How do I move an Etsy shop from a parent’s account to my own at 18?

Hi! You’re right to be cautious here—Etsy doesn’t really have a clean “transfer shop ownership” feature, so the safest path is usually: keep the existing shop legally tied to your parent (and treat it as their shop), and open your own brand‑new Etsy account + new shop under your own identity, then migrate inventory gradually while avoiding having the same items listed in both shops at the same time.

Here’s the safest way to do the transition without tripping Etsy’s duplicate/ownership/fraud flags:

1) Open your new shop the “normal” way (no shortcuts)

• Create a new Etsy account with a different email and open a second shop from that account (Etsy explicitly supports multiple shops, but they must be on separate accounts/emails).
• Complete seller verification/Etsy Payments using your real legal name, your own bank account, and your own tax info (everything should match). Don’t mix your parent’s payout/tax details into your new shop.
• If you will be running two shops during the transition, list both shops in the Public Profile of each account (this is required when you run multiple shops). It’s a simple transparency step that also helps reduce “this looks suspicious” risk.

2) Do NOT “mirror” the same listings in both shops
What tends to get people in trouble isn’t reusing their own photos/description—it’s having essentially the same product presented the same way active in two different shops, which can look like duplicate shops/search manipulation.

A safe migration pattern looks like this:

• Move in batches. Pick 5–20 listings to move first.
• For each item: deactivate (or let it sell out) on the old shop first, then publish the corresponding listing on the new shop.
• If you absolutely must keep both shops open at once, avoid having the same SKU/product available in both places at the same time.

3) Recreating listings: photos/descriptions are usually fine, but tweak anyway
If you created the photos and wrote the descriptions, you generally can reuse your own content. That said, during a shop transition, I’d still recommend you make small, legitimate edits so it’s clearly a “new listing” and not a copy-paste clone across shops:

• Update titles/tags to reflect what you’ve learned (good Etsy SEO refresh anyway).
• Rewrite the first 2–4 lines of the description.
• Reorder photos, swap the cover photo, add 1–2 new photos, or update mockups.
• Double-check personalization fields, processing time, shipping profiles, and variations so everything is accurate for your new workflow.

4) Handle the transition transparently (without sending people off Etsy in messages)

• Put a shop announcement on the old shop that you’re moving to a new shop name (keep it simple and factual).
• Gradually run down open orders on the old shop before you put it on Vacation Mode or stop listing there.
• Expect that reviews, sales history, and listing SEO momentum won’t transfer—your new shop is starting fresh, so build it up steadily.

5) Avoid common “suspension bait” during the changeover

• Don’t use false info, mismatched names, or someone else’s bank/tax details on your new shop.
• Don’t open/close a bunch of accounts quickly, and don’t use VPNs or anything that makes logins look unusual.
• Don’t copy over anything that could be policy-sensitive (brands/trademarks, “inspired by” wording, fan art, etc.). A new shop is a great time to clean that up.

If you tell me whether you want to (A) fully shut down the parent shop eventually, or (B) keep it running as a separate shop long-term, I can suggest the cleanest step-by-step timeline (including how long to overlap and what to migrate first).