Art on Fire at Artfire!

WHAT?!?!?!?!?! I know, I hadn't heard of it either, but I bought some artist supplies there once...


I'm taking about Artfire.  A marketplace for handmade Arts... You name it, it is a virtual artists gallery, art show, crafts bazzar, art fair all online.


I encourage you to poke around on their site here...
http://www.artfire.com


I have just opened up a little store on Artfire.com, and my store name is of course, CarolinaClover. One word.


You can view my new handcrafted site here...
http://www.artfire.com/users/carolinaclover


I am so excited about a competing virtual venue for Etsy. If you are a happy shopper at Etsy, good for you. But you might want to click away now because this is going to get ugly.


As a seller on Etsy I became increasingly frustrated at how they manage their site.  Etsy has "written" and "posted" and "quoted" on many occasions their guidelines for items to be sold in their "Handmade Marketplace". Basically what I'm talking about here is the difference between "ARTs and CRAFTS" and mass machine produced bits that get a manufactured bow put on it by the seller and sold on Etsy as handmade. The integrity of Art on Etsy has been lost and I don't mind saying so publicly.


Etsy has let this happen, it is unfortunate, yes and they have defended their decisions to run their site into the ground by "not turning away anyone who wants to sell on Etsy"...as stated by an admin in their forums.  "Everyone has  a platform on Etsy".


Well, I have news for Etsy. As soon as you stop caring what people post to sell on your site, you become eBay and you are no longer a "handmade" marketplace.


I can only hope that the competing marketplace of Artfire, and some other art oriented start ups, can remind Etsy, via virtual competition, what exactly is considered Art. People vote with their dollars, and my dollars are headed to Artfire.


I hope you join me.