The real answer is where they always have: local markets and craft fairs. Most towns and cities have some kind of periodic craft market, which is often related to a farmers and/or food market. They usually have some kind of weird schedule like first Sunday of every month or similar.
You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventions for specific industries where people will set up booths.
and online: niche, reputation-based forums probably still running phpbb that have been online since the 90s and have aging users with post counts in the 6 figures.
As augmented by their own websites I assume. You lose the mass discoverability but you at least reduce the direct competition with volume, largely mass-manufactured goods.
Maybe it wasn’t obvious at the time but it certainly became so that your low-volume artisanal craft couldn’t sell alongside manufactured Chinese goods going for 10% the price.
Why are you so sure that an item being sold at a local craft-market gives you any guarantee of its local origin? The "hobbyist jeweler" standing at the twee little booth in the community center on a Saturday afternoon, could just as well have 1000pc boxes of identical "artisanal" rings and pendants from Alibaba sitting under the table, ready to replenish your purchase.
Mind you, you can at least be sure that food items sold by such vendors are domestic (if not local per se), because of import restrictions.
The sellers at craft fairs I trust most and purchase from most often are those who are sitting there making things. It's easier to match the quality of things there making against those they're selling.
It's pretty much the only way I can be assured they're not (exclusively) selling dropshipped items.
Only really works for some types of goods, though. Someone selling e.g. end-grain wooden cutting boards would require a very spacious booth to demonstrate their particular skill. Someone selling stained-glass pieces would require a fume hood to make any permanent progress! Someone making scented soaps? Legally, you need PPE to be within 50ft of the process!
It's usually pretty easy to tell tbh. Unlike buying online you can inspect the goods as they are right there in front of you. There's usually a pretty noticeable difference between Alibaba "artisanal" stuff and the real McCoy. In any case, I suspect that at a lot of markets, if someone were to be coming in and selling stuff under totally false pretences, the other stalls would get their pitchforks out.
You can also chat to the person and see if they're knowledgable about their stuff. Depending on the craft, the person might actually be doing it in front of you (or customise their goods somehow).
You can have a conversation with the vendor about the product. Ask them about their techniques, and where they source materials! Folks are happy to talk about stuff they're passionate about, and making earrings isn't exactly rocket science with lots of proprietary information.
Only works if the maker has come along themselves to man the booth, though. Admittedly, that is true in the majority of cases.
But for about ...30%, I'd say? of the vendors I engage with at these sorts of markets, they turn out to be running more of a family operation: either one partner is an introvert with a trade-skill while the other enjoys talking to (and selling to) people; or there's a retired adult who likes to putter around making stuff but doesn't have the energy to show up to fairs, and then there's their kids/grandkids, who've grown up admiring their work, handling that part for them. Either way, the artisan themselves isn't there to explain their work; you've just got their "sales representative" to talk to.
And in those cases, the partner/kids/etc can certainly describe the "outside view" of the creative process, any material sourcing they've helped with, etc... but they don't really have the introspective viewpoint on technique that the maker themselves will have.
Which means that it would be entirely possible to come off as "the partner of an artisan" after just following a few Youtube channels from actual artisans in the field. (With the particular art content I consume, I could probably at least pull off sounding like the spouse of a person who makes vinyl-print stickers or cold-press soap.)
Mind you, if you've never been a creative person struggling through the creative process yourself — nor lived with a creative person and watched them struggle through the creative process — then your story might be missing "emotional veracity."
But I would imagine that most people who would decide to make a business of selling things at craft fairs — even if it's a "fake" business – are people who like crafts and being around creative people; and so who have either tried their hand at some creative hobby personally (but just failed to produce anything that would sell), or have at least dated someone who makes stuff. They're people who wish they could be selling their own stuff, but just don't have their own stuff to sell. For them (insofar as there are such people), it would likely be as much about "being a part of it" as it is about the money.
Or, to put that another way: nobody who's not already in the "crafting world" somehow, would ever come up with "sell Alibaba goods at a craft fair" as a get-rich-quick scheme. Because it's really, really not. :)
Shopify has implemented much of Etsys value as a selling platform, though it doesn’t serve as a marketplace for discovery. Social media (TikTok and Insta) can easily offboard to a website shop, and lots of product creators sell there (and some use TikTok’s Shop, which admittedly is competing more with Etsys garbage dropshipping than anything else). Clearly there are gaps here, as not everyone can create a Shopify site, and social media isn’t exactly an e-commerce marketplace.
I still buy handmade stuff on Etsy. We've gotten coasters with our family name etched in them, vases made-to-order, and other handmade or customized items on Etsy in recent years.
You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventions for specific industries where people will set up booths.