ETSY SELLERS PROTEST FEES BY HALTING THEIR SALES FOR A WEEK

Some vendors on Etsy say they are halting sales of their items on the site for a week to protest a hike in the fees the crafts e-commerce marketplace charges them.

Now, Etsy sellers must pay a 6.5% commission on each transaction, up from the 5% in place since 2018.

A protest organizer, Kristi Cassidy, said thousands of Etsy sellers — a fraction of the 5.3 million vendors on the site — have temporarily halted selling their items. Cassidy, who has been selling gothic and punk costumes on Etsy since 2007, also launched a petition that so far has garnered more than 50,000 signatures from buyers and sellers. Roughly 20,000 are sellers. Cassidy said it’s hard to estimate the exact number of sellers that have actually stopped selling on the site.