How scoring works

Honest Originals reads the public information already on the Etsy™ pages you visit and weighs the little things that tend to separate a real maker from a reseller. No single thing decides a score — each one adds a bit of evidence, and the badge always shows you what we noticed.

What we look at

• Catalog size vs. shop age — a brand-new shop with thousands of listings is hard to make by hand.
• Shipping origin vs. stated location — a "local maker" whose items ship from overseas.
• Processing & delivery windows — "ready to ship" items with multi-week delivery.
• Listing structure — huge variant grids and supplier-style option names.
• Description patterns — copied supplier boilerplate.
• Price plausibility — a claimed material or craft priced below what it could cost to make.
• Sale patterns — an entire catalog permanently "on sale" at one uniform discount.
• Photos — factory catalog shots and watermark remnants.
• Review patterns — buyers who report finding the item on mass-market sites, or bursts of generic reviews.
• Cross-shop duplicates — the same photos appearing across many "different" shops.
• Production-partner disclosure — shops that are transparent about how items are made (a positive signal).

We describe our method, not the exact weights — that transparency helps buyers without handing resellers a manual for gaming it.

What the bands mean

• Looks handmade — the little things line up with a real maker.
• Worth a closer look — a few things don't quite add up.
• Looks mass-produced — reads more like a reseller than a maker.
• Not enough to tell yet — too little to judge; we never guess.

Think we got it wrong?

Scores are probability assessments from observable facts, and they can be wrong. If you own a shop and believe its score misreads your work, dispute it — free, reviewed by a human, always.