I have been selling printed T shirts on Amazon for the past 7 years and made a fairly good living from it and when I heard about Amazon Merch being launched in the states always new that would be the kiss of death for us if it ever came to the UK and I think I was right, I believe their first production facility in the UK went live October 2021 and we saw a massive drop in sales when it did, although I think they might have hit capacity during December when all of a sudden sales picked back up to previous years levels. I think this year they opened a second and now we are really feeling the effect. In the past Etsy would be only 10% of our turnover and ebay only 5% but this past December etsy was 60%of turnover and continues to show an increase with Amazon now down 80% on previous years.
I did a search on Amazon using an incognito browser window for a generic search term of “Funny T shirt” first 5 listings were sponsored the rest were “merch by Amazon” no wonder we cant get any sales.
I know its just the way it is now but just thought I would vent!