What gives me pain as a small business owner

Dear friends, 

I'm writing this the day after my 17th stall, which was at St Brigid's College in Lesmurdie. We finally tried an outdoor location again after so many indoor stalls at Perth City Market, and naturally we had to get used to a long-forgotten set of challenges (and highlights) along the way. But this post is not going to be about this stall per se, but about something that happened while it was ongoing. 

This incident is not unique or uncommon to any small handmade business owner who sells their work at physical stalls and markets. I hope that through me sharing my experience, you too (whether you're a small business owner too or a customer who loves handmade products) will understand why this grieves any artisan maker who sells their handmade products. 

Here is what happened yesterday. 

Somewhere, through all the busyness of making sales and talking to customers, two of my amigurumi toys were stolen. 

The stall we set up yesterday had a nice walk-in layout that faced both directions, meaning customers could walk in and out from one side to another to see the full range of all our products. This was both good and bad; we managed to attract a lot of sales, but also opened up room for blind spots. 

There were several points during the day where the stall was very busy with lots of customers, and there were only two of us (my mum and me) to serve them all. As a result, we were very busy attending to everyone. This caused me to take my eyes off a side table where my amigurumis were laid out. 

After a while, I noticed one of the toys had gone missing. Frantically, I tried to recall who had just come by the stall and would have been near enough to swipe it. Thankfully, I remembered, and with the help of my neighbouring stallholder's children, we tracked down the person after a few minutes of searching the market. I won't go into details about how we managed to get back that toy, but let me stress it was not a pleasant experience and one situation that no one would ever want to be caught in. 

What pains me even more is that after packup that day when I did a mental stocktake of what was left, I discovered that yet another toy had been stolen sometime during the run of the day. At that point the market had closed and the customers had all left, so there was literally no way for us to try and recover the stolen item. 

Theft isn't something foreign to any business, but it's painful even more so when it's a local handmade crafter whose items are wrongfully taken. 

Crafters put hours into what we do. In my instance, the two stolen toys were both smaller amigurumis, and people may wonder, why do I make such a big fuss over something that's hardly bigger than my hand? It must not be worth that much! is what they say. 

Sorry, it is worth that much.

Here's why. For each amigurumi I make to be sold at a stall, I have to find time apart from school, homework, extracurriculars and family time to crochet these toys. I have to juggle a busy schedule every day that doesn't just include crochet, school and homework -- there's also external Little Spools orders to take, and very often something urgent to sew that also takes up a significant amount of time in an afternoon. 

One of those amigurumis takes at least 1 hour or so to make, without interruptions. A larger one might take up to 2 evenings depending on how much time I have. 

So it really isn't fair to say that I don't make a huge loss every time someone steals an amigurumi. A zipper pouch takes about 1/4 the time to make than an amigurumi does. Please, on behalf of every crafter out there, don't take even the smallest of our creations for granted. 

We put so much love, care, time and effort into every piece we make. It's bittersweet for some (including me) to let go of a finished product even though we're getting paid for it - because we've invested so much into making sure it makes someone happy. 

And that just gets ruined when our products are taken without being paid for. Not only does it disrespect our efforts into creating the piece, but it also makes us suffer a loss of our time, resources, and energy. 

Most of us don't earn a super large amount from each product we sell, myself included. For me, I sell my amigurumi to support my craft. I don't make profits off of it, neither is it a way for me to earn extra spending money. The money from my sales goes back into funding my next projects. There is virtually no profit from each amigurumi. 

This means that when something gets stolen, I lose a little from my materials budget and end up possibly having to shortchange on something else. 

So please, I hope this little rant has made the occasional dismissive buyer out there a little bit more aware of the actual consequences of stealing a handmade product. Not only is it wrong, but it also causes the person who made it a lot of heartbreak. We work so hard to keep our businesses afloat, and all we want is for people to walk away happy with the product they got from us. But we don't want to be left stranded without anything to help us continue our craft.

Thank you for listening to me vent about this, and though I know most of my community out there is super supportive and caring, I hope more are made aware now of why it's unfair to regard even the littlest handmade items as "low value" or not that important. 

Stay safe everyone, and thank you for your support!

Best wishes, 

Ashlyne 

(on a happier note, I fixed the "it's not letting me put in photos" issue! It's about time :))