When craftsmanship restores a healthy relationship between the consumer and the maker through a purchase that reflects who we are.
A shared reality and identity
Buying products connected to our region and our everyday reality, products that express who we are.
Recognizing ourselves also depends on choosing what we buy in a way that expresses and shapes our own identity.
To avoid the loss of bearings that lies behind so many anxieties, we need ways to recognize what brings us together and what divides us.
When our consumption reflects who we are, it reconnects us with a shared reality.
When price becomes a social issue
In a world dominated by excess, a product’s price often seems disconnected from its true value.
We live at a time when our perception of value is shaped by heavy marketing, influence, and increasingly convoluted distribution strategies.
Craftsmanship offers a radically different alternative: a price that directly reflects human labor and the quality of the raw materials.
Take a familiar example: a smartphone. Its manufacturing cost, including materials and labor, is far below its retail price. The markup between production cost and advertised price might astonish you.
Why such a difference? Because you are paying not only for an object, but for a whole world of intangibles: advertising, influence, distribution, carefully cultivated aesthetics, exclusivity, the perception of luxury, and the social status associated with it. Through storytelling, you are paying to belong to a narrative larger than the product itself.
You are paying to belong to a story larger than the product itself.
Value rooted in reality
Craftsmanship follows a different model. When you buy a wool mattress made by a craftsperson, you are paying first and foremost for the quality of the materials and the time spent making it.
Unlike industry, craftspeople do not rely on massive economies of scale or hidden costs passed on to the environment or society.
The price of a handcrafted product includes little marketing and few complex distribution costs. It directly reflects the work involved and the quality of the materials. There are no spectacular sales or misleading promotions, simply a fair price all year round.
That leaves no artificial margin for bargaining over a product or service. Knowing that you are not being manipulated as a consumer creates an additional measure of trust in the buying process.
A hidden cost for society
When a price is low, ask who pays the difference. Too often, the answer is producers under pressure, standards being circumvented, tax systems exploited to benefit large corporations, and an environmental footprint no one accepts responsibility for. An abnormally low price is merely the visible tip of an invisible stack of human and environmental sacrifices.
Choosing a craftsperson means choosing a more responsible economy, where price is directly tied to true value.
It also means reconsidering our relationship with negotiation: when everything is transparent and we understand what we are paying for, the urge to reduce the cost at any price fades.
A craftsperson has no hidden margins to absorb excessive discounts, but can suggest sensible adjustments.
This is about defending the craft model.
Learning moderation again
A fair price is not necessarily affordable to everyone. We are keenly aware, and deeply regret, that not every budget can accommodate handcrafted goods. If overheads such as energy, taxes, and labor costs change, craftspeople can make their prices more accessible, provided they can still earn a decent living from their work. If we want to preserve the craft model, we need to ask some structural questions.
If we want to preserve the craft model, we need to ask some structural questions.
Craftspeople do not try to imitate industry or its contrivances. They remain true to one fundamental principle: offering a product whose price corresponds to its tangible value.
It is a model that encourages neither overconsumption nor the devaluation of labor.
So the next time you question the price of a product, ask yourself: are you paying for something tangible, or for a carefully maintained illusion?
Necessity is the mother of invention
Plato understood it long before we had to experience it ourselves: ideas are born not from abundance, but from constraint.
As resources run out and an exhausted industrial economy confronts its carbon footprint, something essential is reawakening.
It would be tempting to see traditional bedding—the wool mattress, the handcrafted box spring—as a nostalgic gesture, a step backward. That would be looking in the wrong direction. Wool regulates temperature, breathes, lasts, and can be repaired. It comes from an animal and returns to the earth.
In a world constrained by energy and resources, precisely this kind of ingenuity—simple, circular, effective—is becoming self-evident once more.
A craftsperson who refurbishes a wool mattress is not recreating the past. They are applying the right answer to a contemporary question. This is not a step backward. It is the beginning of a new adventure.
Craftspeople work hard to preserve a tradition that could offer solutions to contemporary problems. We should be careful not to abandon the craft model and force ourselves to start again from scratch.