Making Things in a World That Wants You to Monetize Everything

Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you start a handmade business: I did it wrong.

Every guide, every course, every well-meaning entrepreneur will tell you the same thing. Find the demand. Do your market research. Make what people are already looking for. Optimize. Monetize. Scale.

I made things I wanted to see in the world.

Kits that make things. Tools that make things. Objects that make your hands busy and your brain quiet. Things people have forgotten exist. Things that sneak a little whimsey into the cracks of a regular Tuesday. I believed, with my whole childlike heart, in the Field of Dreams method. If you build it, they will come. We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream.

Is that a screwup? Maybe. Probably. The spreadsheets would say yes.

But here’s where it gets complicated. Times are hard. Money is tight for everyone, including me, including you. And my natural instinct, the one I was apparently born with, is that if someone lights up when they see something I made, I want to just give it to them. That’s it. That’s the whole impulse. You like it, it’s yours, go be happy.

End stage capitalism has some notes on that approach.

So I’m stuck in this beautiful, frustrating tension between the person I am and the reality I live in. I make things because I love making them. I sell them because I have to eat. I price them fairly because you deserve that. And I keep building, because what else am I going to do.

I do this for you. For the person who wants to make something with their hands and doesn’t know where to start. For the Tuesday that needs a little more whimsey in it. I’m not sure how I’m going to pay all the bills. But maybe we can help each other out.

Support crafty behavior. Encourage crafty behavior. Enable crafty behavior. Not just in me, but in everyone.

They find me because I built it anyway. And I built it for them.