As a textile designer, I often find that the products I design straddle the boundaries of commercial designer fashion and niche craft products.  I’m increasingly turning my back on the seasonal, cyclical methods of working that commercial designers are required to follow, ie so that every designer’s buying, showing, selling cycles all conveniently sit together.  It is becoming increasingly difficult for start-up designers to follow this pattern of working, when funding is not readily available, fabric/yarn suppliers deliver late, and show deadlines are fixed, and all the design houses need their manufacturers services at the same busy times each year.

In my business I am always looking for new ways to get my product into the marketplace, without relying on the ‘traditional’ routes.  It would seem to me that designers who work on the craft side of the designer boundary are much more flexible in their approach to selling their wares.  There are all manner of speciality shows, that embrace the quirky, uniqueness of their products, and people attending these shows relish the opportunity to buy from the designer themselves. 

But again I find myself restricted.   Many of the craft fairs / markets dictate that all the products you offer for sale are made by you the maker.  However, once you reach a certain level of sales working as a craftsperson making everything yourself, it becomes impossible to manufacture all the products you need to sell to earn a living, therefore you have to source reliable manufacturers to make the goods on your behalf.  This is the route I took this year, but this now means that I have had to pretty-much put to one side my designer-maker status and take on the commercial fashion market.  But it now seems that my products can no longer command a premium price because they are now no longer hand made (well not by me).  So I can no longer sell though the craft fair route – even though the product is essentially the same – better if anything! So it would seem to me that craft people are not supposed to want to make a profit from their business?   Yet as a new designer entering the fickle more commercial side of the market it is more difficult to sell niche products because the retailers that you are selling to, purely want to know that they will make a profit from your wares – rather than designer selling to end user who purely wants to look good.