchell is calling out the bullshit, most importantly, the bullshit Etsy itself refuses call out. It is the one thing that brings balance to the behemoth that Etsy has become. I used to wonder if I enjoyed Regresty so much because I felt inferior on Etsy, but now I realize there’s so much more going on there, and not only is it necessary, but we can all laugh about it too.