Etsy CEO Josh Silverman called California consumer protection bill AB 3262 a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and he accused Amazon of lobbying and “working back channels” to make the legislation burdensome for its rivals.
“Amazon is taking bold steps to wipe out its competitors by promoting complex, hard-to-comply-with legislation that only they can afford to absorb,” Silverman wrote in a post on the Etsy blog today.
AB 3262 was designed to hold Amazon accountable for offering “cheap and dangerous products that are mass-produced in other countries” on its site, but Amazon quietly signed up in support of the bill, he wrote.
“Why would Amazon sign up to support a bill that is supposedly Anti-Amazon? It’s simple. With Amazon’s lobbying, AB 3262 has become an increasingly complicated piece of legislation that is going to be expensive for any small or mid-sized business to try to comply with. Amazon is betting on that. While AB 3262 will be an inconvenience to the ecommerce behemoth, it could be crushing to smaller ecommerce players.”
“Amazon’s goal is to be the only place to buy stuff online, hobbling mom-and-pops that sell unique items in their own shops, or more frequently since COVID, through marketplaces like Etsy,” Silverman said.
He continued, “If we allow Amazon to assign a marketplace like Etsy the same liabilities as a manufacturer or a traditional retailer, the costs of opening a shop on Etsy (or on any small to mid-sized marketplace) would increase dramatically, making that economic opportunity far less accessible to many Californians.”
You can find the full post on the Etsy Blog.
Oh bless his heart.
This won’t hurt sellers nearly as much as it would hurt Etsy. They wouldn’t be able to screech ‘we’re just the venue’, run to a safe place and curl up in a ball if they had to take responsibility for something sold on their site. I love that this slime only acknowledges sellers when it suits his purposes.
Exactly Cookie, Josh is & has always been all about Etsy & how much more he can charge his customers (the sellers) to keep his shareholders happy with fat pockets. He is the epitome of a bottom feeding slop sucker.
Has anyone looked up the number of businesses and fashion labels Bezos owns? Isn’t Amazon a monopoly?
(..) ” , , , , , .” This man talks out both sides of his mouth. How can he say this when he’s charging 20% offsite ad fees to his best sellers for sales that are coming from customers that were already buying from those sellers? We all know that our regular customers are being shown ads from the sellers they currently buy from & that it’s human nature to click on something that is put in front of you especially if you know that seller.
I’m so glad I saw the writing on the wall & got my own site before the off site ads started. The day Etsy started actually charging the sellers, I deactivated all my listings, made them all manual renewals & put my shop on a permanent vacation to see if Etsy would come to their senses. Since they haven’t & it looks like they never will, I think I’m going to end up closing my Etsy shop all together. My site is doing just fine & I get to run my business without worrying about what bomb Etsy is going to drop on me next.
Josh really needs to figure out that it takes a lot of little shops that don’t have many sales to make up for one supply seller that is in the top 1% of all Etsy shops.
I’m sorry the beginning of my comment didn’t post… it should have started with… Etsy (J.S.) said “We are in the middle of a pandemic, raging unemployment, and unprecedented wildfires, and as Americans we need to be helping, not hindering, our small businesses.”
To quote a knowledgeable party from YouTube :
“Silverman is NOBODY to talk about abuse. He’s helping himself to 12% EXTRA as he punishes Etsy Artists making 10k or more with this 12% Success Penalty Fee.
Brings his take to 23%.
Such BULLSHIT.”
Can’t argue with that.