christop1957

Yes I agree, Etsy used to make sure you were original or had manufacturing partners. They had some kind of vetting for the partners until Josh Silverman(?) came on board. I think that is when those rules loosened and AliBaba became a legit partner on Etsy. It's been a slippery slope. My segment on Etsy is not conducive to mass production and I think we have simply priced ourselves above it as a way to keep separate . I have started seeing furniture made in Turkey and Poland and Romania that is now beating us up a little on price, not sure how they get the shipping so cheap but that is a different issue

we make furniture out of old wood

That's a little cynical. We don't make the screws that go into our furniture or smelt the iron ore that goes into the steel pipe fittings or grow the trees or generate the electricity that supports distribution of this thread. But we do feel like we make each piece that we sell on Etsy.

Etsy may be compromised these days but it still IS for artists/creators as you say. We have a stand alone website that gets 2 to 9 visitors a day and our main Etsy site gets hundreds every day. That's why we are on Etsy. We are too small to hire comprehensive SEO/advertising help (I've tried a few) so we let Etsy collect the main slug of customers. We employ 4 people full time.