Reselling Knock Off Celine Sunglasses on Etsy as Handmade to Order

Thread today in Etsy's forums here shows that even shop owners are confused about what reselling is and what a reseller shop looks like.  As one post mentioned, reselling is just plain old ecommerce:  buying wholesale and selling retail.  It's a normal business practice.  The problem with reselling on Etsy is that resellers pretend to have designed and/or made the products themselves when in reality the items were purchased -- designed and made by others.  Etsy's staff encourages resellers by coaching them in creating deceptive wording for listings and shop information pages, if the items they offer are in line with Etsy's site branding.  Deceptive selling is not plain old ecommerce or a good business practice. 

Yesterday I compared the number of sellers on Etsy and Ebay selling knock offs of Celine gold chain sunglasses.  Etsy wins (no surprise there).  Etsy dominates the online retail marketplace now for certain types of reseller goods.  Ebay had one seller, honestly disclosing the item is not marked, is a copy (inspired), and is new with tags.  The Etsy knock offs (all the same product sold on Ebay!) listed by 6 different sellers are deceptively sold as handmade.  A couple of extra special resellers list their purchased knock offs as "handmade to order". 

Here are the knock off Celine gold chain sunglasses sold on Etsy (no links to the actual shops, but you can find the listings from the titles or images).

Shop No. 1:  Celine Gold Chain Sunglasses Celebrity Sunglasses

 

Seller claims they are (hand) made to order, but you can see the "Made In China" gold lettering inside the ear piece on the pair at the bottom!

Shop No. 2:  Gold Sunglasses

These are also (hand) made to order, but description says:

"MATTE BLACK sunglasses

&

GLOSSY BLACK. sunglasses

brand new, never worn."

Yeah, isn't that what all the artisans say about their handmade creations? 

Shop No. 3:  Celine Gold Chain Sunglasses with Black Frames

Shop No. 4:  Celine Inspired Gold Chain Sunglasses -- HOT (Black Back In Stock)

This seller claims to have this item available with a pink frame, but no photos of that version are shown.  I've seen these replicas with pink tinted lenses, but all the frames are black. 

Shop No. 5:  Celine Inspired Chain Link Sunglasses

Shop No. 6:  Celine Inspired Gold Cuban Chain Link Sunglasses/ Celebrity Trend/Metal Arms,excellent quality guarantee

So, if you want to resell designer brand knock offs and avoid paying the high fees to use Ebay, Etsy is the venue of choice. 

Factory Handmade Makes the Etsy Front Page

When I was very young, my family lived next door to a really nice woman who worked sewing handbags and soft luggage in a local factory.  She lived alone (divorced, an uncommon situation in the 1950s) in a house identical to ours in size and design -- except she had much nicer furniture than my parents could afford, and a very cool 50s kitsch aesthetic for her décor.  So working in a factory paid her well enough to have a comfortable, secure, independent life.  I have no reason to look down on people who make products in a factory environment.

What ticks me off big time about the "factory collectives" on Etsy is the pretense that a single person designs, makes, and sells a wide selection of products all by their lonesome selves.  Sells not only in an Etsy shop, but all over the net. 

Here is the item that was shown on the Etsy home page

It took only seconds to match the photo to other sites selling the same backpack.

Like here
Buy it retail on Market86

Or here:
Buy it at a huge mark-up on ecanvas bags
The item sold at this link is made with PU instead of cow leather, but uses the same image in the listing.

Wholesale here:
DoBest Wholesale wins a prize for creepiest item title I've ever seen!

Of course you can buy it on AliExpress

If you can make the minimum purchase of 300 units you can have it manufactured for you
Manufacturer on AliBaba
Production capacity is 100,000 units per month, prices per unit range from $3 to $8 each.

The "cupcakes" on Etsy might shake their orange and white pompoms in my face with annoyance and say the evil Ali sites stole the photos from the Etsy seller, and are pretending to copy her handmade design.  I'll be glad to accept that explanation, if they can explain to me how the merchants on AliExpress got access to additional photos from the same shoot, and larger high quality photos than those in the Etsy shop?

My guess is that Etsy's homepage will look much more like Storenvy's by this time next year.  Why keep the factory produced goods confined to the first pages of Browse sections?  Let's just calmly accept the reality of Etsy being the place for cleap factory produced goods, marketed with a cosmetically applied appearance of handmadeness.

Nothing Like Vintage (so why can't Etsy find and remove these items?) DVD Edition

A quick search for DVD in Etsy's Vintage category turns up lots of items, none of which can be vintage because the technology isn't yet 20 years old.   Here are a few of the most amusing "vintage" DVD listings.  (Note that this blog does not link to called out listings, but they can be found by the image and item title.)

The Complete Brazil Body Now Program - 6 DVDs and 4 Guides

A few months ago, before the Etsy forum mods tightened their grip, there were call out posts about infomercial workout DVD sets listed for sale on Etsy as handmade.  There were maybe a handful of listings, but Etsy's (n)ever vigilant Marketplace Integrity Team decided to show the community how well they had things in hand.  Etsy actually removed all of the P90X packages, and even kept track of new sellers trying to list them, removing them quickly.  Unfortunately, the MIT tends to avoid looking at the Etsy Vintage category, a bit of info that seems to be well known by online resellers.

Panasonic DVD-A320 DVD Player

This seller claims the DVD player is from the 1970s.   Clueless.

DR. BIZARRO a VINTAGE film from avon video production staring cheri & velvet summers now on dvd-r 1970s mature bondage fetish dvd

This seller has a shop full of new DVDs created from vintage VHS tapes, some (maybe all) of which are licensed products.  The photos show cases from the tapes, not the new DVDs, so who knows what you are buying here.

vtg Pioneer VXX2702 DvD Player Remote Control

I didn't look at every item in this shop, but easily half the photos suggested the items were nothing like vintage, and supposedly not allowed for sale on Etsy.

Individual or Set of 3 - Lenticular CD Case Wallet 3D Teddybear Teddy Bear Silver /CD24-R-109/

This listing is extra special because the (re)seller took advantage of the way an item can be listed in more the one top level category on Etsy without paying double for it, as you would have to do on Ebay.  The seller listed this case set as "vintage handmade" which means the seller claims to have made it at least 20 years ago.  But the seller did not make it, at any time.  Sold here by China Custom Promotional Products Wholesale Center: 
Where Etsy reseller could get the teddy bear CD case wholesale