If you’re in the market for funky trinkets and unique, handmade clothing, you might want to put off your shopping until next week. Starting today, over 14,000 Etsy sellers are going on strike as the platform increases its transaction fees from 5% to 6.5%.
“We’re hoping to get Etsy’s attention that we are fed up,” said Kristi Cassidy, an organizer of the strike, in an interview with Yahoo! Finance. Cassidy concedes that 14,000 sellers isn’t a huge percentage of the marketplace’s 5.3 million active sellers, but she says, “It’s also quite a bit for just people trying to spread a movement online with no advertising. The amount of support we have gotten when we put this out into the world… people are sharing, it’s spreading entirely organically.”
Cassidy started a petition, which now has over 48,000 signatures from buyers and sellers, urging Etsy to “work with sellers, not against us.” The Rhode Island-based seamstress also references an advertising policy that to …
