My name is Robert and I am a seller on Etsy who utilizes my talents from my career in Mortuary Sciences. I sell wet specimens and donate the profits towards other causes, such as to help organize events or towards charities. Taxidermy and preservation are naturally interesting subjects to me - it comes with the territory.
I am glad to join this new team "Taxidermy Lovers". Personally, I did not know there were such thing as "teams" on Etsy until yesterday. I am still rather new to this.
I actually learned of "Teams" in a rather odd manner, I was hoping that may haps you could assist a team that was just rallied (the group that is in fact the reason how I even learned of "Teams" altogether) by perhaps spreading word of our cause with some of the members here or any friends of yours who could help support us. If you could, it would certainly be tremendously appreciated by myself and the others.
I am not aware if you have learned this or not, but as of earlier this week, Etsy's Integrity Team has begun to forward us (Those selling Taxidermy or Wet Specimens) that our items now require a "Mature" tag to be listed, cannot be shipped in most preserving fluids any longer and most horrifyingly, that we must censor or remove our image thumbnails (those that appear in the SEARCH results) if they show any part of the work itself. For example, if I were selling a wet specimen in a jar, I would literally have to obscure or blur out every part of the specimen itself, leaving an image with only the lid of the jar visible. Naturally, that cannot really be done with items like that or large taxidermy crafts, so Etsy is essentially removing our right to include images in of our wares in search results whatsoever.
For that reason, I felt that since you fine folks are avid fans of this type of artwork, you could possibly hep support us as we attempt to stand against this, in hopes to raise awareness of the unfairness in this new policy.
Should you choose to do so, you can of course do it in this team or among your own friends and shoppes and I am not coming here to beg for recruitment for our group of merchants. If you do perhaps want to see our group however, you can find us here:
www.etsy.com/teams/21088/tell-etsy-that-taxidermy-is-art
Thank you very much for your time and consideration on this subject.
Best Regards,
-R.C. Nasta.
