Hello to all forum readers and writers,

In the coming week, on Wednesday August 5th, a few new changes to DaWanda will be implemented. Here's a little overview for you of the changes taking place next week.

1) New functions for shipping options
Starting next week, sellers will have more flexibility when it comes to shipping options.
- Instead of choosing between national and international shipping (as was previously the case), soon sellers will be able to choose as many different countries or regions (e.g. EU, Europe, North America) as they wish.
- They'll be able to indicate a shipping discount in the form of Combined Shipping. Combination Shipping prices will indicate how much it costs if a product is shipped together with one or more other products. So your customer will more quickly and easily see how much shipping will cost if they buy several items from your shop.
- Shipping settings can be stored as a 'shipping profile', and then be assigned to several products at the same time. So you won't have to manually input the settings for every newly listed items. And of course you'll be able to create as many different shipping profiles as you want.

2) Concrete Guidelines
Quite often a discussion will come up in the forums about which items you are permitted to sell on DaWanda, and which items are not permitted. We have now settled some important questions for you in this regard, by writing some guidelines. These guidelines, which we will publish in the coming week, clarify DaWanda's Terms & Conditions for many central issues. These guidelines also clarify what is expected of sellers and buyers, and how product listings should be put together and presented. We have also considered the question of who may sell which types of products on DaWanda in more detail than before.

At the same time, we will also simplify the process of bringing dubious product listings on DaWanda to our attention. Logged-in DaWanda members will see a link at the bottom left of every product page, which says 'Report a violation to DaWanda'. This can be used to alert our Feedback Team to an item which needs to be examined. You can pick the exact type of violation, and enter your own comment. The DaWanda Feedback Team will then take a look at every reported listing, and if a violation has occurred, they will get in touch with the seller in question to find a solution to the problem.

3) A new category for Vintage
In the course of writing the guidelines for products which you are permitted to sell on DaWanda, we also decided that in the future we would distinguish more clearly between different product types (e.g. unique items made purely by hand and created by you personally, designer products, etc.), as we have already done with supplies for handcrafting. You will see the first steps in this direction being taken next Wednesday. There will be a new main category on DaWanda, called 'Vintage'. We will also adapt and improve the search function on DaWanda so you can more specifically search within the 'Vintage' and 'Supplies' categories. Buyers can decide whether they would like to search within 'Fashion, Accessories, Bags, Jewellery, Baby + Children, Home + Living and Art' (the standard search setting), or to search only within the 'Vintage' category, or only in the 'Supplies' category. As such, vintage products and supplies will be clearly separated from other DaWanda products, in their own categories, and via search, and will not be muddled together with them.

Which products can be sold in the Vintage category?
Vintage products on DaWanda should be high-quality products, which were created at least 20 years ago. They can be products from the areas of fashion, accessories, jewellery and bags, and also design objects, or furniture, antiques and other stylish treasures and collectibles. The vintage products offered on DaWanda can be both handmade or reconditioned by hand, and can originate from industrial manufacturing. As with all other products on DaWanda, these products should be 'Products with Love', and the special significance of the item to the seller should be made clear.

The Vintage category makes it possible to easily buy and sell unique and treasured pieces from days gone by on DaWanda. As time goes on, the selection of unique and special vintage items on DaWanda will become ever greater, and we look forward to welcoming an even larger group of buyers to DaWanda.

You can view the sub-categories of the Vintage category on our info page at: http://en.dawanda.com/info/page/vintage_info

Best wishes,

Azra

great improvements. thank you so much for implementing them next week
MERCI
Kalicat

This sounds great - I am hapy mostly due to the "Vintage" news here on Dawanda. Thank you!

Love the new top level vintage category ........ let's please keep this for actual vintage and not new items made with vintage parts ......... please!

I love the changes Dawanda. You are improving faster than Etsy. Yea. I like it here. I love the fact that you can edit expired listings before activating them. You can't do this on Etsy. Kudos.

Thank you for the improvements to the shipping costs. It's a neat solution.

It's good to see some changes happening, new shipping options are very helpful. But although you say the new guidelines are more 'concrete' they are still quite ambiguous in my opinion. Its very difficult for genuine original work to compete alongside pieces which are obviously made cheaply in a factory (even if they are "handmade" and "short run"- another ambigious term i think)
Dawanda has some amazingly talented sellers, but they are being drowned out by shops which have sometimes 300 or more items in stock and so take up almost half of the space in their particular category. Dawanda says that items must have a "unique feel through and through" but many of these items do not.

I joined Dawanda because i feel it is a wonderful place to sell to people who are searching for items which are unique, or have a personal touch. So I really hope that these people are not put off, if beautiful products with love are difficult to find when browsing.

I agree with you Cuada. There is a distinct lack of "uniqueness" about DaWanda at the moment. It's sort of putting me off a bit!

Had a quick look at your shop - lovely stuff! The bracelet bags are a very clever idea! I have added you to my favourites - Christmas is coming!

Hi Bluetina - thanks for lovely compliment:) You have a fab burst of colour in your shop.
I don't like being negative, but sometimes it's hard not to be! Some of my friends have started shopping here lately and have gotten some great pieces, so hopefully people will have the patience to search through to find the really unique :)Chris