Etsy Rolls Out US-Specific Pricing Tool To Help Non-US Sellers Handle Tariffs & Other Import Costs
Etsy is finally rolling out a solution for non-US sellers to set US-specific item prices to bake in tariffs, brokerage fees and other import costs.
The new feature will initially only be available via the Etsy.com website, not the app, and sellers should gain access in a phased rollout happening between October 20-27th.
Once enabled, sellers will be able to adjust their prices shown just to buyers in the US on individual items or in bulk up to 500 listings at a time, allowing them to account for tariffs, duties, brokerage fees, and other import costs that may apply - but sellers should be careful if they use Etsy's existing global pricing options as they may override any US-specific settings.
From Etsy's help page How to Add Domestic, Global, and US-Specific Pricing to Your Listings:
If you’re a seller outside the US, you can set up a different listing price for orders shipping within your country and orders shipping outside your country.
You can also set up US-specific prices for your listings. If you previously adjusted your global prices to account for US tariffs, be sure to adjust them again after setting US-specific pricing...
...When you set up domestic and global pricing for items with free shipping, you can add domestic and global pricing to all the other listings linked to your free shipping profile. The country of origin can’t be changed for shipping profiles linked to listings with domestic and global pricing.
Currently, US-specific pricing can only be set on Etsy.com. You can set domestic and global pricing on Etsy.com or the Etsy Seller app. At this time, this feature isn’t available on third-party apps.
You can turn domestic, global, and US-specific pricing on or off at any time. If you add domestic and global pricing but do not add US-specific pricing, US buyers will see global pricing for listings.
Etsy provided a short video showing how the new pricing feature works.
And like the existing domestic and global pricing options, sellers should be aware that US-specific pricing will not work on listings with more than 400 variations.
While having some capability to cover US-specific import costs is better than nothing, it's interesting that the only option Etsy is willing to provide is for sellers to bake those costs into their item prices, rather than being able to add tariffs as a separately stated cost like they way Etsy charges taxes.
That decision clearly works in the company's favor as adding those costs to the item price will artificially boost Etsy's reported Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS) - just like it did when they moved packaging and handling fees into item prices earlier this year.
Liz Morton
Etsy seller and ecommerce consultant Cindy Baldassi also pointed out some potential concerns about the new feature in a post on LinkedIn, saying the existing domestic and global tool has some problems that Etsy still has not resolved - and it's possible those problems could extend to the US-specific option as well.
POTENTIAL CONCERN:
The regular domestic and global pricing tool has not worked correctly for over 2 1/2 years and Etsy has made no effort to fix the problem. It sometimes resets the global price to be the same as the domestic price. This can happen any time a listing is edited for any reason, including shipping profiles, variations and description
We do not yet know if this problem has carried over to the new US version of the tool.
Per an Etsy forum post the only thing sellers can do to fix incorrect prices is:
"Set global and domestic both to the global price and publish. Go to your listing dashboard, tick the checkbox of the item. Use editing options and reduce the domestic price by the amount you wish."
Etsy Support regularly refuses to refund shops when a buyer is charged too low a price because of this permanent bug, but some sellers persevere and do succeed in getting compensation.
This could be a major issue in countries where tariffs and brokerage is very high, so please check to make sure that your orders come through with the correct pricing.
Baldassi also recently posted on her Patreon about an unannounced change to Etsy's Search Policy saying international sellers who offer a Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping option to their US buyers may be ranked higher in search - which could be problematic and unfair as many countries still don't have an affordable DDP shipping option available.
The updated policy states:
Shipping: shipping price and method are factors in search ranking. If sellers offer a US free shipping guarantee, free shipping or shipping prices under $6 to US shoppers, a Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping method to US shoppers, or if they offer lower shipping prices to buyers in their own country, it may improve their listings rank in search results.
Sellers with questions or concerns about those Shipping policy updates or the new US-specific pricing feature may wish to attend the live "Ask Me Anything" session Etsy’s Chief Product Growth Officer Kruti Patel Goyal on November 4th - questions can be submitted in advance through a dedicated Google form for the event.
