My husband and I just moved to a town near Kanazawa, so I’m new to life in Japan – I have an Etsy shop from back home based out of the US that’s currently on “vacation mode” until I can figure out how to reopen it. But I’m not sure if it’s possible to have an Etsy shop based out of Japan. Does anyone have experience with that?
I saw this article, which seems to say that it’s not possibly to have an Etsy shop here? https://cecilbrown.co/Etsy-Bans-New-Japan-Seller-Accounts-Etsy-Payments
One more question- if Etsy isn’t an option here, does anyone have suggestions for a similar site that they use? Is Creema like Etsy?
Thank you for any insight!
5 comments
Closest thing is Mercari I guess.
I have an Etsy shop and have never had any problems. All of my payment accounts are US based and I just set all of the settings in Etsy that I’m located here for shipping and such.
Mercari, Yahoo Auction, PayPay Mall, and a lot more.
I bought from Etsy in Japan and I selected the “stores based in Japan” to save on shipping a few times, so it has to be a possibility
It *used* to be possible to open Etsy shops from Japan, back when you could accept payments on Etsy via PayPal. Today Etsy has stopped allowing new accounts to accept PayPal payments, all new accounts must use Etsy’s new payment system, and that payment system is not (yet?) available in Japan.
So if you see someone in Japan with an Etsy shop, they’ve had it for a while.
If you have a US-based Etsy account you might be able to make things work but I don’t know enough about the way Etsy works to say if that is possible or if it is allowed in the Etsy ToS.
You should keep in mind that running at Etsy shop may not fall within your visa status, depending on what that status is. You will also have to report your sales in Japan and file taxes here, at least if you have over 200,000yen worth of earnings in a year.