Resellers on Etsy: Part 2 -- USA Sellers Selling Items Imported From Another Country

Yes, that's right -- what the title says is pretty typical for an Etsy reseller shop!

The silly forum complaints about resellers mostly point fingers at Chinese sellers, but according to Etsy those shops are owned by someone involved in the making process.  An American seller who buys finished products from China, and sells them without alteration or embellishment, had nothing to do with making the items.  They are resellers.

But don't believe for a moment that "Etsy hates resellers" or that Etsy is constantly vigilant and working on a better solution to the reseller problem.  What Etsy is working on are ways to coach reported USA resellers so they can continue to run their shops as usual without being reported as resellers, or getting bad feedback when their buyers receive their item -- supposedly made to order in the USA -- via China Post.  As in drop shipping.  Oops.

After reporting shops (sometimes more than once if they remain open for 4-6 months after being reported), I've discovered it seems that Etsy now allows these types of reselling:

• Buying items on Ebay and listing them unaltered in your Etsy shop as handmade by you.  Photos, titles, and descriptions copied from the Ebay seller.
• Buying items wholesale from factories and claiming you are the designer of these items.  Even though multiple Etsy shops are selling them, all claiming to hand make each item to order. 
• Buying items wholesale from specialty sites whose pages are not indexed by Google or other SEs, so the borrowed photos are more challenging to trace.
• Selling imported knock-offs of famous designer brand items and claiming you made them.  Etsy's reluctance to deal with copyright infringement issues unless contacted by the owner gives these items a free pass for reselling.  When brand owners demand a takedown, Etsy complies.  Some USA reseller shops have listings deleted again and again as different brands find their shops (you can check out their sold listings and note the growing ranks of blank boxes where the image, title and link have been redacted).  All the while, Etsy's Marketplace Integrity Team ignores reports of reselling by these shops, and they stay open. 

Resellers may very well the type of seller most likely to open an Etsy shop these days.  After all, you are allowed -- even encouraged -- to create deceptive listings on Etsy that aren't tolerated on Ebay.  Part 3 will call out some designer brand items -- maybe real, maybe knock offs -- that you can find listed on Etsy as made by the shop owner.  That's right, Betsey Johnson, LV, Tory Burch and other brands have handmade shops on Etsy!