In late February, Kristi Cassidy logged onto Reddit and made a call to action to people who sell their goods on Etsy.
A day earlier, Etsy had announced it was hiking fees by 30%. For Cassidy, a seller of gothic wedding dresses on the e-commerce platform since 2006, the decision felt like an insult to small businesses who kept the site humming throughout the pandemic by selling their goods.
“I wonder, what would happen if on April 11, so many sellers put their shops on vacation mode that Etsy starts [freaking out],” Cassidy wrote. “And then they have no choice but to negotiate with us.”
Cassidy’s Reddit post kicked off a weeklong Etsy seller strike that began on Monday. Thousands of Etsy sellers are putting their digital shops in “vacation mode” to protest the fee increase. An online petition outlining their demands had well over 77,000 signatures as of Thursday evening.
Etsy has 5.3 million active sellers on its platform, according to the company’s website.
