Every ArtisanCheck seal carries a six-digit number. Enter it and see the maker behind the product, each claim they make, and the evidence on file for every one.
Company, ownership and structure are checked against documents, not assertions.
Each claim on a label is assessed on its own, so a strong claim never props up a weak one.
Documents stay with the application, and a reviewer can ask for more at any point.
Every certificate is verifiable by anyone, here, without an account.
We are independent. We do not review, rank, score, promote or sell placement. We validate the information a maker provides and certify accordingly — no fee buys a favourable decision, and the standard the decisions are made against is published.
A seal is a claim in itself. So the register shows the working behind it, instead of asking you to take the mark on faith.
The business on the certificate: name, time in operation, location, and legal structure.
Handmade first, then vegan, organic, natural, made-in and cruelty-free — each assessed separately, on its own evidence.
Anything that couldn't be confirmed is asked about, and the answer joins the record.
The number is the proof — a copied image is not.
N° 000000
A certified product line under Willow & Wax.
A person reads every application. Questions and answers stay on it, where you can see them.
Describe the business, then how vegan and non-vegan production are kept apart, how expiry is managed, and what you source from elsewhere.
Registration for corporations, nothing for sole proprietors or unregistered makers — plus evidence for your answers.
They read it, open the documents, and approve, ask for more, or decline with reasons.
A six-digit certificate, valid for a year, with downloadable seals. Each product line follows the same way: one line, one claim set, one number.
In 2023 the consumer group Which? looked at the first page of Etsy results across furniture, toys and clothing, filtered to handmade only, and ran reverse image searches on what came back. Of 192 items, 23 turned out to be on sale elsewhere online, and all but two were more expensive on Etsy. One children’s book listed at £27.98 was available on Alibaba for £4. Only two sellers in the sample disclosed that another company helped make the item, and researchers could not find evidence that the named companies existed.
None of this necessarily breaks any rules. A seller can describe a mass-produced item as handmade provided they had a hand in the design and say so on the listing. That’s the problem. The word has no enforceable meaning, so it can be technically true and still tell a buyer nothing.
An ArtisanCheck seal carries a number. Type it in and you see who made the product, where, and what we verified before the seal went on.
Handmade included. It is a claim on our list, with a definition of its own: the steps that turn materials into the product are done by hand, by the maker or the maker's own team, in premises the maker controls. A product designed here and manufactured elsewhere is refused by name, however much of the design was the maker's own — which is the arrangement the word is usually covering for.
Source: Which? — “Etsy sellers duping buyers with ‘handmade’ items”, April 2023. Also reported by The Guardian.
You worked hard to make what you’ve made. You deserve the credit.
Start an application Read what handmade meansStart with the Certified Artisan Vendor certification. Add product lines one by one, or bundle them under a membership that renews on one date.
A product line is for cosmetics and anything else that goes on the skin, where the claim on the label is what gets assessed. Hard goods and permanent crafts — pottery, ceramics, jewellery and the like — need only the vendor certification, which carries the craft claims; a hard-goods maker can certify a line as well when a named piece should carry its own number.
All charges are in Canadian dollars (CAD), including renewals, and the amount charged is the amount published here at the time you apply. See the terms of service.
The short answers. Everything else comes up inside the application, where it belongs.
If your goods are genuinely handmade, from where you say, and made of what you say, certification puts that on the record — checkable by a customer or a retailer in seconds.
A photograph of a seal can be copied. The register can't.