News From the Hill

Archive for December 19th, 2008

I read the craziest thing today - in fact I am having difficulty believing it myself. What do you think of this?

From Feb 2009 it will be illegal in America to sell hand-crafted toys or clothing for children.

I have to read that sentence a few times and I am still having trouble with it – don’t take my word for it! There are a couple of good blogs with the story detailed in them.

This site has some ideas on what we can do to try to prevent this from happening. This site sells cute kiddy things and is understandable upset about this news while this site is a business blog with a clear and succinct article on this madness.

I am guessing that affects a lot of the sellers on Etsy, a lovely website which allows craftspeople to sell their own beautiful goods and leave out the middle men. Its really hard to make a living from making and selling crafts. When you consider that the crafts person has to design, source materials and create the items they sell you can imagine that they probably never really make the sort of money they deserve for the time it takes to do all that.

What worries me is that our esteemed (can you smell the sarcasm?) government often follow the ways of America, which coincidently suits the big business guy. Most business people in Ireland will admit that it is not an easy country for the really small business and not getting any easier. Quite often new regulations seems to favour the big guys.

Support handmade as long as you can – wherever you live…