The category the platforms keep dropping
Over a decade, one general marketplace after another has shed real fur.
ASOS banned real fur across its marketplace in 2017. Depop prohibited real-fur listings in 2019. Meta excludes fur from its Shops and from paid advertising. And on 11 August 2026, Etsy delisted real fur — including mink, fox and rabbit — after a sustained campaign. Each time, sellers who have spent careers on a craft wake up to find their whole category gone with a single policy change, and buyers lose a trusted place to shop.
A generalist marketplace can drop fur because fur is a rounding error in its catalogue. Ermelle is the opposite: fur is the entire point. It is being built for exactly what the general platforms exclude — and to keep admitting it.
What Ermelle is
Ermelle is a planned, independent, purpose-built marketplace for real fur. Ermelle does not buy or resell, and no contract of sale is concluded on ermelle.com: the furrier is the seller, the buyer purchases directly from the furrier, and Ermelle does not handle any money. This keeps the relationship between furrier and client intact and keeps Ermelle focused on discovery, trust and compliance.
The marketplace is in development. Everything described here is planned and subject to change. Today, the only thing live is the founding-furrier waitlist — the first cohort of vendors we intend to onboard when Ermelle opens.
Who Ermelle is for
Furriers and fur houses
Ermelle is for professional furriers and established fur businesses — from the Kastoria fur cluster in Greece, with its deep tradition of sable, mink and fox, to independent artisans leaving the general platforms. At launch, vendors are EU-established merchants, because under EU product-safety law each is its own responsible person for the goods it sells. Ermelle curates the catalogue itself: we decide editorially which pieces are published, and every listing is checked for accurate species labelling before publication.
Buyers of real fur
Ermelle is for buyers who want genuine, well-made real fur from a professional maker, with documented provenance and precise species labelling — not a mislabelled listing on a platform that will delist the category next quarter.
How it works
- Register interest. Join the founding waitlist with your email and confirm it by the link we send (double opt-in). Tell us about your atelier and where you sell today.
- Editorial review. We read every application ourselves and check species labelling and provenance before anything is published — there is no automatic listing.
- Bring your listings. When we open, we help you carry your catalogue over so you're not re-keying every piece, and your shop opens once approved.
Where Ermelle operates
Ermelle ships within the EU-27. Buyers are real-fur customers in the EU; vendors are furriers established in the EU, and each is the seller of the goods it lists. Ermelle is operated from Germany by Timo Loeper, trading as develoeper.com Consulting — full details in our legal notice.
Compliance and provenance
Compliance is not a footnote at Ermelle — it is part of the product. The platform is being built to handle, so that individual furriers don't have to shoulder alone:
- Editorial curation. Ermelle curates the catalogue itself: we decide editorially which pieces are published, and every listing is checked for accurate species labelling before publication.
- Species and geography gating. Listings are screened by species and by where they can ship, with CITES checks and sanctioned-origin fur blocked.
- Documented provenance. Provenance records support what a listing claims.
- Accurate labelling. Species must be named precisely; real fur is never presented as anything other than what it is.
What Ermelle will and won't list
At launch, Ermelle is built for categories such as mink, fox (red and arctic), rabbit, sable and marten, karakul/astrakhan lamb, shearling and sheepskin, muskrat, nutria, coyote, and farmed chinchilla with documented captive-bred provenance.
Ermelle will never list CITES-listed species, seal or other marine-mammal products, or dog and cat fur — anywhere. Wild cats (lynx, ocelot and similar), big cats, gray wolf, otters, vicuña, wild chinchilla and all CITES Appendix II fur are not accepted. You can read the full prohibited-species policy.