As reported in this Storque article, Etsy is holding a chat to gather community input on the issue of Etsy sellers having employees. This issue has come up a few times recently in the Etsy forums.
The meeting is Friday May 9
6 pm Central European time zone
5 pm UK time time zone
12 noon eastern USA time zone
11 am central USA time zone
10 am mountain USA time zone
9 am pacific USA time zone
Join us for a discussion and feedback session about employees and your Etsy shop. Rob, aka Rokali, co-founder and CEO of Etsy, will be leading the workshop.
When: Friday, May 9, 12 noon (Eastern US time) times on the Virtual Labs schedule are displayed in your local time
Where: Treehouse Room, Virtual Labs
…
Agenda:
For those selling handmade goods: Are employees necessary for a seller to “make a living making things”? Are the items still “handmade”?What sort of hired help is needed for handmade sellers? Is *what* potential employees do for the shop relevant?
Does the number of employees that a business has impact whether the shop belongs on Etsy? If so, how many is too many?
Are different rules necessary for sellers of commercial supplies and vintage goods? Are employees acceptable for these types of shops?
What sort of information do you need (for example, links to information about employment law) to grow a business that includes employees?
Should sellers who are outsourcing, involved in collectives, and employing people be approved by Etsy? What sort of approval process would you be interested in?
UPDATE Monday May 12 by JB:
The minutes to the meeting are here
May 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
And that would be 2am EST in Australia. You know, there are a lot of sellers and buyers in Australia - and some in New Zealand too. Maybe just once Etsy could have a meeting at a time that would be remotely feasible for some of us to attend. This would also allow those who work during the day in the US to attend too.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I am more often awake at 2 am than I am at 9 am, which is when the meeting is in my time zone.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
a lot of international companies seem to manage to get this right, mainly by swapping around who gets inconvenienced.
favourite times for my husband seem to be between 6 and 8.30am and then again mid evening (west coast canada pacific time) which seem to work for most of the areas he’s in contact with
May 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
With an agenda, there might be some actual discussion. These forums are usually free-for-alls and not productive. Better to read the report afterwards.
The subject, while worthy, really only affects a very small number of stores on the site. While it appears that some stores have left over this issue, still, it is only a very small number of stores that are affected now and may be affected in the near future. There are other issues of much more importance.
Again, this is a “rule” that is not adhered to on the site, where there are already several stores (classifying themselves as handmade) that make their products in a factory or assembly line, even state this is their shop description and sometimes in their product description. They have been allowed to sell on the site for a long time without any interference, despite flags that identify the store or product. So, it seems that the “no other employees” rule was never applied evenly or farily from the start.
Confusion is fueled by the ongoing inability to apply rules consistently and fairly.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I am anxious to hear how this meeting went and what was decided.
From what I gather in the revamped rules, it will be ok for someone to have an assistant pack, ship and do other menial tasks not connected to the actual construction of an item, but this is so contradictory considering the other items they allow on their site.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
UPDATE Monday May 12 by JB:
The minutes to the meeting are here
May 18th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Okay, I just slogged through those minutes.
Did it strike anyone else that Rokali’s participation was completely disconnected from what people most needed and wanted to talk about? It’s as if he was phoning it in from Mars, or something.
Very weird.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
mezzo - it was indeed one of the weirdest virtual meetings i’ve been to. at least with the other community chatts i’ve attended i’ve left feeling that something has been accomplished even if nothing has been set in stone. this one however, left me feeling as if we’d all been run round in circles until the head caught up with the tail and we were still none the wiser as to why we had just done it. both the preamble and ’summary’ (and i use that term lightly as it was more like what i heard after drunken parties 20 years ago when we would try to be clever little shites about something worldly) were extremely unhelpful and totally unconnected to the subject at hand. I think it was indeed phoned in from Mars and I can’t wait until the conversation that was actually being run reaches earth so i can be enlightened ……
oh bugger! guess i’ll never be featured seller after that little comment!
May 18th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
dangerousmezzo: yes.
I left the meeting towards the beginning because it was so chaotic and bizarre, it was too frustrating to witness it in real time. It felt like two different conversations happening at once. I checked the minutes later to see if maybe it made more sense as a complete unit but it still makes no sense to me and none of my questions are really answered. It seems like Rokali gets sidetracked very easily, or he has a different agenda than everyone else. He doesn’t seem to “get” what average people are concerned about. He also has a mocking tone at times which I feel isn’t appropriate.
I also think way too much time was spent on semantic definitions, employee vs helper vs assistant vs partner vs contractor vs collective. People just want to know, can I pay another human to help me make my stuff? Yes or no?