| Life During Wartime | 12-28-2021 12:36 PM |
Re: Question about Etsy sourcing.
Etsy's original guidelines for what can be sold remain as published rules on the site. Basically, it says all items listed for sale must be designed and/or crafted by the seller, 20+ years old vintage, or supplies/tools/patterns for crafting.
You see so many retail boutique shops on Etsy, where the owners simply purchase wholesale and then resell, because Etsy hasn't enforced its own rules about reselling since Summer 2015.
Since the original rules remain published on the site as if they are universally in force, Etsy staff can refer to them to close a shop -- and ban the owner from opening future shops -- for all sorts of reasons.
Etsy does take infringement issues seriously when they receive a legal notice from the owner because according to law they have no option to ignore a request that infringing items be removed. Until a legal notice is received, sellers are protected by the site's Safe Harbor Policy. Even when a shop is caught infringing, Etsy will sometimes just remove only the items specified in the legal communication -- even if every item in the shop is clearly an infringement, although of another brand's property.
If your listings do not sell infringing items, and you treat your customers well, odds are in your favor that Etsy will allow to you resell items purchased wholesale indefinitely. There are shops on Etsy who have been selling "handmade" items they purchased wholesale for a decade, or longer.
More than half the shops on Etsy are using deceptive listings to sell: pretending they designed or made their handmade items, that their vintage is at least 20 years old, or that ready-to-use as sold products are supplies for art or crafting. I don't expect Etsy to shut down 50 percent of their shops any time soon for selling items that (supposedly) aren't allowed on the site. | 
