Research shows many “handmade” products on Etsy found to be fake

It's also difficult when looking for genuinely hand made goods if they are coming from places other than the UK - maybe remote villages in (say) India or China - to know if the items have been fairly traded.

An item might be hand made "somewhere" or hand made in the UK/EU where technically there are laws to protect workers.
Things that really are hand-made may be produced by hand but in sweatshop situations.

When things are one-offs it's unlikely to be made that way.

I feel sorry for you Ilovecats2 and all the other crafters who sold that way.

It is also a loss to those of us buyers, who would look at Etsy sure of finding interesting and hand made goods. My last search through Etsy, looking for a specific style of hand-knitted wool sweater was a deep disappointment. It was almost impossible to isolate the handmade goods from the bulk of the manufactured products on offer. It is a site I will not waste time on again.

Possible there is a market opportunity for someone less money orientated to set up

I sell on Etsy and I spend many hours making my items. Etsy WAS for handmade only at one time but now they are trying to keep up with Amazon and Ebay (and keep the shareholders happy) so they have now allowed manufactured goods (mostly from china) to be sold on Etsy which is pushing the genuine crafters out. Sellers are buying cheap products from Alieexpress and then selling them on Etsy at 3 or 4 times the price. Many crafters are leaving due to the competition from manufactured goods and the huge fees. Josh Silverman has ruined a really good site for crafters

The most cursory glance at Etsy will tell you much of what is being sold is not home made. The same products appearing again and again, photgraphs that are clearly of items widely available.

The Which report says nothing most people don't know anyway.

It can be very disappointing to find out that something isn't quite what was advertised and can lead to feeling that we've been conned. My daughter has a shop on Etsy( Busy Bakes) and I can tell you with absolute confidence from the gorgeous smells that I wake up to each day, that her brownies are home made.

I have a friend who has an Etsy shop. She is a very talented textile artist. She sells some of her original textile art but also printed greetings cards of her original designs. Would that count as 'handmade'?
I often buy from her as her designs are amazing and the greeting cards are sensibly priced. I can't really afford the original textile art and I am a crafter myself so try do do my own textile art, but I'm nowhere near as talented as she is!
I mostly make things as gifts, or to sell for charity. I couldn't make money selling as things take such a long time to make they are too expensive for most people's budget, hence the printed cards which are mass produced from original art and are affordable but based on a unique item.

I've tried to support Etsy, but no more. Everything lve ever bought has been sub standard. The last being a candle that wasn't straight at the bottom and was covered in dust. The seller hadn't even bothered to clean the dust off....and it wasn't cheap.

When I opened my Etsy shop I decided to have it critiqued on a dedicated forum. I was told my items were under priced and was encouraged to raise them. (I didn't)

I was looking for some little plaques the other day, and my first search brought them up at £6.99 each on Etsy. I found identical plaques on eBay for £3.99 each.....

Just had a message from a friend at Trentham Gardens today setting up for a craft fair.
She says lots of nice, not expensive items for sale there (on the ceafys side) if anyone is interested.

If someone is genuinely making pearl drop earrings by hand I don't think £20 is unreasonable to be honest unless they are hand-made imports from (say) China or somewhere else with low labour/overhead costs.

The websites charge a fee - "Not on the high Street " charges 25%, (don't know about Etsy). Time is spent on sourcing and procurement of materials tools, on running the website, dealing with emails and so on. There are banking charges, insurance, packaging and printing too. Then there is the time actually spent making.
Maybe this isn't true of someone who isn't a "small business", I'm not sure, but there's lots of artisans out there who couldn't hand-make earrings at less than £20.

Having bought a couple things from Etsy , I’m well aware of the prices of some of the things can be ridiculously silly high prices for items that look like they just cost a couple pounds . I think to buy from Etsy you really need to do your homework and compare with other online sites . It’s a shame really because there are some lovely items on Etsy so it spoils for everyone.
I’d been fancying a pair of pearl drop earrings, nothing expensive just costume jewellery, some of them on Etsy were like £20 -£30 plus ….….eventually I’d bought a nice pair for £2 on eBay .

Handmade is an absolute minefield. I ran a 'Homecrafters Fair' for 4 years, but had so many issues with copyright infringement, bulk bought items etc. One lady claimed an item was homemade as she folded fabric scarfs, massed produced in China, and put it in a plastic bag! I was even known for forcing people to disassemble their stalls and leave before opening.

Eventually I had wonderful makers, but ended up with the same people month after month...so not so interesting for repeat visitors. Sadly this was why we ceased after 4 years - our visitor numbers dropped to 70-80 a month. As someone said 'they'd seen it before' but finding enough genuine makers within my allowed distance was just impossible I still miss the wonderful people I did find though x

I have an ETSY site and very unhappy that others are allowed to sell mass produced items. What keeps me on there is the fact that the shop front is easy to administer and payments are safely collected. Buyers have to be discerning. I may have a look at Folksy as someone has suggested.

Etsy sellers are victims of the same market forces that drive industrialisation everywhere. Making stuff by hand is quite hard and more importantly takes time; it takes an hour(-ish) to make and bake a cake at home, but a factory can turn out many thousands in the same time. Think about how long it should take to handmade the object you like and then multiply by £20 per hour; if you're not paying at least that then either the maker is working as a slave (possibly voluntarily if they're self employed but I'm not even comfortable with that) or the thing has been made in a factory.

There is a similar British site called Folksy which has a stronger control on whether stuff is handmade.
blog.folksy.com/2022/11/21/buy-less-buy-better-buy-handmade-campaign
blog.folksy.com/sell-on-folksy
folksy.com/local-shops

Primrose53, I think maybe you should try a curated craft show which checks out the stallholders before they are offered a place.

I have sold items at such fairs and haven't seen anything that wasn't hand-made.

You may find people have hand-made several of something (eg, a weaver or knitter making a few of the same scarf or a costume jewellery maker who makes several bracelets the same.

Goldsmiths Fair, Lustre, London Craft Week venues and the Great Northern Contemporary spring to mind.

I bought some hand made things on Etsy from America, never again as the tax and associated costs were more than the items original price. I tried an enquiry via the HMRC forms and the reply took so long (took weeks and was irrelevant) that the items disappeared from the system, presumably were returned to sender, and I lost my money.

If you buy something from Etsy that you suspect is not as advertised you can always pay to return it if it's in original packaging and unworn.or unused.

I was buying from craft fairs, nice individual things that you don’t see in the mass produced shops, I bought a beautiful necklace from a lady for my daughters birthday it broke first time she put it on I rang the lady and she redid it
I bought myself a rose quartz pendant from a craft centre again first time I wore it the gem came off the chain i rang them and they changed it (or redid it)for me, all was good, a few weeks later I went to take the necklace off and only had the chain on me, the stone had again come off.
So that’s it I won’t try again

I wrote a long post on Etsy but is seems to have disappeared. I used to sell antiques and vintage there but closed my shop about 4 years ago. I disagreed with many of their policies.

The posters who state that there are some very talented handmade sellers there are correct. However Etsy does not apply their policies fairly or consistently. Some shops are allowed to go on selling obvious fakes because they generate huge revenue for the platform. Others who sell genuine handmade are targeted by competitors and snitches and driven off. A quick visit to google will reveal many stories of this.

Communication with Etsy staff is poor and they are often rude and patronising. I returned to selling on Ebay because I had some very negative experiences on Etsy.

I have been selling online since the late '90s and would not recommend this platform to any vintage of handmade vendor.

Out of interest what is the dividing line between hand made and machine made? Are you allowed to use a sewing machine? A riveter? Etc. a knitting machine but made to a personal pattern? This is a big subject of discussion in the small tool industry in which we work, so interested in others points of view.

I agree that "hand made" should be just that, not bought in.
I found that craft fair organisers would allow sellers who made a silver setting using mass produced gemstones but would not allow hand cut stone in mass produced silver settings.
I make my own cushion covers and use purchased fabric and zips but decorate them with antique lace made by a family member. How would that work, percentage wise?

I’m an Etsy seller and I can tell you it drives us nuts. There are copyright infringements and selling of stuff that is defo not handmade or vintage. You can report these sellers but Etsy doesn’t seem to care. I’m guessing it’s about the money. I’m very disheartened as a seller but I just keep trying with my handmade jewellery. Each piece individual .

ell - if you buy from etsy or eBay there is a chance that the product will not be 100% handmade, if at all. It is not even safe to buy from single sellers, since they have been known to cheat. Not even "this is a one-off" is a guarantee. And a back-search means nothing, because the design may be copied. There are foolproof ways of getting a unique thing - and one of them is to hand over a few beads to the maker, nd ask for them to be incorporated into thee design, or design something yourself and get it done. I am saying this because I make jewellery for fund-raising, i.e. I earn nothing from it, and so I have no agenda.