Yes, handmade is only available on the .com site at the moment, so all listings are in US$, regardless of the seller’s country. Makes it hard for UK buyers to sell outside the US, but I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s out on other amazon sites.
Edited: the accessories category isn’t supposed to be available yet, so I’d be interested to know how you managed to find a bag on there!? I had heard that a few sneaky sellers were listing accessories in other categories (e.g. home decor) but assumed they would be taken down quite quickly.
Yep I posted this earlier it’s very interesting and something that should really be read and considered as part of your research. I used it as a stepping stone to look into the issue’s raised.
But doesn’t this all miss the point about handmade? For me handmade is unique, not mass produced. And the person who makes their items is also the USP, because it is their personality they’re putting into their items. If Amazon were to try and re-produce what us lot do, it would no longer be niche, unique and personal.
I suppose this begs the question, why have Amazon launched H@A? Is it to support the handmade community, is it to bring handmade items to more customers for the good of the handmade community etc. Or is it to compete with other handmade marketplaces, to take a share of their business and to make more money for Amazon? I wonder…
Sadly, I think you only have to look at a lot of factory made home decor available in stores today to see the influence that handmade has had on lots of current trends.
There’s an interesting lifestyle element to a lot of real handmade shops (and blogs) that is appealing to many. And big businesses know that a lot of people will gobble up the ‘look’ of that handmade lifestyle especially if they can get it at low-wage factory-made prices … so they copy and compete and blur the lines between the idea behind the lifestyle (making beautiful things, supporting small businesses, living simpler … etc etc.) and turn it all into another ikky form of rampant consumerism.
Oh dear … this is all too cynical for a Sunday. I need cake!
But hasn’t that always been the case? Take art for instance. You can get prints of famous art to hang on your wall, mass produced and sold a lot cheaper, but it’s not the same as having the real thing. The real thing has intrinsic value (and not just monetary) that no amount of copies can take away.
Fashion houses know that their designs get replicated all the time in the high street. But that doesn’t stop people going and spending thousands on the original piece by the designer themselves rather than just getting the cheaper version.
I think no matter what Amazon do, there’s still a place for original handmade pieces, by individual designer/makers. Not everyone “gets” handmade, they’ll be happier with the cheaper version feeling they have a bargain, but lots of people do value originality from the designer. And those are the people we need to engage with.
True-but do you want to give Amazon the personal details of your clients, plus all your other commercially sensitive info to broaden your own reach. The inference is that if an artisan produces something which suddenly becomes fashionable (which has happened in the past) Amazon will be able to make a mass produced carbon copy within days rather than weeks. It is a bit like being an employee for Amazon at a very low rate of pay and with no employment rights at all.
Agreed! But Amazon? One of the biggest mega-peddlers of them all? They don’t seem like the best organisation to help get the ‘buy small’ message out there …
But, would those clients necessarily want to buy a mass produced “handmade” product from Amazon? Some will I guess, but some won’t. They’ll still want to buy the individual handmade piece, because they value hand made, not mass produced, whether it’s Amazon or the High Street.
No they don’t, I agree. When I want to buy handmade, Amazon isn’t the first place I’ll stop. Amazon is a large corporate at the end of the day, so I’m not considering selling there myself.
I guess time will tell as to how things go with regards Amazon’s relationship with it’s handmade sellers!
In the meantime I’m passing out the beers, and we can all celebrate how fab original and unique handmade is! Cheers!
But the dividing line between “mass produced” and “hand-made” is not as clear cut as it appears, Liz. With a factory of 2000 chinese jewellery workers at my disposal it would be very easy to reproduce my designs over and over again, all “made by hand” using my traditional techniques, but at a fraction of my costs. Consumers would not be able to tell the difference when the piece was “in wear.” They might not even know at the point of sale because Amazon could legitimately claim they were handmade to a British design. The advantage of my business is that not everybody can have one of my designs because I don’t repeat them, but dealing with Amazon would put that in jeopardy. (Not that I think I am on their radar-AT ALL )
Take for instance last year in BHS they were selling hanging hearts that looked for all intense and purpose ‘Handmade’ and people where not just buying them but I even overheard people saying oh I love handmade like this and filling their baskets with them.
So yes you can make mass produced look very handmade and it sells right here on the high street.
I guess what it comes down to is what does “handmade” mean? For some it’ll mean the handmade look, mass produced at bargain prices on the High Street, the provenance of which they don’t consider. For others it’ll mean much more.
Perhaps it comes down to that age old question, why are we here selling on Folksy if the general public can get the “handmade look” mass produced on the High Street? What’s so special about handmade?
I think ‘Handmade’ should be more about producing items that cannot be bought elsewhere…you may be able buy similar, but not the same. I have just sent off an order for 20 pairs of embroidered Christmas oven gloves. My customer chose what embroidery designs she wanted on the hand sections of the gloves and left the fabrics to me. I used 2 main fabrics, and 3 other contrast fabrics to give a variety. These cannot be be bought anywhere else…and that is what my customer wanted.
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