Indie Sellers Unite with Mattie Boyd of The Indie Sellers Guild

What would it look like for small businesses to join forces and demand better conditions and systems from the tech companies they've come to rely on? If you've ever complained about high fees, low standards or greedy CEOs, this is the episode for you. The Indie Sellers Guild is a grassroots, non-profit organization created to promote equitable and fair treatment in online marketplaces, starting with Etsy.

In this episode, I'm joined by Mattie Boyd, interim member of the ISG board to discuss:

• the Etsy Strike in April 2022 and the early days of the Indie Sellers Guild
• how the Amazonification of Etsy - higher fees, mandatory programs and a rise of dropshippers and fake “handmade” accounts - is eroding the trust of
• the Indie Sellers Guild’s objectives and some exciting 2023 developments
• plus Mattie’s personal experience launching their shop and how they’ve diversified channels beyond Etsy

The Indie Sellers Guild is a grassroots, non-profit organization to promote equitable and fair treatment in online marketplaces. They are independent artists, vintage curators, and small businesses working in solidarity to fight exploitative fee structures and policies that harm their livelihood and creativity. ISG seeks to speak with one unified voice for the interests of indie sellers to the media, legislators, and the general public.

Mattie Boyd is an interim member of the Board of Directors of the ISG, and their role within the Guild pertains to public and media relations and outreach. Mattie is also a founding member of the Guild, a full-time Etsy seller, and one of the original Etsy Strike 2022 strikers.

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Transcript

0:04

Welcome to Retail for the Rest of Us, a podcast for indie retailers, makers, and shop owners who want to do business differently. I'm your host, Janine Malone, retail expert, small business cheerleader, and the founder of Feel Good Retail. On this show, you'll hear insights, strategies, and ideas on how to sustain and scale your shop without sacrificing your sanity. Each week you'll hear from me and the occasional guest expert in what I hope feels more like voice note from your retail BFF than a business podcast. Additional goodies and support can be, found in our show notes and at feelgoodretail.com. Now let's get into the show. Music. Hey everyone, welcome back to Retail for the Rest of Us. I'm your host Janine Malone and today I'm talking to Maddie Boyd of the Indie Sellers Guild and Toxic Femme. You may remember in 2022 the Etsy strike. Etsy raised its fees yet again and implemented some other practices that understandably really enraged a lot of the shop owners and small businesses that use that platform to do business. And this resulted in a huge push on social media as well as retailers on the platform taking time off, taking money out of their own pockets in order to protest and make a point around the unfair treatment of the users that Etsy relies on to make money. Since then, I've kept an eye on the organization that originally promoted and created the idea of this Etsy strike. And in September of 2022, the Indie Sellers Guild was born. The Indie Sellers Guild is a grassroots nonprofit organization that promotes the equitable and fair treatment in online marketplaces. They are independent artists, vintage curators, and small businesses working in solidarity to fight exploitative free structures and policies that harm their livelihood and creativity. They seek to speak with one unified voice for the interests of indie sellers to the media, legislators, and the general public. Maddie, who I'm joined with today, is an interim member of the board of directors of the ISG, and their role within the guild pertains to public media relations and outreach. They're also a founding member of the guild, a full-time Etsy seller, and one of the original Etsy 2022 strikers. I knew when I brought this podcast back and we wanted to bring these kind of conversations to to the platform, ISG was one of the first places I reached out to. I am fascinated by the idea of guilds and unions. I think unions are critical to the structure and fairness, and treatment of workers in this country, despite their decline in these more modern times. But I was fascinated by the idea of what it could look like for folks, particularly indie retailers, who maybe would traditionally be seen as competitors, what it could look like if they joined forces to better everyone's experience. And something that really fascinated me about my research for this episode was that the Indie Sellers Guild refers to Etsy as a workplace. And I've never really thought of it that way, that like these tech platforms where retailers don't necessarily, often just straight up don't, have a seat at the table for some of the decisions that will affect their livelihood. And they're not employees, right? They're not... Engaged in an employment contract with these tech platforms, but there is some kind of agreement. There's terms of service when you utilize a platform, but what would the term of service be if indie retailers could create their version of a contract with these platforms? And so that idea and that idea of like banding together and becoming a community and really fighting for. The future of indie retail, whether it's something that's a hobby or a side hustle or your full-time career is really fascinating to me. And so I valued this conversation so deeply and it's really got my wheels turning. And Maddie was so informative about the process so far and what the history of the guild has looked like as well as some really exciting things coming up in in the future. Now, if you're not familiar with Etsy, don't worry. Maddie does an incredible job of walking us through exactly the objectives and some of the grievances that have come up in the recent years with platforms like Etsy. And I think that this is a great episode for everyone to think about collaboration, to think about the way that we're engaging with these platforms and the rights we have on them. And I also think that it's important for all of us to show solidarity with one another. So of course, at the end of the episode, Maddie gives us insight into how you can get involved and how you can support the Indie Sellers Guild. Before I let you go into the conversation, we do have one correction to some information Maddie shared about the Etsy offsite ads pricing. The proper percentages are 15% fee for sellers who who have made under $10,000 in the last 365 days. Those users are able to opt out of the program. But for anyone who has made over $10,000 in their Etsy shop in the last 365 days, there is a forced 12% fee for any sales made through the Etsy offsite ads program. Either way. I think it's bullshit. So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Maddie and jump into the show notes to make sure you have all the information on how you can support the Indie Sellers Guild. Cheers to feeling good. Hi, Maddie. Thank you so much for joining us on Retail for the Rest of Us. How are you? My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great. How are you? Oh, fine. You know, suffering from some seasonal allergies, so perfect time to record a podcast. Yeah, exactly. So let's start at the beginning here. I'm so interested just to hear about the beginning of the Indie Sellers Guild and also how you first got involved. Yeah, absolutely. So the Indie Sellers Guild really got its start in around springtime of 2022 and it was when Etsy's most recent fee increase was announced. That is like the fee that they charge sellers every time we sell something Etsy takes a cut. That fee was at one time prior to 2022 it was 5% 5 cents on the dollar. After 2022 they announced it would go up to 6 and a half cents on the dollar. And that was really like the straw that broke the camel's back as far as. The Indie Sellers Guild and the Etsy strike. And it was on that issue really that we launched the strike. And in doing that, as the strike went on for that week and then in the sort of aftermath of it, we really realized that we needed not just the flash in the pan of a single strike. But an enduring organization that could really do the work to address these issues over a longer term. Awesome. And so the Etsy strike itself, like how did that function as an Etsy seller? Like, how do you go on strike? Sure. Yeah. So sellers were encouraged to kind of participate in whatever way. Worked for them. Some of us, myself included, did go on strike, quote, unquote, for the full week. And we did that by putting our shops into vacation mode, which is a setting on Etsy, where if you're not going to be around for a while, you can say, okay, I'm on vacation now. And they let you put a little note so that when if a buyer navigates to your page and you're on vacation it says you can say I'm on vacation or whatever. In this case we wrote we're fed up with Etsy's fee increase and lack of support for buyers and sellers so we're going on strike. Other people maybe did it for less time, they did it for a few days or for one day if that's what made sense to them. Some people didn't formally go on strike in that way at all but they still participated by spreading the word and by engaging in the struggle in other ways. Sure. I think that's great. And I think one of the things that's really interesting, and we'll definitely get into this, is like, the difference between a guild and a union, which, you know, for many folks, myself included, I, my husband is part of a union, my dad is part of a union, you'd think I'd know more about how they function. But because, Is this right? Because Etsy sellers are not employees of Etsy, that you have to function essentially as a guild? Is that right? Basically yeah it's that's basically it's really that like a union has a fairly specific definition these days and it does like you said it does tend to apply to like formal waged workers um that have a boss and that receive a paycheck or or what have you and guild the word is kind of it's it's a more it's a more general word there's not really a specific definition in you know at at least in American society for a guild. And we like that because this is we are we are workers, but we're sort of a sort of a new development as far as the history of labor, the platform worker who gets who makes money online, and he doesn't really have a human boss, but interacts with like a management type algorithm. So we wanted something that related to labor struggles, but that was also acknowledged that like, this is a new thing. Yeah. And I think that's what's so interesting when you were saying like about putting your shop on vacation mode or just the way you could participate in the strike is that a union, there are also more protections as an employee. So, as someone who's interacting with this tech platform and this algorithm, you have to find that balance between showing up, let's say. For the fight, but also it's your job, it's your shop, it's how you make money in a lot of ways. So like balancing how involved you can be. So I think that... This, what y'all have put together as the Indie Sellers Guild to be able to voice as a group and as a community is really important and doesn't necessarily, like, hopefully harm the actual shop owners in the process. Right, absolutely. And a big part, in addition to the grievances that we have with Etsy and with other sort of big tech, you know, e-commerce platform owners, there's also, So we're also doing a lot of work to just help our members and sellers generally kind of improve their own shops, whether they're on Etsy or Shopify or what have you. And to put them in the best position possible to grow their own businesses, even in areas where it's not necessarily like a labor struggle formally. We do encourage people, for example, to diversify their online store presence. So if you do really well on Etsy, that's great. Doing well on Etsy, but maybe consider branching out in addition to some other platform as well. So that if something does go wrong with Etsy, or Etsy suddenly takes a turn towards, you know, a more hostile selling environment, you've still got eggs in other baskets. So it's kind of two sided in that way. Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting. And I definitely want to talk more about like, how you've done that in your own business in your own shop, and also just kind of the other supported alternatives. But before I go down that rabbit hole, because I love to live in the strategy piece. Can you tell me how, since the Etsy strike, how has the Indie Sellers Guild evolved? Like, where are y'all at today? Yeah, so we recently became officially a 501c nonprofit organization which is really exciting. We also launched a sister organization called the Indie Sellers Guild Foundation that specifically focuses on. Informing both sellers and buyers and people generally about issues facing sellers and also about doing research into what buyers and what sellers need out of a platform. We do our membership by virtue of working in this field, has a lot of experience with what works and what and what doesn't and what sellers need. But it's important that we're not just lobbing criticisms at the platforms, that we're also actively coming up with a vision of what we think these platforms can do or should look like or can look like to improve the experience. And so that research is being conducted by the foundation in partnership with a university, actually Dr. Close from DePaul University. So it's a very official, it's really, really exciting. We're hoping, and once we do generate the research and write it up, there's going to be a white paper that will be freely available to anyone who wants it. Because the information is important, and we want people to have it. And we're projecting that that whole process will kick off in official this summer, actually, so soon. Amazing. Wow. Yeah, any day now. And I don't know, these are the moments whenever I talk about any of these tech platforms, it just makes me wish I could go back in time and like become a coder and do the right thing. I think, well, I shouldn't say that ship has sailed for me. But, you know, I'm a long way away from making like a multifaceted marketplace. My coding stopped at like customizing my MySpace and my blog spot. But that's really exciting. And I think it's very interesting to hear about like the ways that not only y'all have. Structured, like, I love the idea of the foundation and really bringing the consumer in because I think that's probably a voice that some of these tech platforms are, I don't want to say more likely to listen to, but they're certainly, I think if consumer concern is raised, they would put a little bit more fire under these boards. So, you know, with all that being said at this moment, or even over time, because maybe it's evolved, what are the core objectives of the Indie Sellers guild? Like what are you working towards? So the core, I would say the general objective of the indie sellers guild is really to even out what we see as a really severe power imbalance between the owners of these e-commerce platforms and the people who sell things on there. And that is the people who are maintaining the relationships with the customers who are producing the goods and selling them and really doing the work, the labor. Create so much value through this and we create so much goodwill for these platforms, but when it's time to make decisions about how the costs of operating the platform are shared between executives or management and sellers, or what features will be introduced or taken away, or what policies will be tweaked or changed, we have just no, we don't have any voice in those decisions. We don't even have a seat at the table even though it's so much of our work that's been, poured into making these companies successful. And so the goal of the Guild in a general sense is to use our numbers, our really, really vast numbers. There's on Etsy alone, there's something like seven and a half million sellers leveraging our numbers in a way to kind of say like, hey, we deserve to have a seat at that table too. And we deserve a little bit more agency and more of a voice where these decisions are being made. And then specifically, there are some issues, a lot of them came up and that we organized around with the Etsy strike relating to specific things that are happening on Etsy and generally on sort of indie e-commerce marketplaces that the fee increase was one big one that was really the major one at the start. But also things like. On Etsy specifically, like the problem of resellers or counterfeit goods sellers that put legitimate sellers in kind of a difficult situation where we follow rules and are expected to compete against people who don't follow rules or who are selling you know sweatshop goods or whatever. Sustainable for a lot of us, but it still generates money for Etsy, because they're still paying listing fees and paying for advertisements. So it's bringing the divergent interests of sellers and platform owners. Together, we both want Etsy to succeed, but we want it to succeed in a way that's fair. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, well, first, I think it's really interesting because I, you know, I think a lot of folks really can relate to the like the fee increase like that being and, you know, I think you mentioned it went from 5% to six and a half. And even previously like there had been a significant increase. I think it was three and a half percent like that. So it almost doubled in five years, which is pretty significant. That's like worse than we're seeing in inflation right now. And, you know, as that's all going on, of course, costs are going up, we're in the middle of a pandemic, like there's just a lot going in. So I can understand why people, you know, that alone would be enough to really want to rebel against this kind of like, power inequity, like you're saying. But I think what's really interesting, too, is that is, well, there's like threefold, like trying to really get myself organized here. There's like, the trust that Etsy seems to be playing with, with their consumers, which, you know, I know. Luckily, the only reason I know any of this, first of all, is because of all of the amazing information on the Indie Sellers Guild website, and all the great like history and videos and meeting the whole interim board. So if anyone wants to hear more after this conversation, definitely check that out. It'll be in the show notes. But Etsy also, under their previous CEO, had filed and was accepted as a B Corp, which is a standard of business in America that, essentially promotes that you have more of an interest expanding beyond maximizing shareholder profit. That's a very general idea. But they actually have dropped. B Corp status, correct? That's right. And so then there's, that's kind of that alone says a lot to someone, you know, I think about my mom, who loves to like shop on Etsy and support small makers, and she isn't going to do the same kind of research into is this a B Corporation? Is this a legitimate handmade seller, kind of like you were saying, so and I threw the information on on your website heard, I believe it was Christy, who's the interim president, say that that concern that like the resellers and the lack of, I don't know, transparency or rule following on Etsy's own part was like really one of the number one concerns. So can you tell me a little bit more about what's going on with that? And also, like, how does that harm or affect all Etsy sellers? Absolutely. So Etsy as an e-commerce platform is relatively unique because unlike say. You know, Amazon where you can buy pretty much anything at probably very low prices, Etsy is a little bit more specialized and they advertise themselves as being for handmade and unique and vintage or one-of-a-kind items. It's not where you go to get, I don't know, what have you, just random, I can't even, random supplies. It's not where you go to buy toilet paper, it's where you go to buy a handmade thing that you want to give as a gift or this or that, what have you. And that's the reputation that they've really built over time. It's, it's the, it was the vision of the company when it was founded way back, what, nearly 20 years ago. But over time, we've seen. Them stray from that um from that from that goal. And and what what what I mean by that is we've seen, people who don't have anything one of a kind or unique or vintage or handmade they're paying a sweatshop factory in you know what have you vietnam or china or a low-wage country to make these things that they're then passing off on etsy as handmade when in fact they're not. And what we see is that Etsy continues to make money from these people because these people even though they're not following the rule that the terms of service, they do still pay for ads, they do still pay listing fees, Etsy still gets to charge them transaction fees. And so what we're seeing is an overall degrading of the experience for buyers who do, who are being made to believe that they're shopping a selection of handmade unique vintage goods. And also it's it's just it's an environment that's much more difficult for someone who does who makes their things handmade in small batches or to order. It's just it's not really reasonable to expect somebody like that to compete against somebody who can leverage a gigantic factory somewhere or someone who just sells what counterfeit goods gets a fake watch and calls it a Rolex and says it's vintage and sells it. It's just it's not a level playing field and so it does it it hurts sellers who, uh. Do follow the rules, because it's unfair in that way. It also hurts buyers who are being misled. And the issue is, over time, you mentioned the dropping, the B Corp status, and the CEO changeover. With each new CEO at Etsy, we've seen kind of an accelerated creep towards what we've called the Amazonification of Etsy, where there's very little to distinguish the Etsy experience from the Amazon experience. And that's not how it should be. That's not how they advertise themselves. It's not the, it's not how buyers understand Etsy. And it's just, it's dishonest. And we want them, we want to kind of change course a little bit on Etsy so that it's not so focused on maximizing profit at any expense and more on its sort of original core mission, which was to make commerce human. It's, they still use the slogan, but it's just, it's not the experience anymore like it used to be. And we want to change that. I think that's so critical. And I think to your point, exactly. It's not just the promise of a marketplace. It's like there are very specific, just in their marketing, in the branding alone, like the way that you think about Etsy is yeah, exactly. Like handmade, vintage, to your point, like really small batch. And it's not that there aren't other places, you know, Amazon, you know, creating Shopify, all those kinds of places, like you can set up a shop anywhere. So I think it is critical. And I think what you're pointing to really is like that trust and when you are shopping as a consumer. On Etsy, your experience with one shop can affect how you think about the platform as a whole. Absolutely. It just erodes trust. And when I say that I make my things by hand, I'm telling the truth. But when other people are saying it, and they're not telling the truth, it becomes very hard for the average buyer to know what's what. Yeah. And even just in my experience too, with folks who do make things, they're more specialized, they're more handmade, their smaller batch, usually that equates to a higher price as it should. And I think when you have folks masquerading as something handmade, but they can charge half the price, then again, consumers are like, well, why is this t-shirt or sticker or bag so expensive when I just saw this elsewhere? And I think makers already have a lot of an uphill battle with that and really getting, especially Americans to understand the value of specialized items. But I see that as a huge problem too. And I hadn't even really thought about that in some of the stats that the organization has shared about how few accounts on Etsy and shops are being shut down despite increased complaint is pretty staggering. Yeah. And that was really when they first announced the most recent fee increase in 2022, one of the ways that they justified it was, we're going to use this extra money that we are. Taking from you, and invested into searching out these listings in violation of the Etsy rules, and we're going to remove them. And we just we have not seen any evidence at all of that happening. In fact, we've seen the problem just compound to really, really massive proportions, just like unbelievably so. Yeah, wow, that is. It's giving didn't like Spotify do something similar. They like said they were going to donate like $100 million to like BIPOC creators. And I think some research came out recently that was like, yeah, they've given like$2 million. Yeah, it's remarkable how they can just say these things. And there's no follow up. And for most people, it's that you don't think to check them on that you don't think to dive into the financials or whatever, because it's Etsy. Etsy has a ton of goodwill, or because. It's Spotify. Spotify is the service that lets me listen to all these cool artists, they could do anything wrong. But when you zoom in, you see that there's like this, this sort of power imbalance between creators and platforms. And that's, that's what we focus on. Yeah, I think that's, oh my gosh, so critical, obviously. So in addition to that, so there's that level, there's like the fees, there's the fakes. And then there's kind of these like forced programs, right? Like, I know there, I don't really totally understand the star seller program. Maybe you can let me know. I believe you yourself are a star seller. And the offsite ads program. And recently, I've been seeing a lot from you from the Indie Sellers Guild about Plaid and how that's kind of, it's not really a feature, but can you tell me a little bit more about that kind of forced program? Those programs. So this, the Star Seller program to start, this was one of the five demands that we organized strike around. And it's this program that Etsy started recently over the past few years that measures things like how fast you as a seller are responding to messages from buyers and how often you are shipping your products out on time and you know what your reviews look like and everything. And that's those are generally good indicators of a successful Etsy shop. You should ship out your products on time, you should respond promptly to messages. But what we're seeing is sellers are getting penalized if they don't respond to a message from a buyer. If you don't get to it within 24 hours, you're at risk of losing your star seller status, which causes is your search rankings to go down. When you're a handmade, especially if you're just doing Etsy as a hobby, it's really not reasonable to expect that you're going to rush to the computer every time a message comes in. Maybe you devote three days a week to your Etsy side project. You should, our feeling is that sellers and buyers really should be able to work out for themselves. What the expectations are. If you send me a message, I should be able to tell my buyers, hey, I respond to all messages, but it might take me if you message me on Friday at 7pm, I might not get to it until Monday or whatever. That's reasonable and that's something that buyers understand. But for Etsy, it's in this creep towards the Amazonification of Etsy. Etsy wants all sellers to behave the same as if we're all little warehouses. Anytime a message comes in, we're on call to respond to it and so on and so forth. And there was also, in addition to that, people, sellers who live in countries that don't offer tracking on small shipping orders were penalized because there there was no way to prove to Etsy that I sent it out on time. Oh, wow. That's since been rectified since the strike. And so we have seen these slight improvements to the Star Seller program. But generally, it just kind of represented this incursion of Etsy into the relationship between the buyer and the seller that was unwanted, it was unhelpful, and it was causing a lot of issues for sellers. And it's, again, it's something that sellers really should have more of a say in. What specifically the expectations should be. It's not something that should be decided algorithmically and then you get penalized because people can't see your products anymore if you fall short. Right. Thank you for your time. So that was the star seller. The other one has been the forest offsite ads program. So that one. Requires a little bit of explanation. Etsy, when you're a seller on Etsy, you have the opportunity to buy ad space within Etsy so that you pay to have your listing show up when someone goes on Etsy.com and searches a keyword. So like a Google search, those kind of like top ratings. It's it's with if someone goes to edsy.com and says I want to search for a You know a teapot or whatever sure they type in teapot You can pay Etsy to take your Etsy teapot listing and move it up towards the top perfect. That's fine. That's a voluntary You're allowed you yeah, Joey you can choose not to do it more recently that they've added on what are called off-site ads and that's where Etsy will take your teapot listing and then go over to Facebook or to Google or to to what have you and buy up ad space on Google or on Facebook and say, look, it's Teapot you could buy. If someone clicks on the ad for the Teapot and buys it, Etsy then says to the seller, okay, we bought this ad on your behalf. Now we're going to charge you 12 to 15% of the item's value because somebody clicked on your ad that we placed for you. Without permission, you have no idea if Up to a certain level, you can opt out if you, there's a threshold where if you're below the threshold as far as your sales, you're allowed to opt out. But if you rise above the threshold and the threshold is $10,000 within any 365 day period. So it sounds like a lot, but it's very low compared to the federal poverty line, for example. Yeah. So in this case, if at any point in any 365 day period, you've made more than $10,000, are locked into off-site ads and instead of 12% for the people under $10,000 you're paying 15%. Percent. So anytime someone clicks on one of your ads... Makes their way over to Etsy and buys one of your listings, that's 15% haircut right off the top, in addition to that 6.5% transaction fees and the other fees like that. It's helpful for some people, it's not as helpful for other people. For somebody like me, where I have an Etsy store, but I also have other stores that I pay to advertise, like my Shopify, it puts me into a position where I have to compete with myself for ad space, because I'm buying ads to direct people to Shopify. I've got to now Etsy is buying ads on my behalf to direct them back to my Etsy and I've got to compete with my own store for ad space. It's just it's not helpful for me. I don't want to spend 15% of my budget on advertising my Etsy listings. I prefer to spend a different amount and I prefer to spread it across various platforms. And the fact that that we're not allowed to opt out of it, is it's again, it's indicative of the fact that sellers really don't have a voice where these things are being concocted in Etsy's boardroom. Yeah, that is, I hate that. I'm not a huge fan of like paid ads in general, especially like, I think, you know, a lot of folks have, whatever, I don't need to go on that tangent, But I think to not give folks the option. And it sounds like shops are being almost penalized for doing well, for making a good amount of money, whether it's a side hustle or their full-time business or just one of their channels. And like you said, on the other side of that even, to be competing with yourself, it's really not the vibes. Yeah, exactly. And it's another aspect of it is the way that Etsy knows if someone clicks on an ad and then makes a purchase is through the use of cookies that they leave in your browser. And in practice, what that means is maybe a buyer sees that ad for that teapot and clicks on it and they look at it and they say, okay, that's great, fine. And then they put it down for a couple of weeks, let's say two or three weeks, and then they go back to Etsy and they think, okay, I'm ready to buy a teapot. I'm going to go find one. I've I picked one out and I'm gonna buy it. That cookie is still in their browser for 30 days. So that seller, if it was their ad, their offsite ad that was clicked three weeks ago, if this person eventually does convert and makes the purchase, you're getting dinged for that 15%. It's not as though it's just a one-shot thing and either they click that and make the purchase or not, and you're good. It's any time over that 30-day period. Yeah, the attribution is 30 days. Wow. Okay, well, that is. A nightmare. Yeah. And again, it's profitable for Etsy, because Etsy can sell you something that you're not allowed to decline. Exactly. Yeah, it's just it's out of whack. Yeah, right. To your point. And, you know, maybe like you said that I can see that being a program that for some folks who haven't, who don't have the budget to do advertising on their own or whatever, I'm sure you know, Etsy has, they have deep pockets. So I'm sure those ads are getting pretty high placement. But to not give sellers the option to opt out, I think is really... Right. Or even just to lower the amount. I would not be as unhappy if I could set the own amount, my own amount rather, that I'm comfortable paying, and it would be lower than 15%. Yeah, I bet it would. So, okay, yeah. And then what is happening? What's happening with Plaid? Can you walk me through that as well? Yeah, so Plaid is a third-party company and what they do is, it's a way of verifying that the bank account details that you've given to Etsy are really yours, that there's no weird fraud going on. It's something that Etsy does need to verify this. Etsy does need to know that when you say, here's my credit card, if you ever need to charge me for something, they need to know that it's yours and they've done this without any issue in the past through the traditional way, which is where you give Etsy your information, they will make a, it's the thing where they make two tiny little deposits and then you say, okay, the deposits were seven cents and four cents. And Etsy says, okay, now I know it's you. That worked completely fine. There was no reason to change it. But recently Etsy said, okay, now everyone, you've got to go through that process again and you've got to use Plaid to do it, this third-party company. There was really not any explanation as to why we had to go through this again, and there was not any explanation as to why this third-party company Plaid had to do it. And the issue with it was, A, that if you look into Plaid Incorporated, they've had so many, alleged privacy violations. They've had to settle lawsuits where people have accused them of. Dealing fraudulently with people's private financial details. It's really, really icky stuff and it's always we're not comfortable with this company being put in charge of all of our financial details. And then the other thing was the way that Plaid chose to verify people's accounts was not the little two deposit method thing that Etsy has always done in the past, that's standard in the industry. The way that Plaid asked you to verify was to take your online banking username and online banking password and just give it over to Plaid. And so for a lot of people who do online banking, they'll realize that in the terms of service for your bank, it says don't give out your password. This is private. It's your password. Don't give it away to anybody. And so for some people who do that, they might be running afoul of their own bank's terms of service. And also, moreover, it's just so unsafe. It's so not the way to do that. You don't sign over your username and password to your bank account to some third-party company when there's this other much safer tried and true method of doing this. And so we never were able to get a response from Etsy as to why it needed to happen again and why it needed to be plaid and why it needed to be in this way. And so what we did was to urge Etsy to drop the plaid partnership, first of all, it was really a sketchy seeming company, but also certain sellers were able to bypass the plaid thing or to force the old way of doing it with the deposits. And there was also discussions where we reached out to the USFTC, the Federal Trade Commission, to see if there was, if Etsy is allowed to do this, or if we have any recourse as consumers of Etsy services. And just tying that to... Take people's uncomfortability with that and to research it and to issue advice and recommendations and to demand Etsy that they make a change. And what we've seen in response is not like Etsy has not dropped the partnership with Plaid, but we've seen them extend the deadline whereby they said you've got to register this through Plaid. They keep pushing that back. Interesting. And so it's still kind of in limbo. We're not sure what's going to happen. We do have advice on the Indie Salaries Guild website for buyers who are being asked to sign over their banking details and who don't want to. We've got advice to help you if it's possible to avoid it without running afoul of Etsy. We can help you go through that and also dealing with it as a social issue where this it's again people not having a voice, not having the agency to run their own businesses in a way that feels good to not just hand over your financial information. It's so wild. And for small sellers, even in my own business up until my first few years. I just had a different checking account in my personal... I don't want to give over my whole login. That's my shared account with my family, my car loan. It's everything. Like I'm not, I don't have that much to spread around. So I only have one or two accounts. So yeah, I can understand why that would be really disheartening and really confusing, especially if you've been using Etsy for years and years to like have to do this, verification. And also, like you said, to not have an alternative or just feel like you're being forced to do something without your permission or your consent. Oy yi yi. All right, well, it seems like they're doing a great job. No notes. So yeah, I mean, that, I guess, to pivot to a more actionable, like, I guess, semi positive route. I'm curious to hear a couple of things. So first, what successes has the Indie Sellers Guild had so far? Are. So I think one of the main successes really came out in the immediate aftermath of the Etsy strike in 2022. And it was, it really forced people, or it gave people an opportunity to see that Etsy is not the same as Etsy. It's like Etsy sellers, the people that you deal with when you go on Etsy to buy products, the people whose work you're buying or appreciating, they're not the same as Etsy management. It's like any other workplace where you've got bosses and you've got workers and the workers may not always be a hundred percent in lockstep with what the bosses are doing. Etsy enjoys a tremendous amount of goodwill for being the crafty folksy sort of you know online flea market type thing and that goodwill enables them to do all this really shady and unfair and exploitative stuff behind the scenes and the strike was an opportunity because a lot of... What like news media really caught on to the strike. It was it was in the headlines around the world. We had we were doing interviews for big publications in the United States like the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek but also in I believe I did an interview with an Indian newspaper. I know we had a lot of press in Europe and that was really cool and it just it it enabled us an opportunity to kind of shatter this fantasy that Etsy is just this happy-go-lucky uh folksy mom and pop website. It's not, it's big tech. It's Amazon. It's, it's, it's, uh, whatever. It's Google. It's if that, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly, exactly. So that was a huge success as far as concrete, like material successes for Etsy sellers. I think that the changes that we saw really in the immediate aftermath of the strike to the, um, star seller program, the relaxing of some of those guidelines or the revising of them so that people were not being penalized for living in countries that don't have shipping tracking or they don't have affordable tracking. That was a big success and also just the pulling to the creation. We were able to create, like a little community or in fact a fairly large community of Etsy sellers who previously were not in contact with each other and to get all these people together and to get them, give them an opportunity to brainstorm ways of collectively benefiting Etsy sellers broadly. I think just to take a step towards that, because Etsy, we do compete against each other for clicks and for customers and for money, but we do really have a lot more to gain by working together to correct this huge power imbalance than we do from petty competition with each other and to kind of. Acknowledge that or to establish that and to show people that that's possible. That was also a really big gain for us. I think, um, we do really hope to. More fully act in the way That a union acts for a unionized workplace for etsy sellers, but that's a process It's going to take time to build that especially as we're doing this from the ground up in like a grassroots way, I think that that work is going to pay off in the long term for sure But it is really exciting that the Strike and the Guild have had these little victories along the way in terms of networking and in terms of actually affecting Etsy policies. Absolutely. And I mean, hopefully I have my dates right, but the Strike was in April of 2022. And then the Indie Sellers Guild formed and launched officially on Labor Day of 2022. Is that correct? That's right. So it hasn't been very long. It really hasn't. To see that movement and to see just, you know, to even get 501 status and, you know, start the foundation and get that moving is really goes to show like, not only the work of the board and the people involved, but of the entire community, like really to rally around this and seeing the need for change for real. Yeah, absolutely. We've really been fortunate also because some sort of more traditional and more established labor organizations and unions and left-wing organizations have really been enthusiastic about jumping in and helping guide us along this path and sharing the knowledge that they've accumulated with us. Like we're all, none of us, we're all Etsy sellers so we do have a lot of creativity and a lot of skills but we don't have a ton of labor organizing experience. And to have these sort of like-minded organizations jump in and lend their assistance has also been a really big source. It's really been like an inspiration, I think, really like helped us feel more in solidarity, not only with each other as Etsy sellers or as platform workers, but also as like workers in general. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I think we need more of that everywhere, All the time, frankly. So to pivot a little bit, you, of course, are an Etsy seller. And as you mentioned, also a Shopify seller. So can you tell me a little bit about your shop and also how you kind of expanded your channels and like your approach to your business outside of Etsy? Sure. So yeah, I started, I got my start on Etsy. It was... Late 2018 or early 2019. So it was a little bit before the pandemic. And it was really for me, it was just a hobby. I was into I was like an amateur graphic designer, I used to make memes, basically. And I somebody gave me the my roommate at the time gave me the idea to just take the memes that I was already making, and put them on the shirts and just see if there's any interest in it. And I did at that point, it hadn't occurred to me to do it online. So I would just do them. Them for real and then bring them to events that I could try, like flea markets and that sort of thing that I could sell these things at. And I was really surprised at the response to it. I would sell out a lot of these events that I would go to. And so I found Etsy because by a really long shot, especially at that time, it was the easiest, the lowest barrier of entry to like creating an e-commerce, like an online store. They just, they make it so much easier than so many of the other ones, especially Amazon. And so I did it and again it was just it was a hobby. I didn't expect it to go anywhere but it kind of started to take off a little bit and then suddenly the pandemic happened and at that point to make a living I was I had been working retail a little bit and I was also dog walking and all of that came to a close with lockdown and the only thing that I could do really was to focus on my Etsy store and so I did that and in the the sort of um the pandemic lockdown online shopping boom my shop was one of the ones that really got swept up and saw a lot more engagement, a lot more traffic, and did a lot more business. And eventually it started becoming more and more of my income. It started to make sense for me to start taking days off of dog walking that I could devote to fulfilling orders. And it kind of continued along that way until finally I was like, it's time, like I'm gonna, I'm going full time. Like the numbers made sense. I started going full-time on Etsy and then sometime after I think 2021 it would have been early 2021 I think it was. I and it was another Etsy seller in fact who who gave me this advice it was like if you're doing well on Etsy that's fantastic continue doing well on Etsy but Open your own Shopify store or whatever your own website standalone website also and um. Have that alongside the etsy store and the way that that works for me is I Get exposed to a lot more people on etsy because that's it's a household name, So people place orders with me on etsy and i'll fulfill them. But As i'm packing up those orders i'll take a little postcard that says hey, by the way, If you go to my non Etsy store, you can buy the same products plus other things that I don't put on Etsy and they're cheaper because I don't have to pay, you know, whatever six and a half to fifteen percent. Fees to myself, like I do to Etsy. And so you get to use your Etsy exposure as your own sort of marketing strategy for your own website where your margins are better. And so that's been going along for me pretty nicely. And since then, I've also gone on to Depop, which is another online marketplace mostly for vintage or secondhand clothing. It's as of a couple of years ago, it's now owned by Etsy. So there's that. Oh gosh, yeah. Etsy really bought up a lot of similar companies during the pandemic or just before the pandemic. But again, it's another. Sort of outlet to reach other people who go to Depop. I find that Depop is a lot of younger people. And it's also very, I think they've got more exposure in the UK than Etsy does. Yes. Which is useful and helpful. And yeah, it continues to be my full time job. Today. I've also kind of expanded a little bit more into like in person events, now that that's more possible, also the markets and that sort of thing. And also sort of behind the scenes, I do, to where I like help make and design and fulfill and sell merch for some local bands in the area. Cause it kind of dovetails with, I make t-shirts mostly. It dovetails with what I do with my own store. Which are brilliant. I much must say. Thank you so much. Your product is, I have the, the tower shirt, the tarot open in another tab. I'm like, I have to order that. It's brilliant. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Of course. And yeah, I think that's great. And like, I think that's a great tip because something I really struggle with as someone who. Helps independent retailers and consults with them and tries to think about sustainable strategy. My bone to pick with Etsy is that it's not easy to get customer contact information, email addresses, which I think is a crime, personally. And so I love that tip of. I have a postcard, I have my prices a little bit lower on my own site, and just kind of, pushing people there, pushing people to your newsletter list with some little thing with their order is such a great and smart idea because, again, who knows what's going to happen with these platforms? They could get more large and powerful or people could be like, actually, this platform stinks. And so I think that's amazing. And congratulations on being full-time in also the hardest few years that retailers maybe have ever had. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Of course. I guess the last question before we get into my final, we do kind of like a little questionnaire at the end of the episodes, but how can folks and people listening get involved with the Indie Sellers Guild? Yeah, so we've really, it's absolutely free to join. You can join whether you are an indie seller yourself or just someone who appreciates the existence of indie sellers because we've got memberships for sellers and we've also got like supporter memberships for for supporters. You go on to indiesellersguild.org and you can apply. There is an application process and it's just so that we can be sure, unlike maybe some other platforms, that you are really an indie seller. Like we We verify it. Weak. We're not letting just anybody in here, we verify. And that's important because it's what also we want Etsy to do. But it's very easy. You fill out the member verification form. A real live human being will go over your responses and will let you in if you qualify, which I assume the vast majority of people who might be listening to this will absolutely qualify. I mean, Jeff Bezos listens to this probably, but you know, he's shaking in his boots. Yeah. He might not do so well in the member verification process, but yeah. And then from there, it's, there's no membership dues at this point anyway, it's all volunteer, it's all grassroots and you can kind of be as involved as you want to. You can be like an active member where you're going to the meetings and you're engaging in the campaigns, or you can just kind of be a more of a like a passive member where you you receive your member number, you receive your I'm an Indie Sellers Guild member badge, and you can put it on your store to kind of inspire confidence in buyers that you're one of the good ones on Etsy or or what have you. And it's just it's and just partake in the support and the information and the solidarity that we've built. Awesome, yeah. Everyone go join. I need to join as an ally, And I think there's also options to make donations. Absolutely. Yeah, there are options. That's we were being a nonprofit now, a registered nonprofit enables us to start fundraising. And we're doing that for things. Like just the general building a website and an infrastructure where if you're a member, you can vote and have your voice heard within the organization. That's, it's just something that needs to be built from the ground up. Also, like legal fees, because we've had to consult with lawyers on certain issues, particularly with the Plaid one, and that sort of thing. But it's fully transparent. We release financial reports and everything, and no one is expected or forced to donate or anything like that. Awesome. Well, I... Appreciate that information. I hope everyone, that's your homework, if you're listening, go check that out, go join. And then I have three kind of just wrap up quick fire fun questions, if you'll indulge me. So what is something that is feeling really good to you these days? It could be like a self-care practice, a proud moment, something you're watching or listening to. Yeah, I guess I've got two and they're both part of my morning routine. I'm a morning person. I I get up really early and I do a lot of my work in the morning and I love making coffee. I'm one of those people who's like super finicky with the way they make their coffee and it needs to be very, I grind the beans at home and so on and so forth. Love it. And I love it. I didn't want to give that up, but I was concerned about my caffeine, how much caffeine I was drinking throughout the day. So I do have my normal coffee in the morning. I have one cup in the morning. It's such a great way for me to start the day from the making it to the drinking it and then everything else after that is decaf. I just, I added decaf, so it's there, so I can still enjoy coffee, but I don't need to get all wired. And I feel really less, I feel a lot calmer having made that change. And then the other one is I'm really into like cooking shows on TV. What's your favorite? Pop Chef. Same, loving the new season. Yes, all stars. I'm not a huge cook myself, but like I really like watching other people be creative in ways that are not necessarily like native. It's just, to me, it's just cool to watch people go through their own creative processes. And it's a really fun way for me to start the day, especially when I know I'm gonna be diving into my own sort of creative endeavors as I finish my coffee. Ooh, I love that. I love that little, honestly, a nice cup of coffee and watching Top Chef in the morning is like, I'm gonna try that this weekend. It's very meditative. I love that. What makes you feel successful? I think the thing that makes me feel the most successful is when I encounter somebody in real life or in the wild or whatever, like wearing a shirt or a patch that I've made, especially like if I don't know the person, some of my friends wear my stuff and I love them for that. But like when I see a stranger wearing one of my shirts or when I see one of my bumper stickers on a stranger's car or whatever, it's always so exciting. It really makes me feel like a success. Totally. Okay, cool. And one last one. If you could go back, what advice would you give yourself when you first opened your shop or started your shop? I think the advice that I would give. I think it's really important for sellers to really like nail down their niche and like to establish like a creative vision and stick to it. And when I was first, and like the niche that I've carved out for myself is, it's like fairly hyper-specific. It's like trans and queer and punk rock and metal. And where those things intersect is where a lot of my, what a lot of my work focuses on. And I think when I first started, I had this idea that I needed to make things that would appeal to as many people as possible. But as I went on, I found out it's really, It's really narrowing down and not putting out the same stuff that everyone else is doing, but having something where if somebody sees it, they can say, oh, you know what? That looks like something that he does. That looks like a toxic femme thing. And establishing that early on and just sticking to it. I also, it's like being confident in your own perspective. Because when I started, I wasn't really... I didn't know whether people were gonna respond, how people were going to respond to or whether people were going to appreciate like my point of view or my um my like creative vision. And so it i watered it down or i made stuff that kind of strayed from that and it really wasn't until i just committed to what i was already thinking about or what i was already doing and and really uh doubling down on that that that was when i started to first see some real success. It's like be confident in your own vision and don't do things because you think it's what other people want. Do what you want to make. And just have confidence that that's going to appeal to people or resonate with people. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that makes it so much more meaningful, right? Like, if it does connect with someone, they're like, oh my god, like, this is brilliant. Like, it just feels so much more exciting and connective than just, yeah, like you said, something you can get anywhere else. Well, I think that that confidence definitely comes through in your work, and also in your work as, you know, the, what are you, the interim, like, press, I keep wanting to say press secretary, that's not the right thing, but it kind of makes, you feel like you should have a podium. Thank you. Yeah, I don't even think I have an official title, but I'm part of the team. Exactly, and I really so appreciate your time and sharing, not only just what's going on, but also what people can do to really fight back and take back some of that power. Really, it means a lot to me and thank you for being here and thank you for your work. Thanks for listening to Retail for the Rest of Us. Find additional information and resources related to this episode in the show notes or on our website, feelgoodretail.com. This show was lovingly produced and edited by Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to text it to your business bestie, share it on social media and leave us a rating or review. It really helps the show grow organically, and we love making new friends. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being in business and cheers to feeling good. Music.