By "internet circles I run in" I'm talking about the ball-jointed doll hobby, so probably 90% of the products we're talking about are handmade doll clothes and wigs. The dolls themselves are usually made of polyurethane resin, which I don't think could be considered harmful once it's cured.
Most of the other hand-crafted things I would consider checking Etsy for first are things like jewelry and pottery. Unless you're using lead-based glazes, I think those sellers are all pretty safe going to Storenvy.
I just know that a large percentage of the makers I follow on social media have been complaining about these new payment policies in the past few weeks, and many of them have already opened Storenvy shops.
> any product whose use is regulated by any law in any jurisdiction.
That doesn't mean say product which is banned in your jurisdiction.
It means any product that is regulated (as in, there is any law at all governing its use) in any jurisdiction.
Like for example plastic is normally pretty harmless, but maybe theres a law in Portugal saying there can't be a certain amount of plastic in soft drinks and now its restricted
IANAL but I thought this wording was interesting and took it to its logical extremes.
True, the wording is pretty vague. I assume it's a CYA-clause for Storenvy so they're not liable if someone sells something illegal somewhere. IANAL either though, so who knows.
It looks like Etsy's policy is a little more explicit about it being the seller's job to make sure whatever it is is legal wherever it is.
> Due to the potential harm caused by hazardous materials, as well as complex legal regulations surrounding such materials, including shipping restrictions, hazardous materials are prohibited on Etsy
Etsy doesn't define "hazardous materials" in their policy though, just provides a few examples.
> Our marketplaces provides a direct connection between buyers and sellers around the world. If you buy or sell an item from another country, or if you enter into a transaction with someone across international borders, you are responsible for complying with international trade restrictions, including restrictions put into place by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), regardless of your location.
Well, mostly, it's because they're not mass-produced. The type that I collect are made from polyurethane resin, which has to be handcast in silicone rubber molds.
Each doll is made of 15+ individually cast pieces (at minimum - two feet, two calves, two thighs, two hands, two forearms, two upper arms, torso, head and headcap, and that is for a single-jointed doll with a one-piece torso, many dolls will also have extra knee, elbow, wrist, and ankle pieces, and the torso may be in two or three pieces instead of one).
Those pieces then have to be hand-finished (removal of extra flashing material, sometimes elastic channels drilled for the stringing if that was not already included in the mold, sometimes full seam sanding), and assembled with elastic and metal hooks.
The silicone molds are only good for about 10-20 castings before they start having enough wear and tear to reduce the quality of the resulting doll, so a lot of the material cost is actually in the silicone (platinum-cure silicone is much more expensive than resin). New molds then must be made off of the original master sculpture.
Then, if you bought the doll with a face up, an artist hand paints the doll's features with pastels and acrylic paints. And if you bought it blank, you will have to either paint the face yourself or commission someone to do so eventually, as blank dolls really don't have anything in the way of features - imagine a 3d model with no textures applied.
So that's just the incremental cost of each individual doll. On top of that you have to pay for artist development time of new sculpts, marketing and websites, translators if you want to be able to sell your dolls worldwide, all other other usual overhead costs of running any sort of business, etc.
Edit: Also, I don't know if most people really realize the size of some of these dolls. The ones I have that start broaching the $1k mark are anywhere from 65-72cm tall, and weigh as much as 10 lbs. One of mine is 80cm tall, meant to represent a 12ish year old girl in 1:2 scale. She's so big I buy her shoes from the toddler department, not a doll shop.
In the past everything was expensive. The world of mass production hides from us how much it costs to make 1 of something. A few hundred years ago books were insanely expensive and almost nobody had them. A hundred years ago toys were hand made and expensive and a child might have one or two, most likely passed down from someone else.
We live in a world where the amount of cheap stuff has exploded beyond the imaginations of anyone from the past.
Would this include anything that would fall under California's Prop 65 warning labels? Because if so, that'd cut out a LOT of things you'd never worry about...
> Any product containing any hazardous or dangerous material including mercury or any product whose use is regulated by any law in any jurisdiction.
I get what they're trying to do, but that's pretty broad
https://support.storenvy.com/customer/portal/articles/93987-...