A Change of Venue

So, if you are an Etsy seller like me, you've probably noticed that this year's sales are in the toilet, unless, of course, you happen to be one of the Chinese (probably sweatshop, human rights violating, mass-producing) factories that have been allowed to sell "handmade" crap on Etsy since 2013. Etsy used to be an OOAK, hand-crafted, handmade and vintage only, made in America, online market place. That's what made Etsy, well, Etsy.  It was not Amazon.  It was not Ebay.  It was the place to go to get that special toy or yarn or dress or hand-knit scarf or nick-knack or piece of handcrafted jewelry.  Now, it's a market place where cheap made-in-China crap fills the first 50 pages of your search and undercuts the prices of the real artisans.  And the real artisans, the Americans, have watched their sales become non-existent.  Etsy even went so far, when sellers and teams boycotted Etsy en masse, to lie to sellers and say that they weren't doing what they did.  So here's my deal:

I've thought about this and thought about this and been angry and been sad (I've been with Etsy for nearly 5 years) and done some research and now I am starting over with a new shop on a new site, Zibbet.com.  This is a site that is what Etsy was when Etsy first began.  It doesn't have fancy bells and whistles, they aren't beta testing a new page view format or trying to come up with ways to prevent buyers and sellers from contacting the powers that be every month.  They aren't offering you a million ways to pay (or sellers a million ways to get cheated out of the profits from the few sales they are getting). They are just offering a platform for American artisans and indie dyers to connect with the people who used to connect with Etsy but have turned away. It's good to make money, but I'll tell you this:  I can't support anyone who uses "made in America" as a front for lining their pockets with Chinese kickbacks.  Sorry, Etsy, I just can't do it.

So the new shop is open for business.  The shop is Cedar Hill Farm Company. I am still adding listings (it takes about an hour to create 10 listings, and I have over 220 to put in there), but I hope you will visit my shop anyway to check it out and add a bookmark to you tool bar. Just to remind you of why you love my hand dyed yarn ...

Thanks for stopping by and for supporting American small business.