Okay everyone, ready for reason #2 to buy handmade? You'll never guess what it is...
AFFORDABILITY. I know. You're thinking- seriously? This one's off her rocker. But it's true. When you buy retail, what happens is that a buyer for a store chain negotiated a discount from the manufacturer for purchasing wholesale. Then they shipped it and packaged it (potentially), and paid people to put it up on shelves and work registers and all that good stuff. So the price you pay only equates to somewhere between 10 & 30% profit in most cases for the store you bought it from. The rest is overhead.
When a crafter sells an item online at a site like Etsy.com, for example, his or her overhead is greatly reduced. You are paying them for the cost of the supplies and the time it took for them to make it, but most crafters end up underpricing work just to sell SOMETHING because some grocery money is better than no grocery money. It doesn't take a lot of looking to find something handmade that's surprisingly affordable.
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It makes me really sad that so many items are so underpriced... of course, we all do what we do because we love it, so that helps ofset that dissappointment.
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