The First Thread: KXKCustomShop

KXK wasn’t new to me. I’d seen them for years on Amazon, Facebook, and Google Shopping — a massive custom‑jersey brand with endless variations, cookie cutter stock‑photo mockups, and factory‑level, too-good-to-believe pricing. They were part of the wave of China‑based factories that flooded U.S. marketplaces after Amazon China shut down the third-party marketplace in that country due to massive fraud. Apparently the state run businesses don’t like to compete with capitalism.

So what were they doing on Etsy?

How Did a Chinese Factory End up Selling on Etsy 

And Why is Etsy Labeling them as “🖐🏿Made”?

Etsy is a marketplace for small business and folks that make things or design things or curate things. Handpicked, hand created, handmade.

Why would a Chinese factory be able to sell on Etsy as an independent maker with no production partners and claiming to ship from California? Blending in with the flood of new “handmade” shops that have been dominating search results.

Same mockups. Same listing photos showing dozen of computer generated mock ups with banner text slapped all over it like a front window of a convenience store. The same eerily perfect but soulless AI models. Nearly identical to dozens of other shops that all look like they came off the same assembly line.

And none of these listing photos even remotely meet Etsy’s image requirements. 100% fail.

Then I saw their banner:

“Hign Quality Custom Products.”

If you’re selling “high quality,” maybe start by spelling the first word on your shop banner correctly? It makes me wonder how capable they are of printing the correct names on their mass produce products.

I also noticed the blank, emotionless faces of those disaffected teens, staring out at me from the AI generated banner.  Creepy Shining vibes… Wait, come to think of it those might be actual teenagers.

Failed spelling tests and low-grade computer generated AI banners put aside, they weren’t the real red flag.

The Numbers That Didn’t Add Up

4,100 sales.

7 years on Etsy.

1 year of sales history

I’ve been selling on Etsy for 10 years and managed to amass 13,000+ sales through hard work, 1 piece at a time. I know the work that goes into making these products. I know what mass produced items look like.  You don’t do these numbers without production partners, without shop helpers, without scaling, without outsourcing.

Keep in mind that 4,100 sales are only the tip of the iceberg, the actual number of units is likely significantly higher—potentially between 12,300 and 20,500+ units—because of how Etsy and eRank track sales data for bulk products like sports jerseys and the nature of the products. People buy for sports teams. They’re often sold in bulk.

The timeline also doesn't make sense, eRank showed almost all of those sales — happened in the last 12 months. The timeline of the reviews only go back about a year as well.

So what was KXK doing for the other six years? 

And why would a factory‑scale brand with a global footprint bother with Etsy at all?

Because they weren’t just “on Etsy.”
They were thriving:

• dominating categories
• ranking high
• selling nonstop
• posting listings nonstop
• Many items were were best sellers on Etsy
• all while claiming to be handmade?

The logistics were all over the map

When I cross-referenced the information provided by Etsy and on the KXK website, I found this:

Etsy store Ships from: Ukiah, California
Etsy shop Owner location: Mendocino, California
Website address: Los Gatos, California
Website About page: Hong Kong, China

Nothing about this shop looked handmade by the maker

They’d been on Etsy for seven years, yet almost all sales happened in the last year. Their volume was enormous — far beyond what any handmade shop could produce. Their turnaround times were factory‑fast. Their prices were factory‑low. And their shipping origin? Ukiah, CA.

But:

• no shop photos
• no owner profile
• no production partners
• no business registration
• no evidence of a California workshop
• Yet still listed as handmade?

It was like reading a résumé where every bullet point cancels out the one before it.

I didn’t know yet whether this KXK Etsy shop was a full remote‑run shadow shell shop operation or a single person masked as a factory rep. Either way they’re cranking out a tremendous amount of product for a shop giving every signal that it’s a single independent maker.

At that point, I had two choices:
Walk away…
or follow the thread.

So I messaged the listed owner: Xiaohong Lin.

The Conversation That Confirmed Everything

I expected a canned Star Seller reply.
Instead, I got a confession.

I asked about a bulk order — 240 jerseys — and said I needed them made in the U.S. Their Etsy listing claimed they shipped from Ukiah, California.

The response:

“We are a local store in the United States. But our factory is in China, where labor is relatively cheap and manufacturing is more developed…”

They offered:

• 20% discount
• free DHL shipping
• direct production and shipping from China

I pressed again:

Why does the listing say California?
Why no production partner?
Why the handmade label?

Their answer:

“We are an American company, but our factory is in China… I don’t want to deceive you because some customers have strict requirements for the shipping location.”

I asked if they were resellers.

They clarified:

“We are a KKX direct operated store, not a distributor… All the jerseys will be produced directly at the KKX factory and then shipped to customers.”

No middlemen.
No handmade production.
No U.S. workshop.
Just a direct pipeline from a Chinese factory to an Etsy storefront labeled “handmade.”

And that was it — the moment the illusion collapsed.

The quiet part out loud

KXK wasn’t a glitch.
They weren’t confused.
They weren’t an exception.

They were a case study — the first thread in a much larger pattern.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it:

• The same photo templates.
• The same production videos
• the same “handmade” labels
• the same sudden sales spikes
• the same lack of transparency
• the same operators
• the same pipeline

KXK was simply the first shop willing to say the quiet part out loud.

Etsy’s Silence Says More Than Their Policies

What do you do when you find a shop on Etsy that seems to be breaking the rules? That seems to be working outside of the guidelines that Etsy puts in place? You report the shop or you can report the listing. So I did that. I provided all this information including the entire chat thread, the handmade badge, the confession that they were Chinese factory, and I sent it off to Etsy at the end of December.

• the message thread
• the admissions
• the handmade badge
• the evidence trail

Etsy’s response: nothing.

KXK is still live.
Still selling factory‑made jerseys.
Still labeled 100% “🖐🏿Made.”

As of January 12, 2026, Etsy continues to certify them as handmade.

The Beginning of a Bigger Story

KXK was the first thread I pulled — but not the last.

In the weeks that followed, I found multiple storefronts with the same fingerprints:

• shared warehouses
• shared photos
• shared business registrations
• shared operators
• no production partners
• massive sales
• “handmade” badges

This is part of an ongoing investigation into Etsy’s growing network of factory‑run storefronts — and the handmade sellers being buried beneath them.

More threads are coming.
More evidence.
More names.

And while I’m pulling these threads, I’m also trying to keep my own shop alive — navigating Etsy’s opaque rules and avoiding the automated penalties that hit real makers harder than any factory ever will.

If you want the next chapter — the next receipts, the next wave of evidence —

join the group: Keeping Etsy Human