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This situation seems entirely unfair to me and I am surprised that a lot of people here are siding with Etsy. If they had such clauses and information in their

This situation seems entirely unfair to me and I am surprised that a lot of people here are siding with Etsy. If they had such clauses and information in their Terms and Conditions, then fair enough, comply or leave. But the worrying situation we have here is that Etsy appear to be making up non-publicly stated terms, targeting a guy who obviously hand assembles his own equipment. Sure, the guy didn't provide every bit of info they were requesting, but why should he? He complied with every Etsy request until they started asking for photo's documenting every step of the process which is just ridiculous. 99% of the supposed hand made goods on Etsy are not hand made, they're outsourced products and drop-shipped goods. Maybe they're trying to crack-down on that, and maybe they should publicly state that and update their terms. Try searching, "laptop bag", "iphone cover" and I can almost say with certainty that most of what you see is not hand made, but rather slave labour or outsourced. Etsy have bigger problems to worry about than whether or not a guy is actually making his own electronic devices when there are substantially larger stores moving larger volumes of product (like some of the clothing and shoe stores you see on Etsy) who should be questioned first. And if this is indeed the process, maybe letting your sellers know IN ADVANCE before they've already made the product to sell might result in easier compliance. Just because he is hand assembling a product using already constructed components like a pre-fabricated PCB and perhaps even pre-soldered components, does that make it any less hand made? Do people seriously think every component in the new car they're buying was made by the car manufacturer? No. Do you think Apple hand make every component in their iPhone or Macbook computers? Do you think the artist who painted that portrait made his own canvas and made his own paints? Fair enough that Apple or car manufacturers aren't fobbing their goods off as hand made, but it gives you an idea how reliant we've become on component assembly opposed to the non-scalable DIY approach. ---- And the final nail in Etsy's argument is this blog post they wrote in 2012: http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/defining-handmade-on-etsy/ http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/defining-handmade-on-etsy... The relevant part of this post is this defining paragraph: To be clear, when we talk about “hand-assembled” on Etsy, we don’t mean simply putting together a kit where all the pieces are already chosen and provided together. For example, if someone bought a flat-packed bookcase from IKEA that came with all the pieces pre-cut and all the necessary hardware included, and then put it together as directed by the enclosed instructions, that assembled bookcase would not qualify to be sold on Etsy as a handmade item. “Hand-assembled” on Etsy also does not include gathering commercially-produced items and repackaging them in a gift basket. Which links to this DO's & DON'TS link: http://www.etsy.com/help/article/483 http://www.etsy.com/help/article/483 which features these key lines: On Etsy, the term "handmade" can additionally be interpreted as "hand-assembled" or "hand-altered." To be considered handmade, the seller must substantially alter the design of an item produced from a "ready to assemble" kit. ---- Nowhere did I find anything that stated pictures or any documentation whatsoever is required to account for the construction process. The fact the guy is making his own enclosures by Etsy's own definitions of hand made is deemed to be hand made and not merely commercially assembled. If he was buying every component and merely assembling it, then that is definitely not hand made at all. I've emailed Brendan directly with a link to this comment, which hopefully helps him out. Maybe those above aforementioned links can help the author get this store restored.

MBCook 13y ago
> To be clear, when we talk about “hand-assembled” on Etsy, we don’t mean simply putting together a kit where all the pieces are already chosen and provided together. For example, if someone bought a flat-packed bookcase from IKEA that came with all the pieces pre-cut and all the necessary hardware included, and then put it together as directed by the enclosed instructions, that assembled bookcase would not qualify to be sold on Etsy as a handmade item. “Hand-assembled” on Etsy also does not include gathering commercially-produced items and repackaging them in a gift basket. I'm not sure where I fall on this. Isn't the description above exactly what he is doing? He's assembling an object based on someone else's design, from commercially available parts. The cases are made from laser cut parts, so that's not exactly hand made. I gather that he's using the laser cutter to draw all the labels on the case, they're not custom painted designs. He's put some design into it (and quite a bit of his time), but I'm not sure Etsy is wrong. He's basically made a kit out of someone else's project and is assembling it for the end user. He's nearly into manufacturing. When I think of Etsy, I think of the crochet patterns or stuffed animals I've seen. If he had designed the device I'd give him more weight, but I'm still not sure he's in Etsy's market. I also think its fair of Etsy to ask for build photos in case of a question like this. I would say his photos provide the necessary proof (either way). I'm not sure additional photos of him soldering DIPs to the board would actually add anything.
- DigitalSea 13y ago
  You do make a very valid argument here and while he is definitely assembling already created components, I think by Etsy's own definition of "hand assembled" he is within the rules of the site. "To be considered handmade, the seller must substantially alter the design of an item produced from a "ready to assemble" kit." The author isn't buying any ready to assemble kit as far as I know. He's sourced the components and even if the components were in a ready to assemble kit, you could argue the laser cutting of the enclosure is by Etsy's definition a substantially altered version of the kit. But from what I can gather he's not buying the parts in any kit, he's merely purchased a pre-fabricated PCB and putting it into a custom enclosure which is far from a ready to assemble kit (at least for the average consumer) as there is still quite a bit of manual labour involved. Soldering requires skill, knowledge of the correct solder to use and even the correct tip and temperature settings for particular solders. I've seen first hand people overheating and ruining components because they thought they could resolder a wire back onto a circuit board or even replace pick ups in their guitar. There are people who sell custom guitar stomp boxes and effects like this guy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/GnarHeelPedals http://www.etsy.com/shop/GnarHeelPedals — I doubt the boards and chips are being hand made, they're hand wired which is merely another way of saying hand assembled. To me it's the same thing. It'll be interesting to see how Etsy approaches this and what happens next. I can see why some people are more sceptical than others and realise interpretation of terms like "hand made" and "hand assembled" mean different things to different people.

MBCook 13y ago

> To be clear, when we talk about “hand-assembled” on Etsy, we don’t mean simply putting together a kit where all the pieces are already chosen and provided together. For example, if someone bought a flat-packed bookcase from IKEA that came with all the pieces pre-cut and all the necessary hardware included, and then put it together as directed by the enclosed instructions, that assembled bookcase would not qualify to be sold on Etsy as a handmade item. “Hand-assembled” on Etsy also does not include gathering commercially-produced items and repackaging them in a gift basket. I'm not sure where I fall on this. Isn't the description above exactly what he is doing? He's assembling an object based on someone else's design, from commercially available parts. The cases are made from laser cut parts, so that's not exactly hand made. I gather that he's using the laser cutter to draw all the labels on the case, they're not custom painted designs. He's put some design into it (and quite a bit of his time), but I'm not sure Etsy is wrong. He's basically made a kit out of someone else's project and is assembling it for the end user. He's nearly into manufacturing. When I think of Etsy, I think of the crochet patterns or stuffed animals I've seen. If he had designed the device I'd give him more weight, but I'm still not sure he's in Etsy's market. I also think its fair of Etsy to ask for build photos in case of a question like this. I would say his photos provide the necessary proof (either way). I'm not sure additional photos of him soldering DIPs to the board would actually add anything.

DigitalSea 13y ago
You do make a very valid argument here and while he is definitely assembling already created components, I think by Etsy's own definition of "hand assembled" he is within the rules of the site. "To be considered handmade, the seller must substantially alter the design of an item produced from a "ready to assemble" kit." The author isn't buying any ready to assemble kit as far as I know. He's sourced the components and even if the components were in a ready to assemble kit, you could argue the laser cutting of the enclosure is by Etsy's definition a substantially altered version of the kit. But from what I can gather he's not buying the parts in any kit, he's merely purchased a pre-fabricated PCB and putting it into a custom enclosure which is far from a ready to assemble kit (at least for the average consumer) as there is still quite a bit of manual labour involved. Soldering requires skill, knowledge of the correct solder to use and even the correct tip and temperature settings for particular solders. I've seen first hand people overheating and ruining components because they thought they could resolder a wire back onto a circuit board or even replace pick ups in their guitar. There are people who sell custom guitar stomp boxes and effects like this guy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/GnarHeelPedals http://www.etsy.com/shop/GnarHeelPedals — I doubt the boards and chips are being hand made, they're hand wired which is merely another way of saying hand assembled. To me it's the same thing. It'll be interesting to see how Etsy approaches this and what happens next. I can see why some people are more sceptical than others and realise interpretation of terms like "hand made" and "hand assembled" mean different things to different people.