What is happening to our shop at Etsy?

What Happened? Why is your shop temporarily closed?

Many of you are wondering what happened. For those of you that have been with our shop since the beginning (2012), you’ll know that we have almost never put our Etsy shop on vacation mode during this period.

On October 26th, Etsy decided to do this for us. We received a notification that we needed to upload additional verification documentation proving our business was real and that we were real people operating the shop. We were given a timeline to complete the uploaded information. 5 days prior to the deadline, we uploaded the requested documentation.

We are assuming Etsy’s automation systems do not understand how to validate a business operating as an LLC with a real person as the owner. As soon as we uploaded the requested docs, Etsy decided that the 5 day deadline didn’t exist anymore and automatically placed our shop on vacation mode for us.
We’ve reached out to Etsy for the past several days trying to understand the missing pieces. We’ve uploaded documentation, IDs, screenshots of settings, etc…. They keep coming back with further “requirements” that were all submitted days before their timeline.

We’re not sure if we’ve done something to upset the Etsy powers that be, or if this is all just clerical/legal/system nonsense. Either way, this has impacted you, our customers. For that we genuinely apologize for being unavailable to take your orders.

We’ve since found that this is happening to thousands of shops on Etsy and there is little you can do to control the situation. If you are interested in going down the rabbit hole, here is an interesting and disturbing thread on Reddit with very good information:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Etsy/comments/uwrqck/account_suspension_help_checklist/

What are we doing about it?

We have not stood idly by while this was happening. We’ve brought back our CTO to help us move our technology forward and to offer an alternative to Etsy for the future. We should have a fully operational standalone website up and running by the end of the week (you may actually be reading this from that website). And unlike in years past, this website will keep accurate inventory values between our sales channels.

UPDATE: Etsy does not allow any sort of offloading of data/information from your shop while you are on Vacation Mode. This includes any API connections that would allow you to download your listings. This is making the process of adding our products to the new website tedious (3000+ listings with variations, images, etc…). While our shop is on hold we are doing what we can to add the listings we need and keep everything synced. If you see something you need and it hasn’t been added yet, please reach out to us directly via email.

We continue to work with Etsy on resolving this issue. If you have ever tried to get support from Etsy, you know this is no easy task. They make it very difficult to contact them, and even more difficult for shop owners to get support.

This may end up being good for everyone. While we will continue to support our marketplace on Etsy, our standalone website: https://brasskicker.net will become our new focus. Without paying for Etsy’s expensive fees, we will be able to offer lower prices and better service there.

We are even working on some premium offerings that will enhance and improve your standard BrassKicker experience.

Once we figure this out, we’d be more than happy to help you figure out how to get your small business off of Etsy as well.

We will be posting the full story of this process when we make it through. Hopefully we will have enough information to help you avoid this with your shops. We’ve learned that Etsy really doesn’t care about their shop owners any more.