Impact
Every order here pays a person, not a production line. That is the whole idea. What follows is what it means in practice — including the parts we have not solved yet.
The money goes to makers
- 11 independent shops trade on Ettee. Not one of them is a warehouse. Meet them.
- We take no commission on shipping. What a buyer pays for postage goes to postage, not to us.
- No forced advertising fees. Marketplaces commonly make ads compulsory above a revenue line and bill sellers 12–15% on top. We do not. The full comparison is on What It Costs.
Made to order means almost nothing is wasted
A factory guesses how many it will sell and destroys the rest. A maker here starts your piece after you order it. That is slower — and it is why there is no clearance bin on this site.
- No unsold stock burned or landfilled at the end of a season.
- Materials bought for the piece, not for a forecast.
- Repairs are normal. A hand-stitched seam can be re-stitched; a glued one cannot.
Why small shops matter in the US
Small Business Saturday — the Saturday after Thanksgiving — moves roughly $22 billion in a single day, and small shop owners routinely expect around a fifth of their annual revenue from that one weekend. Around 85% of shoppers say they intend to buy from a small business that day, rising to 88% among Gen Z and Millennials.
On the Friday people compare prices. On the Saturday they compare people. That is the day this site was built for.
Where the work travels
We ship to 35 countries. A maker working at a kitchen table in one state can now be the person who made a wedding gift on another continent. Details on Shipping & Delivery.
What we have not fixed
An impact page that only lists wins is marketing. These are open:
- Shipping emissions. Individual parcels crossing oceans is the least efficient way to move goods. We have not solved it. We do not offset it and pretend that is the same thing.
- Packaging is uneven. Every shop packs its own orders. Some use recycled and plastic-free materials; not all do yet.
- We cannot audit every workshop. We check that work is handmade. We cannot yet verify every material’s origin, and we will not claim otherwise.
What a buyer can do
- Order earlier. Standard shipping is far lighter than express, and giving a maker time is free.
- Buy one good thing. A piece that lasts ten years beats three that last one.
- Leave a review with a photo. For a shop this size, one honest review does more than any ad we could buy.
