We support cottage industry.  We live in a rural community where many people depend on growing food.  They have trouble holding jobs because of many factors.  Cottage industry has always been with us culturally, It provides jobs next to people's gardens, but current marketing trends and companies with tremendous resources eat into the small market niche marketers occupy.  Our products depend on hand crafting, and we pay 33 cents a minute for that help.  If a product takes 4 minutes to make, we have to pay out 1.38 for labor.  We also have to add material costs as well.  The good thing about this is that most of this money goes directly into the community.  There is a circle created here.  A sustainable economy as far as it goes.  Walmart took out thousands of these circles when their form of marketing drove our down towns into a collage of "space for rent signs"  

Most products available today are made and distributed by GIANTS.  Giants today, just go and get what they need from a cheap (Chinese or foreign) labor force, in massive enough quantities to reduce per piece shipping to a negligible amount.  This has left a previous generation of small creative American industrial artists and craftspeople throwing up their arms and quitting before they begin. Poverty is maintained, and the average person has nowhere to go except to a large corporation.  Cottage industry here in America needs all of the support it can get. It once was the resource American business depended upon.  Without  outlets, ordinary arts and crafts will vanish due to the fact that there is no demand.  Video game players will replace them. Are you a company where cottage industry and innovation still has a place to prosper. We are in the business of bring cottage industry in America back to life.  There are unseen (at first) rewards to supporting American made small enterprise.  One is that productive activity creates innovation.  When a good innovation (product or service) comes along from our countrymen through cottage industry,  distributors such as yourself can be first in line.  Success in anything where cottage industry is concerned goes a long way, and it helps keep creative people continuously productive. It sets up the possibility of interest free micro loans within community, and creates friendship in problem solving groups.  In Willits California, there is a 20,000 square foot Makers Space, called Wowser.  Among it's many tools and working areas, Wowser also has a 3d printer! Check out the pictures and go to some of the pages. This is the kind of activity you support in your principles.  It creates "can do" artists and craftsmen,  inventions and tooling to produce them.  This is good for the immediate economic culture looking for daily bread. It is our path to support this ideal which Merry and I have taken.  This is how we stay involved in our community and promote prosperity for friends and family in their persuit of right livelihood. 

At some point every product was an innovation!  Innovation creates great opportunities for retailers to be first on the block with a super idea.  It also creates synergy and word of mouth promotion for you by the Maker (Vendor).

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=wowser+makers+space&ei=dP2KVYPAOo-0oQSc-JGAB

When I was a young boy growing up, the items and the things which we used and played with from day to day were made in Japan. Early in my life, and not unique to me, I tore things apart to see how they were made. I was taken back and amused one day when I unfolded the metal making up a toy, and found that the metal came from a Schlitz beer can. I being a war baby was at the age of reason when Japan entered our markets. I watched them use cottage industry and clever ways to invent things and tool them into being. I then watched them change their national output to quality with lenses and cameras, finally enter the world big time with cars and equipment. This is not to mention creating cultured pearl farms and entering the world with their cultural and engineering insights. The main thing that matters to me at this late date in my life is the fact that it started simple using available resources. It got BIG. Big enough to leverage higher technology and enter the world trade market and succeed.
At a time in America when we have groups of people out of work and hungry, I think that there are practical benefits to creating home grown industry similar to that of Japanese efforts after world war II. It yields fast and certain returns with guidance. Markets are all in place. Market share is the only issue, and a little patriotism goes a long way to gain market share.

COTTAGE INDUSTRY




COTTAGE INDUSTRY COTTAGE INDUSTRY COTTAGE INDUSTRY COTTAGE INDUSTRY

Along the front of our living room couch, there is a row of wire bending machines and devices. They are compact and are efficient at producing thousands of wire forms which we have designed. These combine with other things we do amounting to packaging and some finishing to create a product. http://oliveoillamps.blogspot.com/ When we are not producing, these devices can be stored away so that our living room can be used for our pleasure.
All of these devices and the products, are inventions of ours, and the tools were created in a makeshift machine shop I have holed away in an ancient house trailer resting peacefully near a small grove of trees and blackberries. The main machines and tools which compose this shop are a drill press, a Dremel tool, C-clamps, files, hammers, anvils made from pieces of railroad track, and in addition to a few guides and measuring devices, a hand held electric drill.

To feed my passion for tinkering and inventing, and have material as a medium for my artistic sculptures, I have hoards of material ranging from wood to metal. I have sheets of quarter inch plate aluminum, copper, and scrap from local machine shops. Shapes I have collected for their future usefulness in tool building, or creating folk art. I am also equipped with sand and plaster for mold making.

My wife also has a work station in front of her chair which she reads in and has coffee. In front of this chair are her tools to produce art. Currently she is producing water color paintings. One of them is pictured in this blog, as well as a picture of some of my machines,

There is a desk between the living room and kitchen where our computer printer, scanner set up is, and our telephone. We have a wood stove to keep cozy, and plenty of wood. Outside, we have a fine producing garden, three ducks, chickens, a horse and a dog.

Every now and then, the living room becomes a packing and shipping room when we package up our arts and crafts to fill an order. We sell all over the country, and through one of our customers, our work goes all over the world. We are a cottage industry, although we call ourselves a cabin industry, because we live in a log cabin! To tell you the truth, I don’t know how life could be better. We live at the base of a forested mountain amidst the foothills. We are near rivers and streams, two hours away from the pacific Oregon coast.

As a result of being in this business, I have had some insights about right livelihood. I believe that as a culture we have become detached from one another, and that the adverse symptoms that this creates, represents a void in our ability to function without government. I believe that cottage industry can help bring us back together. A bar of soap produced by cottage industry is far superior to a bar of soap produced by corporate world trade organizations. Let me have a soap maker tell you why:

When commercial producers make soap their eye is on dollars–how to get more. One way is to separate the glycerine from the rest of the fat and sell it at a much higher price. The glycerine, however, is what retains moisture and makes skin soft. Sure you can buy commercial soap with glycerine, but first they took it out of the mix and then they added it back in, probably in smaller quantity. And pH? The very process of making soap is a balancing of pH. The acids in the oil and the alkalis in the lie neutralize each other. Homemade soap, properly made (it is important to use good instructions and follow them carefully), has a neutral pH. Rough, caustic pioneer soap is a thing of the past with modern ingredients as methods of measure.
Commercial manufacturers, to make soap both cheap and more attractive to the nondiscriminating buyer, add chemical dyes and fragrances. Many people are aware that they get head aches from artificial fragrances of one sort or another. Many more get headaches without knowing why. Americans rely on the Food and Drug Administration to protect them from harmful cosmetics, including soaps, but most do not realize that to make its decisions, the FDA does not do independent testing. It relies on information supplied by the very companies whose products they are evaluating. Clearly the fox guarding the hen house.
A couple of years ago, after using simple homemade soap with natural fragrance and color for several years, I decided that because I tended dogs and horses cats and chickens and milked goats that it might be a good idea to use commercial anti-bacterial soap. Of course I knew that all soap is anti-bacterial, but still, it seemed like I would be extra safe. Not long after, my fingernails began to get flaky. I didn’t relate it to the soap. I thought it must be a dietary problem and tried taking gelatin capsules, different herbs, multi-vitamins to no avail. When I happened to see a commercial for a medicine to treat "dermatophytes," horrible little creatures that live under fingernails and cause exactly the conditions I was experiencing, I began to analyze in a new direction. If I had harmful bacteria under my nails, despite that I was using anti-bacterial soap it must be that I was killing the natural bacteria that should be on my skin fighting dermatophytes. To test my theory, I simply went back to homemade soap and my nails returned to normal. Another thing that I have become aware of over the years is that I experience much less fungal itch in moist areas of my body when using natural homemade soap.
There are many excellent web sites that can give you more scientific information than my anecdotes. I urge you to look into them.


In addition, the money spent in the direction of cottage industry goes to empower common people who are our countrymen, so that they can live and raise their families with dignity being able to purchase what is necessary to accomplish this. We all need and use the things which we can produce at home. At the turn of the century before soup came in a can, we did do these things at home, and our great economy began with cottage industry. A return to this in my opinion would be healthy for us all. It would help bring us together and become friendlier to each other. It would give us a forum where we can share more with one another as well.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? http://netconnecttheconcept.blogspot.com/