The “Foundation” is what we create something on top of and PalmStreet is taking the efforts and contributions we’ve poured into their app. In response, many of us are boycotting the app entirely on Sunday, April 26th. No buying or selling. They need to grandfather the foundation sellers that this platform was raised upon. Please spread the word 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽
I commented on the prior post about this change to offload smaller businesses from “foundation” program but I think it is worth giving context and sharing my perspective as a small business.
I’ve been selling houseplants on PalmStreet since 2024 as a fun business/passion project. I really enjoy sharing my plants and fostering a sense of community with other sellers, buyers and the overlap of friends I’ve made along the way. Plants brought me here, but the community is truly what keeps me coming back. I even participate in and organize raid trains to bring good people, plants and vibes together!
I do not have the pleasure of doing this full time though, I am a single mom and work full time for a nonprofit organization so I only go live once, sometimes twice a week. I care for and pack all of my plants by myself and take great joy in sharing them with everyone, but this jump in requirements from $5k initially to $25,000 PER QUARTER is unreasonable for many sellers. Additionally, the announcement from PalmStreet gave 9 days notice of the impending end of this brand new metric. They have since extended the deadline to May 31st, but this still is unacceptable in my opinion. If you are going to change the goal posts, they could have at least tried to be reasonable and start the quarter AFTER the announcement! Awful timing aside, it appears evident to me that all they care about now is how much money we can make them. I propose they grandfather the existing foundation members and create new requirements going forward. If they must remove any benefits for the existing foundation sellers, they can get rid of the “dedicated rep support”, which could reduce their operating costs, but why take away the cash back which comes from our sales?? Also, for reference, I talk to my rep via text up to four times in a fiscal year but who knows, maybe the other sellers talk to them every day?