We've hit a bit of a snag! Not a major one, but if we don't address it soon it will become a major one and possibly close us down which would be a crying shame as we are so so close to being really sustainable.
The snag: we need to create an income to pay all our bills but we're not quite managing it yet.
Possible solutions:
increase the % we charge all our sellers
only deal with what we call professional crafters
buy in items to re-sell
close down
With each of these options there is a plus and a minus, some obvious and some not so obvious. If we increase the % we charge all our sellers then all the prices need to go up to ensure that what each crafter wants for their item is what they receive which may well put customers off. Also, some sellers may be uncomfortable with this idea as they have an idea of what the market will bear for their work so either need to reduce what they are happy to receive or use an alternative retail outlet.
Only deal with professional crafters - the reason this option is on the table is because if each seller sold at least £150 pcm all the %s add up quite nicely to pay the bills. However, a small crafter often produces smaller quantities or lower value items due to their capacity issues as most have a main job while they try to transition to becoming a full time crafter. The obvious snag here is that if we only deal with professional crafters we lose the ability to offer hobby crafters the chance to show off their work and gain valuable feedback to take them to the next level. If we had sufficient stock from everyone it would probably work, which takes us back to potentially only dealing with professional crafters who have the capacity and means of production to produce in volume. And, again if we asked smaller crafters to produce in volume it takes away the fun and the reason they started - often to escape the 9-5 pressures of an external employer which is the role we would have to take on and that in turn would mean they say I didn't sign up for this.
Buy in items to re-sell - the obvious thing here is that it completely goes against what we stand for in that we want to offer locally hand made original work and buck the trend of only finding the same things everywhere. However, we do stock some items that are not hand made already such as books and kits so allowing a small element of stock to be re-sold items isn't quite such a horrific thought. But obviously we can't buy in items that one of our crafters currently makes, the easiest example is dreamcatchers.
There is a big argument for supporting fair trade and giving workers around the world a fair deal, and we want to do that too. If we ask crafters to reduce their costs they in turn have little or no chance of making it for themselves and we would be doing them such an injustice that quite frankly we would deserve to be closed down. There is also the argument that we are in retail, we do have to compete with the real world and maybe the fight can't be won, maybe we were a little too ambitious in our thinking. Or maybe we just got the figures wrong in the first place.
But here's the rub - we are just so so close to making it work that with a few tweaks here and there it's almost touchable. But, at what point do we draw the line and say we are unable to subsidise anymore. Because up till now we've taken the hit, we've never taken a wage or even been paid for our work to allow for the cashflow to build up. We don't expect sympathy, it was our choice after all but we did anticipate it turning around slowly so that the early months of not taking payment would eventually turn around but sadly it's not turning that fast and our food cupboards are constantly empty!
So, to all you crafters out there - we'd love to hear a suggestion or solution. If you were working for a company that continually didn't pay you yet expected you to work a 60 hour week I can imagine what most of your reactions would be! Sorry if this sounds pessimistic for the Hippos, but we will work something out and I suspect the simplest one is to put the % up so that everyone can get involved if they choose to. But if someone has an out of the box solution that we didn't consider then please shout up, Hippo xx
