The negatives of handicrafts are its greatest positives.
The industry is not scaleable. There is not enough production. The children of artisans do not want to carry on the trade and want to educate themselves and join the job market. By all accounts, handicrafts industry should be on road to extinction - but all of these negatives are its best hidden blessings.
Whenever some things becomes rare and difficult to obtain they also become costlier and the costlier they become, they have the makings of status symbols. and funnily the more costlier status goods get it the more they sell i.e, demand increases as prices increase, a category of goods known as Veblen goods. In fact, one can argue that these goods are the real natural status goods as it is difficult to increase the supply unlike iphones or high end cars where automated production technology can be used.
Can we find use the negatives, nay positives of the handicrafts industry and find ways of improving design and execution and marketing of handicrafts and market them as the new status symbols ?
If this succeeds and the artisans becomes prosperous, more people will take to producing handicrafts and the production will increases substantially. This will puncture the Veblen bubble of increasing demand by increasing prices as there may not be much status left in a product whose product volumes are rising and everyone is having one at home. But that too would be an excellent outcome as the handicrafts would attain vitality because it would have a large base of producers and consumers.
So here is a challenge for all those in these areas. If you find any dying handicraft, can you create very high end status symbols products from handicrafts ?
Would this be true of art forms also ? Can we create events which are status symbols from such art forms ? The cogniscenti would argue it would be an insult to the art form. No doubt it would be, but would it not be a greater insult to let the art form die ?
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