The Handmade consortium is (from their website): "a collaboration between Etsy, Craftster, indiepublic, Craft Magazine, Interweave, Burdastyle, The Austin Craft Mafia, Design*Sponge, and The American Craft Council, nine prominent forces in the DIY and handmade worlds. Calling ourselves The Handmade Consortium, we have banded together to encourage people to buy handmade this holiday season."
They are pushing a program called Pledge Handmade to urge consumers to buy handmade or artisan products this holiday season. So far about 5,000 people have registered at the site and most have added comments about why they like handmade goods. I love these comments, here are some examples:
- mass produced is boring. buy handmade
- I love a Handmade way of life
- Why buy what everyone else already has when you can pick something from the heart that really says 'this is who i am'
- Handmade comes from the heart
One of the trends we are tracking is the the growth of personalized or highly customized products and the role DIY and artisans play in this trend. This trend has been around for a long time. It was mentioned in the 1979 book Future Shock and became popular in the 90's under the term "personalization". It fell out of favor but came a few years ago under the term "mass customization". It then became very popular due to the best selling book The Long Tail. That's way it is with trends - they generally take a long time to happen.
We will be covering this trend in much more detail in our next forecast report.
Do you recognize that this is the best time to get the business loans, which can make you dreams real.
Posted by: MayoElizabeth | June 09, 2010 at 05:38 PM