Dawanda is finally introducing listing and sold items fees

I've just received today a pre-invoice from Dawanda. This is two fold:
1. We are to pay for all sold items starting from June 08 a 5% fee
3. Dawanda is introducing new listing fees (it was free until now), which is depending on the price of the item.

This is the new scheme for the listing fees (separately of the 5% commision on each sold item).

Items up to value 10.00 EUR cost 0.10 EUR per item listed
Items of value 10.01 EUR - 20.00 EUR cost 0.20 EUR per item listed
Items of value 20.01 EUR and above cost 0.30 EUR per item listed
Listings are now running on a limited time of 120 days, starting on the day of listing.

Now I don't mind paying, we all knew it was coming, however I find that being less known than Etsy, and having much less traffic and sales, Dawanda is introducing a very steep pricing structure.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Etsy has 3.5% commision and a flat fee of $0.2 for each listed item.

Dawanda, has a 5% commision, and depending on the item listed, it can cost you up to 0.3 Euros (which is approximately $0.4 - double than the Etsy listing).

Also I think most of us were under the impression that the fees will be introduced from 'now on', not going back to mid last year. A couple of us have been just hit with a major fee that we have to pay by Feb. 23, which we didn't count on.

I guess what I've always preached but never really put into place, I will have to actually do: start my own shop under my own name and domain, so I can control exactly what I'm paying and when.

If you have a shop at Dawanda right now, what do you think of these new listing fees? You might just convice me to keep my items there for a bit longer if you have the best argument...or to open my own shop :-)

Children jewelry sold in Hawaii recalled

The Hawaii based company called Aloha 808 Trading, has just recalled around 12,800 pieces of jewelry due to them containing high levels of lead. All this jewelry was for children and they were made in China. Ouch.
It seems that the jewelry was sold in Honolulu from April to November this year for between $2 and $5 US.

It seriously makes you re-think buying other than artisan, handcrafted jewelry, since there is no such danger of lead and other 'strange' materials entering the piece, except what we manually work with. But of course, there are always people who are prepared to buy pieces worth $2 from their local Wallmart and face the risk of their child getting cancer or whatever else these products might contain.

Just for curiosity's sake, here are some of the pieces recalled in Honolulu...