I have had a shop on Etsy for quite some time now. Not a lot of sales, but enough during that time that I thought it was fun and well worth it. I just love that people from all over the world enjoy what I create here in my little studio. A few years ago, I kind of went into maintenance mode over there. My problem has always been having enough stock to actually show up in searches. I managed to get over 50 items listed, but then a few things sold, I did some markets, and suddenly I was low on inventory again. And just like that, my shop faded into the background. That repeated itself a few times, until I just sort of forgot about it all.

Working full time and managing something where each item is unique and handmade is challenging. But that is the situation. Nevertheless I decided to try this again this year. But so much has changed in just a few years, I am both overwhelmed and befuddled.

First there is the GPSR regulation from december 2024 for all items shipping to EU.

In order to comply with that, one needs a representative inside the EU that can vouch for your products, and that of course costs money. It is insanely expensive and not something I can do. I am already bound by regulations via my maker’s mark, that allows me to stamp the quality of noble metals like silver and gold, but that is not enough. So I had to drop shipping to EU. I cannot even sell to Sweden or Denmark at the moment. While Norway is not part of EU, the regulation will make its way here at some point. Then I can be my own “responsible person” as well as the economic operator. But it is far off as these things take time. Update: It turms out that Etsy pile all countries together in EEA , and even though Norway is not officially following the regulation through EØS – Etsy says it does. So now I am my own responsible person.

That means I can sell to whole of Europe right? Not.. quite. Many countries now demand a packaging license in order to sell to their country. And there are an equal amount of websites and licenses and fees as there are countries. Since each country wants you to pay a packaging fee, or rather a packaging disposal fee, it becomes rather costly if you want to sell to many countries. There is no way I can afford that. So my list of european countries I now can sell to has diminished greatly.

Then we have the whole tariff debacle, and even worse for small sellers all over the world – the elimination of the so-called “de minimis exemption”. If a product had a value of less than 800 US dollars, American citizens did not need to pay VAT, duty or tariff on it when importing. The removal of this will have a great impact on sellers across the world since US is a valid and interesting market. There is still uncertainty connected to whether the tariff will be tied to the product’s country of origin, or as they also have mentioned – a flat fee from 80USD to even more. If you buy a necklace from me for 35 USD , I bet you have no interest in paying 80 dollars on top of that.

Since everything is up in the air I had to remove shipping to US as well. At least temporarily until I know what the result will be. If the tariff is set based on the country, it might be the 15% tariff the US customer has to pay importing from Norway – as that is the deal at the moment. 70% of my sales haven been to the US, since the love of colours and stones there matches mine.

What a time to try this again. All the above regulations are of course targeted at some very large , specific companies, but the impact on smaller businesses all over the world is devastating. It will impact my own shop of course, but it will also impact where I’ll be able to buy from now. The excitement of finding something lovely from a far away place and getting it shipped to me will be gone. Chances are the shop I am buying from won’t be able to afford the fees.

I am just hunkering down and trying to increase my inventory again. I had grand plans for this shop to be one of the structuring elements of my retirement. I might need to pivot.