What are who_made and when_made

Etsy prides itself on being the marketplace for selling handmade and homemade products. With this in mind, you must track who makes your products and when they are made. Shop Uploader uses the who_made and year_made columns to add this information to your Etsy listings.

This article covers:

• What is who_made?
• How to enter who made through Etsy
• How to enter who made with Shop Uploader
• What is when_made?
• How to enter when made through Etsy
• How to enter when made with Shop Uploader

Why do I need who_made and when_made?

The who_made category refers to who made your product. The when_made category refers to your product's production year. Etsy uses this information to ensure that your products are handmade, vintage, or both. The information you provide in these fields helps Etsy determine if your product fits their requirements.

What is who_made?

Who made describes who made your product. Etsy cares about this because they only accept handmade, vintage, or supply items on their platform. They want to make sure the product you are selling is indeed handmade.

How to enter who made through Etsy

To enter who made it on Etsy, you must first navigate to your listings page. Once there, select the listing you want to edit. While in the listings, scroll down to the listing details section. There you will see the about this listing subsection and three dropdown boxes.

The first dropdown refers to who made it.

To select who made it, click the dropdown and select the corresponding option.

How to enter who made with Shop Uploader

To enter who made with Shop Uploader, open your upload template. With this open, find your listing(s), then scroll to the right until you find the who_made column. You add one of the following options to the correct cell(s).

Those options are:

1. i_did
2. someone_else
3. collective

i_did means that you made your product, from the design process to manufacturing your product. This option corresponds to Etsy’s option of “I did”.

someone_else means that you may have designed the product, but someone outside your shop did the actual manufacturing. If you select this option, you need to add a production partner. This option corresponds to Etsy’s option of “Another company or person”.

collective means multiple people from your shop worked on constructing your product. You do not need to assign a production partner for this category. This option corresponds to Etsy’s option of “A member of my shop”.

For more information on production partners, visit the Production Partner article.

What is when_made?

When made is the year or decade your product was produced. Etsy needs this information to determine if your product can be considered vintage.

How to enter when made through Etsy

To enter when made, first, navigate to the Etsy listings page. Next, select the listing you want to edit. Finally, scroll down to the listing details section. There you will see the about this listing subsection. Use the third dropdown to enter when made.

There are quite a few options you can select when entering when made through Etsy. Below is a list of most of the available when-made options.

How to enter when made with Shop Uploader

To enter who made with Shop Uploader, open your upload template. With this open, find your listing, then scroll to the right until you find the year_made column.

Note: when_made and year_made are used interchangeably and refer to the same concept

Unlike Etsy, Shop Uploader only requires the year it was made. For example, instead of saying 1980s, you would put 1986 if that was the year made. If you don’t know the exact year it was made but know the decade, you can enter any year from that decade.

Note: If your product is made to order, select TRUE in the made_to_order column. When this column is TRUE, you can leave the year_made column empty.