What's It Worth?

A recent trip to Target with my daughter reminded me of how abysmal the retail shopping experience can be. My daughter had recently moved into another apartment and needed a toilet plunger. We quickly located the bathroom wares: there were two choices of plunger, all plastic or some kind of plastic-y material. None had the substantial wooden handles we had come to expect in a toilet plunger, and one choice of plunger, the laughingly named Evercare Toilet Plunger,  was like a cartoon idea of a plunger: the suction cup was flaccid, almost flat, with no suction strength at all. I laughed out loud when I picked it up, brandishing it like a [useless] weapon. Where was it made? In China. We chose the other one, the Clorox Bright Blue Toilet Plunger, made in Italy of Chinese components--or something like that. I'm still waiting to hear if the thing works.

More and more of the products displayed in our retail stores are crap [pardon the pun] like these plungers. Tom has frequently moaned about his inability to find a workable replacement for the blade in his bow saw. All the hardware stores now carry cheap, thin blades made in China. We have noticed over the years, also, how gardening tools have decreased in workmanship and quality.

Americans have become accustomed to cheap products made by poorly paid workers in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka who operate in appalling conditions. The availability of these products has affected our attitudes toward workmanship: we expect all products to be cheap and readily available, and we give little thought to the people slaving away in factories to provide us with those products. We have forgotten the time and effort that go into making things, especially those things that are hand made.

I have had first experience with this coarsened attitude toward hand made, crafted material. For a few years I have made things to sell at craft festivals, and I have had very different experiences. At some festivals, those attending seem to appreciate the time, effort, and creativity invested in a well-made item, and they are willing to pay appropriately. At other festivals, folks seem to think the hand-made items for sale should be as cheap as the products on the shelves in Walmart.

At one local festival, a man came by my booth to look at some scarves I had crocheted. Every scarf was different, and I had incorporated unique hand-stitched designs with buttons and felted wool in the one which interested him. He didn't purchase anything, but he returned to the booth hours later as we were packing up to leave. He picked up a scarf we had already taken down from display in order to pack it. He held up the scarf which had taken me hours (several days) to make and offered $20 for it. When I politely refused the offer, he threw the scarf down and stormed off angrily. "You could have made a sale," he sneered.

I later sold the scarf for $35-40 at another festival, in another state.

Of course, calculating the price of one's crafts by determining the hours one has spent making them is out of the question. I recently made some coasters out of beer bottle caps we had saved over a couple of years. I crocheted them together in a unique design. Perhaps someone else has come up with this same idea, but I haven't seen it. As the author of Ecclesiastes says, "There is no new thing under the sun"; crafters often come up with similar ideas independently.

Each of these coasters takes me hours to make. I first crochet around each of seven bottle caps, taking 30 minutes or more for each cap; the time depends on whether I am also watching programs on Netflix, which I often do while I am crocheting. I add a crocheted edging on the top of each cap. Then I crochet the bottle caps together. Finally, I glue a cork backing to each separate piece of the coaster. I estimate that it takes five or six hours to make each of these coasters. No one is going to pay me a minimum hourly rage to create these--the price would be exorbitant. I enjoyed making them because I get a real kick out of coming up with ways to recycle material that we usually throw away. Yet if I do try to sell these coasters at a festival, I will have to come up with a price that honors my work while also recognizing what a customer might be willing to pay. It's a delicate balance.

That balance is more difficult because we've all become used to cheap products at cheap prices--cheap products on which retailers can slap a big mark-up price because those companies aren't paying American minimum wages, aren't providing workplaces that follow OSHA regulations, and aren't paying for health insurance for their workers.

American workers' wages have remained stagnant for the past two decades, but cheap products have obscured that fact for many Americans.