Etsy has redefined its Creativity Standards to exclude a vast majority of 3D printed goods sold on its website. Now, anything 3D printed must be “produced based on a seller’s original design.” This would seem to eliminate the wildly popular flexi dragon prints – and many other 3D printed items – that can be found by the thousands on Etsy’s virtual shelves.
The move took 3D print sellers by surprise, as it was unannounced by Etsy itself. Instead, the update was caught by sharp-eyed Etsy sellers who bothered to read the legal section under “Our House Rules,” which was buried a few pages deep in a recent Etsy community newsletter about keeping “our marketplace safe.” The alarm was sounded throughout 3D print forums as Etsy sellers panicked that their shops might be shut down.
When Etsy first launched 20 years ago, it was an online bazaar of handmade crafts and vintage clothes. Sophie Duba, Senior Director of Marketplace Policy at Etsy, joked during a video about the policy changes, that in the early days they weren’t sure if they’d allow the use of sewing machines to make handmade items. Now the site is flooded with cheap trinkets sold by dropshippers, resellers, and sadly, large 3D print farms.
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The company began cleaning house in 2024 by introducing “Creativity Standards” to reassure shoppers that Etsy still had a human touch. Under the new policy, every one of the millions of items on Etsy’s virtual shelves should fit into one of four categories: “made by (seller),” “designed by (seller),” “handpicked by (seller),” and “sourced by (seller).” The categories are pretty loose, but Etsy hoped this would keep humans in the loop.