Advances in manufacturing have made it possible to make products faster and more efficiently than ever in history. Manufacturing has also been brought to consumers with technologies such as 3-D printing, allowing anyone to produce an item with the touch of a button. However, the vast majority of people truly appreciate when something is handmade by a skilled craftsman, and that might explain the success of Etsy (News - Alert), a website dedicated to offering a platform in which handmade products can be sold.

The company launched Etsy Wholesale last year to offer its sellers a channel for growing their business by making it available with qualified independent boutiques around the world. The platform is designed for retailers to find unique product they can offer in their store year-round. This includes a streamlined ordering process that ensures payment and delivery of the products offered by the sellers.

Etsy Wholesale was launched into beta last year and the company announced it will launch publicly later this summer, officially coming out of beta. In order to start selling their products, individuals have to pay a one-time joining fee of $100 followed by a 3.5 percent transaction fee that will be collected by Etsy for wholesale purchase orders.

Even though the new wholesale platform goes against the initial principles that founded Etsy, some sellers have been asking to relax the rules that were put in place. When the company was founded it was intended to assist craftsmen that produce products by hand. But some members violated this rule by offering mass manufactured products on their Etsy store. While this angered many people that strictly followed the guidelines the company established; others wanted a more lenient rule regarding how some items were produced.

This led to members of the community establishing watchdog blogs and forum groups to report instances in which products that are mass-produced are sold on the site. For its part Etsy has a Marketplace Trust and Integrity Team and an algorithm called SCRAM (Systems for Catching Resellers and Abusers of the Marketplace) to detect resellers of mass manufactured products.

In a report in the New York Times, Etsy Chief Executive Chad Dickerson said, “If merchandise from Etsy sellers can be available in thousands of stores, as opposed to in a handful that we could possibly run ourselves, then it’s better for our sellers and it’s better for our buyers.