Recently, we’ve seen a notable increase in multi-shop bundles on Creative Market. These products have done remarkably well in terms of sales and have quickly claimed several spots in our list of top-selling items. While we salute the ingenuity, creativity, and effort of those creating and participating in these bundles, we’ve come to the very difficult conclusion that, for now, Creative Market isn’t the right place for them.
Creative Market Loves Individual Creators
Creative Market was started as a way for individual creators to thrive while doing what they love. That’s who we are and we never want to lose sight of that. It’s important to us that we build a marketplace that values creators’ work, without forcing a pricing race to the bottom, or creating a climate where shops feel like they are forced to participate in bundles to get exposure.
The easiest decision for us here is to ignore these concerns and continue to enjoy the revenue spikes from these bundles, but that’s simply not the company we want to be. In all that we do, we want to empower and lift up the indie creators in our community, and in order to accomplish this, we need to remove the ability for users to bundle together goods from other shops. In addition to the new policy on multi-shop bundles, we’ll also be doubling down our efforts to find new ways to promote great shops and products that deserve more visibility.
Why Multi-Shop Bundles Are Complicated
We don’t have a problem with bundles, or even multi-shop bundles. As many of you know, we have our own multi-shop bundle that we put together every single month. We work hard to make sure these bundles are fair for both shops and buyers.
Unfortunately, allowing our users to create bundles with multiple participants is much more complicated. Unlike our own bundle, we simply can’t ensure that third-party, multi-shop bundles provide the kind of experience that we can stand behind as a platform or as a brand.
We have several concerns:
- Since each bundle must be controlled entirely by a single account, we can’t be sure that all participating contributors are receiving their fair share of the earnings, or even getting an honest look into the sales numbers for the product that they’ve participated in putting together.
- It’s extremely difficult for us to track down whether the bundle creators actually have full permission to sell the products of other creatives. It’s important to note that, to our knowledge, the current creators of these bundles have operated with the highest level of integrity, but it’s virtually impossible for us to guarantee that others who seek to replicate their success will be as honest.
- Several shop owners have expressed concern that allowing too many multi-shop bundles to exist unchecked could have damaging long-term effects on both the community and economy on our site (see previous section).
For these reasons, we will be implementing an official policy that prohibits shops from offering bundles of products from multiple shops and outside contributors.
Note: This policy only applies to multi-shop and/or multi-contributor bundles. Every individual shop owner may continue to bundle together his or her own products.
We Want You To Have Better Bundle Tools
For the most part, the problems surrounding these bundles are on our end, not yours. We want our users to have the tools that they need to succeed, whether that be a way for shops to easily bundle their own goods, or something that allows great, hard-working shops to partner with each other. We’re going to carefully look at all these possibilities and commit to building better bundle tools for shops in 2016.
We’ll do this while working closely with our community to ensure that as we build these tools, the following goals will be our top priorities:
- Buyers will continue to be able to find great, best-in-industry products and deals on Creative Market.
- Any bundles that shops participate in will have checks in place to ensure that all contributors are willing participants who are compensated fairly.
- Bundles will not “take over” Creative Market. The success of individual creators will always be at the core of who we are and what we do.
Timeline For Removing Multi-Shop Bundles
These new policies will be implemented as of February 1st, 2016. We ask that all shops remove (and cease uploading) multi-shop bundles as of that date. Please know that we did not make this decision lightly, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused the shops and contributors behind these bundles.
Thank You For Speaking Up!
Every single time we’re faced with a tough decision at Creative Market, we are comforted by the fact that our community is passionate and outspoken. We’d like to thank all of you, including the great shop owners currently running multi-shop bundles, for kindly telling us your concerns and having patience as we worked through these issues. We hear you and want you to continue to be a critical part of how we shape the future of Creative Market.
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