The rules of selling on Faire have shifted, and success now depends on how well you understand the platform behind the scenes.

Over the past several years, my conversations with independent brands and makers have had a common theme: Faire was becoming a problem.

Even deeply confident and successful business owners reached out to tell me they were struggling — confused, frustrated, and paralyzed over whether to keep putting energy into Faire or cut their losses. 

This was jarring because Faire had spent many years creating a sense that all you had to do was sign up and the orders would roll in. And to be honest, it did kind of work that way for a while. Then, for a lot of people, it stopped: orders dried up, waitlists became indefinite, and costs kept stacking. Many people found themselves doing more work and paying more money for less predictable — sometimes nonexistent — results. As one maker said to me: “We’ve been on Faire since COVID, and our numbers have steadily declined since 2023. I have literally no idea why.” 

I knew that core wholesale principles we teach at Wholesale In a Box — including the truth that an online marketplace should only be part of your strategy, no matter what — still applied to Faire. But I also had the uncomfortable feeling that something had fundamentally shifted, and I wasn’t clear on how sellers should navigate it anymore.

So about six months ago, I set out to actually figure it out. We conducted 37 in-depth conversations with independent brands, five on-the-record interviews with Faire’s own team, and did a thorough review of how the platform has evolved since its early days. Faire even selected us to be part of a small group of Industry Advisors with quarterly touchpoints with their team — so I’m current not just on how Faire works today, but on what they’re actively changing and where they’re headed. 

What we found was pretty darn useful. Here’s what I think you need to know.

The “set it and forget it” era ended and nobody sent a memo

In Faire’s earlier days, the platform made it very easy to say yes. Brands got dedicated account managers, hands-on onboarding, and referral credits. Retailers got deals like up to $20,000 in startup inventory credit. This wasn’t accidental — it was strategy. Faire raised hundreds of millions in venture capital, and like most VC-backed marketplaces, they needed to build critical mass fast and outrun competitors. Taking a loss for years to make that happen is standard for this kind of venture. But once they’d built the marketplace they needed, profit became a priority and their policies and algorithm shifted.

Most brands didn’t find out any of this until their orders stopped coming. Around 2022, Faire opened its doors to a massive surge of new brands, which meant the algorithm had to get a lot more selective. As Faire’s team put it:

“We used to emphasize that Faire was more of a set-it-and-forget-it platform. But after that time, there was a really large increase in brands — and that came with the reality that brands that are putting in consistent elbow grease and tinkering and making things relevant are going to succeed.”

Many makers who joined before 2022 built their businesses on one set of rules and woke up inside a completely different game.

Faire is actively scoring you — and most sellers don’t know it

Part of what made the shift so disorienting is that the new rules were never explained. And the most important one is this: every order you fulfill, every message you respond to (or don’t), every review you earn feeds into a performance profile that Faire uses to decide how prominently — or rarely — to show you to buyers. It’s not just about having good products. Your operational behavior is directly shaping your visibility.

Faire tracks your policies (lead time, minimums, shipping terms), your fulfillment and customer service metrics (on-time shipments, cancellation rate, response rate, reviews), and engagement signals like your conversion rate and catalog freshness. Strong metrics build visibility over time. Weak ones erode it — often gradually enough that you don’t notice until the drop feels sudden. 

And Faire’s dashboard only shows you a fraction of what the algorithm is actually assessing.

Once you know what Faire is measuring, you can work on the things that actually move the needle instead of guessing.

As Faire’s platform has evolved, increased competition and algorithm-driven visibility mean brands must stay active and strategic to maintain consistent orders.

Why orders drop — and why the pattern is predictable

This is where the scoring system shows up in real life. The order dropoff is probably the single most common Faire experience.

New brands get a temporary visibility boost when they first join while Faire gathers data. When that window closes — typically within a few weeks — visibility becomes far more selective. If you haven’t built the right foundations during that time, the boost ends and so do the orders.

Longer-term drops are just as predictable. The cause is almost always one of three things: catalog drift (listings that haven’t been updated, seasonal relevance that has slipped), a performance metric that has crossed a threshold and is dragging down your visibility, or conditions that were once carrying you — a trending category, less competition — that have shifted. None of these shifts tend to set off alarm bells on their own – but they are identifiable… and they’re usually fixable.

The economics are layered — and easy to underestimate

There’s one more piece of the picture that most sellers are missing, and it’s a financial one. For every dollar of wholesale revenue on Faire, most brands keep somewhere between 70 and 82 cents — sometimes less. Most have never calculated this. On top of the base 15% commission, there’s a $10 new-customer fee on every first order, payment processing fees, any promotions you’re running, and shipping costs you may be absorbing. All of these expenses stack in ways that are easy to miss.

On the flip side, it’s crucial to know that the math gets better as your repeat orders grow, because reorders carry fewer fees and less promotional spend. This is why building real relationships with your stockists matters so much. The financial logic of wholesale on Faire only starts to work once reorders are part of the picture.

A tool, not a verdict

What strikes me most, after all of this exploration, is how much stress Faire causes for many sellers — and how much of it could be eased once the platform is understood clearly.

Faire is a tool. It can connect you with retailers you’d never find on your own, make reordering easier, and supplement a broader wholesale strategy in real ways. What it cannot do is replace that strategy, build your relationships for you, or guarantee fairness.

The makers thriving on Faire right now aren’t the ones who love the platform or have found a secret to gaming it. They’re the ones who understand it clearly — costs, demands, limitations, and all — and have decided, with open eyes, that it belongs in their business. That’s the only kind of Faire success that’s actually sustainable.

Emily Kerr-Finell

contributor