*A week after this post Etsy changed its definition of handmade. I wrote a second post about the new policies which you can find here.
**After I wrote the post about Etsy’s new policies, Etsy got in touch with me and that led to a podcast interview with Etsy which you can find here.
It takes me two or three hours to make a stuffed animal. The process involves me cutting and marking the fabric, pinning and sewing the pieces together, turning the toy right side out, and then stuffing it and adding eyes and details.
Given how long it takes I find it difficult to put a price on the finished toy. A price that would fairly compensate me would be so high that very few people would likely pay for it. It’s difficult to build a
profitable business selling handmade stuffed animals.
If you love to design toys, but you also want to have a successful business, you need to come up with some solutions. I sell patterns, like many of you do. But another option is to hire help. With someone, or a few
people, to help you cut and mark, pin and sew, stuff and detail the toys you can fill bigger orders. You can sell wholesale and you might be able to turn a profit, but it will still be difficult because you have to pay your employees before you pay yourself. I have also started using the Avantus employee benefits platform recently and seen some brilliant results, so definitely check that out if you’d like to give your employees great benefits.
If you send the design to an overseas factory and have the toys manufactured where labor costs are low, you can increase your margin. I’ve spoken with several plush makers who have pursued this route with success. And look at Ugly Dolls, right?
When I imagined the factories that manufacture plush toys I envisioned lots and lots of machines. These would be machines that could somehow do all the work of making a stuffed animal. Even though when I make a toy I have to carefully cut and sew each part by hand, I assumed that in a Chinese factory
there was some kind of machine that could do all of that. How? Well, I never really got that far.
My assumption was blown to pieces the other day when my friend and fellow plush maker, Laura Stantz, shared this video with me.
Here we see a Neopet plush toy, Flotsam, being manufactured at the Dong Guan Gain Charm Toys., Ltd. in DongGuan City, China. The Flotsam was made as a prize in McDonald’s Happy Meals a few years ago. I know the video is 14 minutes long, but watch it. I think you’ll find it fascinating. When Laura showed it to me she said, “It was so intriguing to me how similar their workflow is to my own. You know, minus
the metal detectors and the 4,000 workers.”
She couldn’t be more right.
At 4 min. 5 secs. I think you’ll begin to see what I mean. This woman is sewing a toy EXACTLY how I sew toys. Look at her tweezers. She is making that toy by hand. At 5 min. 34 secs. you’ll see the toys being turned right side out. That man is turning the toy right side out exactly how I turn toys. By hand. At 6 min. 50 sec. the toy is stuffed just like how I stuff toys. In fact, I need that tool!
But it was at 7 min. 20 sec. that I really began to rethink my assumptions. This woman is ladder stitching Flotsam closed by hand. Just like me.
Because, of course, it’s impossible for a machine to make a stuffed animal like this one. It’s got gussets. It’s tiny. It has to be handmade.
Me and Laura and these factory workers are all doing the same thing. It’s so striking!
If we use Etsy as a meter for what counts as handmade in our current culture, though, Flotsam not included. In fact, for a long time Etsy required sellers make each and every item in their shops themselves. More recently, in an effort to hang onto creative businesses that needed to expand and hire employees in order to meet demand, they changed the policy.
Etsy’s expanded definition of handmade now includes “hand-assembled.” The policy states: “Handmade items must be created by the seller operating the Etsy shop (or a member of that shop). Selling commercial or mass-produced items on Etsy’s handmade categories is not permitted.” So the stuffed animal can be made by a member of my shop, but it can’t be mass-produced. If I have four employees sewing for me, my toys are handmade. If I hire 4,000 factory workers, though, they aren’t, even if the process is exactly the same.
—–
The same day last week that I watched the video I also read this post by Kevin Morris on the DailyDot entitled, “Why Etsy’s Brave New Economy is Crumbling.” The article focuses on Etsy resellers, a topic
that’s been discussed at length many times in many places. About Etsy’s new definition of handmade Morris says, “According to Etsy’s rules, that might look like this: one artist screen prints fabric, then another artist sews clothing from the fabric. The finished product is listed in a collective Etsy shop. With Dickerson’s changes a store can also now outsource its designs to a machine cutter, which makes a larger collective sound more and more like an assembly line, with each ‘member’ simply being one step in the assembly process.”
Morris’ point is that this is a slippery slope toward condoning shops selling factory made goods on Etsy, a site that’s supposedly a handmade marketplace. He shows us how resellers corrupt Etsy’s mission, driving down prices to the point that the real handcrafted items can’t compete. I get it. Resellers that scan Japanese craft books and resell the pages as PDF patterns, patterns they certainly don’t have the copyright to, drive me insane. It makes me just as mad as everyone else. I’m not arguing that it be allowed.
Neopet Flotsam on the left. My Shark on the right.
But I’d like to point out that what “handmade” means is complicated. I would arue that the woman who sews and turns and stuffs Flotsam is making that toy by hand, just like me. And I’m guessing she’s earning small wage from doing so, just like me. At the same time, there’s no way I’d pull a stuffed animal out of a McDonald’s Happy Meal and say it should be sold as handmade on Etsy.
I’d like to ask you this question: where do we draw the line? How much hand making is necessary to call something “handmade”? Are my toys more handmade than Flotsam, or not?
I’m not sure how to put this into words exactly but I think it has something to do with the emotional (for want of a better word) involvement of the person who made it/and or designed it. Flotsam was hand made by a person who doesn’t care about Flotsam, neither does her/his boss or the company who ordered to make a zillion flotsams. Originality is another thing that makes ‘handmade’ stand out from the rest I think.
I agree with Nicole’s comments. Also, “handmade” to me implies that the maker has the ability to revise her creation as she goes, making small improvements or changes as inspiration strikes. The door to creativity is open. I wonder if the word “hand-crafted” is more apt?
Just in case you or any of your readers are interested / concerned with labor conditions in the developing world, but still focused on looking to expand, as an alternative to factory labor, there are many co-ops in the developing world employing women who sew products by hand, or on non-industrial machines.
We work with one organization in Nepal called the Association for Craft Producers (ACP). They are certified fair trade, and pay their employees salary – not in piece work – as well as providing benefits (unheard of in most countries for this type of labor). The best part is that you can really see how transformative this type of employment is for the women who work there. The access to opportunity and employment makes a huge difference for these ladies, and for their kids.
We manufacture our bags with ACP and it’s definitely an affordable and way better option for us, as opposed to factory labor in China, Bangladesh, etc. We don’t sell our products on Etsy – we have our own online store & we wholesale – but we DO say that they are handmade in Nepal, because they are sewn in exactly the same way as I would sew them here in Boston, with similar machines, and in a building that is not a sweat shop. It’s not cheap to do business this way, but it’s how we want to do business, and we can do that with a much clearer conscience. Just some food for thought.
I was thinking the same thing. While there was a designer behind making Flotsam, that person was working on a paid project that wasn’t their own idea.
Honestly, I’m not sure where the line needs to be drawn. I remember when Neopets first started (way back in the dark dial-up days of the 90s) and it was a small group. Does the person who comes up with the cartoon and then says, “we can make these into toys!” just a pusher of mass produced stuff? Or are they really an artist like Abby?
I’ve been hearing about this debate second hand through my niece. She’s a graphic designer and has worked for big name companies like Pepsi and I Can Has Cheezeburger. She works on her personal art in her spare time. Is her freelance work any less valuable than the things she paints for her self?
At what point does a product stop being art and start being commercial? I feel like Andy Warhol tried showing that there is no line when he painted the Campbell soup cans and set up a wall of Tide boxes. Even commercially made graphics have artistic merit.
I’m so glad that you posted this, outsourced labour conditions were the first thing I thought of when I read that sentence, and although I understand that not everyone cares, it saddens me deeply to think of people from small independant businesses going the same route as the corporations.
(I do not wish to imply that the lovely Abby doesn’t care; just people in general, non specifically!)
Very interesting and thought provoking blog post, I enjoy posts like this a lot 🙂
I wonder if, rather than literally whether something is made by hand or not, maybe what Etsy et al are really trying to get at is something like seller-made, or perhaps artist-sold. That would support the individual makers but exclude big companies that reap the rewards while paying workers a pittance and not allowing them creativity.
wow. such a thought provoking topic. i know in my mind what i view as handmade but its hard to put into words. i think its a more esoteric thing. a factory worker and i both making a stuffed animal are indeed technically the same. but the item i make is handmade because i want to, profit going to me, changeable by me. maybe it is the assembly line aspect? so many hands involved.
i know im not explaining myself well, so i will just stop :o)
This is such a thought provoking post and question. I think maybe the “handmade” marketplace has become so large and mainstream that it might be outgrowing its name. I think maybe people are driven to buy “handmade” because it suggests they are making a personal connection with the maker, as opposed to the impersonal feeling behind many mass-produced goods. Is that difference in thought justified? Maybe or maybe not. Many people don’t realize that mass production goes back to the Renaissance, at least. El Greco, Rubens, and other famous artists had workshops full of painters who did most of the work on their paintings, even though they were signed and sold as works by the master him-self or herself. (El Greco even had a “catalog” of paintings he could make to order!)But it all seems to come back to personal connection–even mass produced goods like the ones Anaphase mentions upstream carry a sense of the buyer having a connection or specifically choosing to support the workers, whereas I don’t think that’s present in the Flotsam toy you reference.
It’s funny how handmade can mean different things in different contexts. I make OOAK artist teddy bears (a term I despise, but the best way to describe them, as ‘teddy bear’ alone seems to imply a Hallmark-type creation!).
I design the bear, make the pattern, do all the cutting out and seam allowance trimming, plus tacking, then sew the pieces together using my sewing machine (other than the nose section of the gusset) I then stuff it by hand, spend an hour or more on the perfect nose, plus eye placement and ear attachment, then joint it and close it up by hand. For me, this is handmade, however I have seen descriptions of ‘handmade’ on some bear listings with a derogatory, ‘handmade, sewn by hand alone, NO sewing machines’. Seriously?! The implications are that I’m one step down from Build-A-Bear!
While I would not stoop to say the dolls being made in the video are not handmade, there is still a big difference between cottage industry handmade and factory handmade. And there needs to be a venue for the former.
Factory handmade has its place, although the environmental costs of that place are mind boggling to me. Factory handmade uses synthetic fibers completely. Synthetics are oil waste plastics. Producing them is toxic to workers and also to our environment. They will never decompose in water or landfills. I see synthetic fibers and I get that actual stomach-sinking feeling as the whole process is just poison and my heart breaks for the children and grandchildren we are leaving behind to clean up our mess. Plastics have been proven to be so entirely useful in medical supply applications, for example, and I would not completely do away with them until we may one day find an alternative, but to participate in the indiscriminate manufacture of so much plastic waste (goods and their polluting by-products) seems like cutting my own grandchild’s throat.
However, on the topic of cottage industry vs. mass-produced industry, although it is possible for a factory to hand make, there really needs to be someplace customers can go that distinguishes the cottage industry handmakers. It is a disservice to customers to keep shoving cottage industry artisans in with the corporations. If only as a service to customers looking to buy local or natural or eco-friendly or zero-waste or without question ‘handmade’, then there’s no reason why we can’t set that kind of industry apart so buyers can find it.
Handmade by an artisan also means direct human relationship. Mass production does not allow for this kind of community-building. I want to buy from people. Buying from people is skills building. It requires a certain level of knowledge and experience. If I have a cobbler, a seamstress, a toymaker, an herb gardener, and a plumber in my own neighborhood, then I feel I have a healthy neighborhood full of skills needed and shared. But I have to KNOW they are there and that requires relationship. Call it handmade or not, factory and corporate supply chains take relationship out of our lives too easily. It’s not a question of labeling; it’s a question of whether or not we want to live with actual people or just avenues to products whatever we decide to call them.
I struggle with the term also. I make tshirts and my brand is an Eco-conscious one. With the chemicals required for screen printing, it’s irresponsible to print them myself at home and dump those chemicals down the drain. So I contract a local printer to do it in a responsible way. I’m ok being “indie” and not “handmade,” but I find sometimes the distinction is unfair. I’ve been kept out of festivals, while other artists create their art and use a contractor to make prints to sell at those events get in.
Control over the creative process seems to be important here.
I’d agree that the people who produced all those Flotsam’s most likely could care less about those toys, I do think the company that ordered them, and the designer that created the pattern, and the factory owner that produced them do care just as much as any business owner cares about their products.
I think this is admirable, Anaphase. Thank you for sharing. Still, though, having your product produced overseas is cheaper than having it produced here in Boston, right?
Seller-made and artist-sold are two very good terms. Thank you, Cathy.
Again, creative control seems to be an important part of what defines “handmade” for many people.
Casey, you’ve brought up a second element that seems to define “handmade” for many people and that is having a relationship with the maker. Even if that relationship is really only an exchange of Etsy convos, knowing there’s a person behind the product gives us the perception of handmade.
You have hit upon my main question here, Katy. What defines handmade? Is it the presence of a machine? Certainly that can’t be what qualifies or disqualifies something as handmade.
Allison, I think you’re point is similar in some ways to Casey’s above. Human relationships seem to be a part of what qualifies something as handmade.
Like Katy above, Tessa, people question the handmade nature of your work because it is created by a machine, even though the machine is allowing you to make work in a more environmentally friendly way. At what point does the use of a machine, or helpers, disqualify something?
Selling handmade items is rough. I tried it, people don’t and won’t pay enough to cover the time you took to make it and sometimes not even the cost of materials you use. I make quilts now and I give them away, when people ask to pay for them I say no. That way I make them to make me happy, to give to someone I know or someone who knows someone I know. I use it for my therapy to relax and be creative. To live I work as a nurse, which pays every other week and provides benefits. I love nursing and I love creating and making quilts. It’s not a perfect solution but it works and makes me happy
It’s funny, I was pondering this very question the other day while we were driving Tim to music. The video was very interesting, some of it was not surprising to me as I have had some training in professional sewing, although I have never worked in a factory setting I am aware of some of the processes. However I was very surprised with how ‘hands-on’ their process was & I can definitely see where some might question the definition of ‘handmade’. I think the main thing that separates what we do is that our products, whether they are toys, clothing, jewellery etc is that ours are ‘individual’, every eye will be slightly different, not a computerized machine sewn duplicate, even if we are able to employ someone to help. And then there is quantity, even if you sell your patterns to others who make & then sell the exact same product, everyone is going to make it slightly different – different fabrics, different colours, maybe even different sizes – they will all be ‘different’ & the likelihood is there will never be the same large numbers of that one product ever made as there is when it’s mass produced in a factory. Perhaps individual product uniqueness & quantity of an individual style/pattern is the true meaning of “Handmade”.
I totally understand and I don’t claim my work is handmade. I do however, find such distinctions to be unfairly applied at times (or maybe not honorably applied by the makers themselves). That in and of itself is not such a huge issue, I don’t mind the indie label and don’t mind educating people as to why I’m not handmade. It is interesting to see the wide spectrum of ways the label can be applied though.
I do think it is a larger issue that in some cases, such as in the case of screen printing for apparel/textiles, that the handmade label is not the best label b/c it means someone is not being responsible with the chemicals they have to handle (screen print ink for apparel, whether waterbase or plastisol is considered hazardous waste until it’s cured and it’s actually against the law to dispose of improperly).
I find it interesting that one comment talked about supporting handmade because it’s supporting a person and a skillset, rather than a corporation. I think it’s also important to support responsible art, craft and business in general too. I think it all depends on what level you’re comfortable with and I tend to support indie/handmade businesses that are very transparent in their methods of production. For my own business, I chose a small, local printer to work with instead of sending my work out to a printer that was big and had the cheapest rates. That way I knew the people I was working with on a personal level and that my choice was helping to give back to my local economy.
I suppose you could take that even farther though. In the case of sewing plush toys, if one is against the factory in another country paying low wages and having little concern for their workers to make the actual toy, does that same person still care if the fabric/thread/sewing machine that a US crafter uses is made in a similar factory? Can you find and/or afford the supplies you use for your business from another handmaker? (not YOU personally, you in the general sense 😉 ) Aren’t we all piggybacking on some level on machine-made things?
There are all kinds of issues you can get into!
I too was surprised by how hands-on the process of factory-made, mass produced toys is in this video. But I don’t find myself convinced that we can call this handmade simply because it passed through human hands. Rows and rows of workers sitting all day doing one small piece of the entire process, cranking out thousands of the exact same piece for a corporation simply isn’t handmade. I think if an item goes through dozens of sets of hands to be completed, it isn’t handmade. It’s factory made. Though handmade may be hard to precisely define, you know it when you see it. And this isn’t it.
Defining “handmade” in a technology driven world can be a difficult task. Maybe the question should be, “What does the customer consider “handmade?” It it a consideration at all? What makes a handmade product standout compared to a factory made product? What makes the product worth the price to the consumer? Is it handmade when the embroidery is machine made? or must it be hand embroidered?
This is no different for an artist. Is it only (two dimensional) art when paint is applied to paper or canvas? Should digital art be considered art? Then there is the skill aspect. Should “feel good” or sappy artwork be considered good art compared to someone with great skill? What makes the piece worth the price to the consumer?
I think all of my thoughts on the subject have been expressed – probably more articulately than I could – by others, so I will just say that:
> another option is to hire help. With someone, or a few people, to help you cut and mark, pin and sew..
does come suspiciously close upon the heels of you getting your daughters the sewing machine!!
I understand your frustration, Katy! I’ve had that same feeling. I sew part of my dolls on the machine and part by hand. I hate having it sound like my dolls aren’t really handmade because the sewing machine is part of the process!
Selling handmade goods is hard, indeed. I don’t think the prices for my dolls are unreasonable but the average person I interact with every day at my day jobs seems to think so. I have literally had someone say to me that they could get “5 just like them at Walmart for what you want for one doll” and I could have screamed.
Sadly the reason why made-in-China stuff is so cheap is because of labour being comparatively cheap, especially compared to countries in US or Europe
all the above comments discuss the complexities of this topic very well. I like the label maker-seller or artist-seller. This small scale production does have an additional quality for me. Everyday purchases are clearly going to be mass produced, but I want to have sellers out there that are individual and different and put that bit of love and quality into their product and I am happy to pay for that. I agree with many above that say most will not pay for this, but as a maker myself I appreciate and understand the effort and will pay a bit extra when I can. I want there still to be choice, over the years I am more and more concerned by how bland and uniform the shopping choices have become. For all it faults etsy and similar websites do give sellers a chance to form a relationship with buyers looking for that individual one off item. As a seller myself I agree it is very hard, and even when I have had quite a bit of contact with a buyer and crafted something bespoke for them I am disappointed they do not leave feedback. Life seems so fast and disposable, everyone is on to the next thing. Still you have got to try and handmade in all its forms has the added benefit for me of that “warm” feeling of having supported or helped an individual not make some fat cat executive even richer.
Enjoying the recent thought provoking posts very much
Creative control does seem to be a big factor in the definition of “handmade.”
What about people who draw an original design and then have it made into prints by a professional digital printer? They are certainly able to sell those prints on Etsy without a problem (I’ve bought several there). There’s capacity to make an infinite number and they’ll all the be exactly the same. And yet if someone sends their t-shirt to be screenprinted with an original design that person can’t sell on Etsy. Why? It truly is tricky.
Right on, Jane. That personal relationship of knowing the maker seems to be a very important part of what defines “handmade.”
Good point about the prints, I was mainly focused on things that are sewn or knitted. It seems the more you look at this question the more complex & tricky it becomes. Curious there should be a distinction between a digital print that has been bulk printed by a 3rd party & a screen printed t-shirt, I would have thought they were in the same ‘basket’, must be frustrating for people who would like to sell their screen printed t-shirt on etsy.
I was sharing what I had seen in the video with my husband the other day. (He has been helping his dad out for the last few year – he works in the finance industry & they have a lot a dealings with business & industry all over the world including China), apparently China has laws inhibiting the use of machine because, they have such a large population base they can’t afford to lose jobs to a robot, this apparently is why they are so hands-on in factories such as the one show in the video.
For me watching that video, the difference is the mass-production by assembly line. I know these designs are assembled by hand, but they weren’t designed with anything other than minimum-cost vs maximum-profit in mind. Sure, they had to look a certain way, and be easily assembled by a technician; but thats it. Theres no thought process for the person assembling it; all the thinking has been already done. Someone handmaking something has to think about it continuously while the product is in production. Well, thats my theory anyway!
I hear you, Amy, but I think many businesses of all kinds design products to minimize costs and maximize profit, you know? And if you have your original artwork digitally printed there is not much of a thought process during production, you know?
But I understand what you’re saying. Intention and creative control seem to be defining factors in handmade.
Could it be supply and demand or more like originality? i mean if you put out any of your toys out there in tens of thousands they wont be so special anymore and no one will want to pay them the prices comparable to one of a kind creations, like they say if they wanted any usual dog plushie anyone can have they can buy it cheaper at some store probably, and if those prices come to etsy individual creators wouldnt stand a chance i think thats why their policy is what it is..
I believe what is important is if an item is original and made with the creator’s “love” and “care” into the product.