For years now, I have been building furniture and home accessories by hand. Each piece I have created has been designed and put together by me alone and finished with the utmost care. In today's highly competitive world, craftsman like myself are unfortunately getting pushed to the side by the "box furniture" we see in so many stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart.
To the normal untrained eye, this boxed furniture looks great. You can purchase a pine end table for around $50.00 to $75.00 that looks well made and has a decent finish on it. You can purchase at the same store a table and 4 chairs for $150.00 that will certainly hold up for at least a few years.
So how do my colleagues and I compete with this? There is no way I can buy the wood, put in the time involved in cutting the pieces, assembling them and putting the finish on for $50.00 and still make a profit. My table and chairs wholesale for no less than $400.00 and that means they sell in a retail store for $800.00. In other words, a true craftsman cannot compete and this is the dilemma we are facing today.
I am a firm believer in hand made goods, doing business with a hand shake instead of a contract and giving to people excellent quality in both my products and customer service. This is disappearing in America quicker than we would like. The hands on, old style, down to earth craftsman is slowly being put to the wayside.
I remember back way back when, (much to long to admit to you), when I started making my first products to sell. I made a ton of birdhouses and a ton of twig baskets. I sold these at a very reasonable price and it was a great beginning to my future products I developed later. Now, you can buy on many Internet sites birdhouses and baskets made in China that are of good quality and are under $10.00 each. I couldn't even walk to my shop for $10.00 let alone make a basket for that.
So what do we do? It is up to the people who still believe in the true quality of handmade products and the craftsmanship that goes into them to stay away from Wal-Mart and Kmart for furniture and go back to buying solid, well made, handcrafted goods. Not only will you find the product you purchase most likely be one of a kind, but it will also last your lifetime and more.
