Brett and crystal childs were living a hipster dream in Denver. They had taken a class in screen printing together to escape the stress of work; Brett, 28, was a restaurant manager, and Crystal, 27, was an interior designer. Screen printing, it turned out, was their calling. Their favorite design was an oversize diagram of a bicycle. They printed it on T-shirts. They printed it on pillows. And dresses and wallets. Soon enough, they longed to quit their jobs and become full-time screen-printing artists. To find customers, they put their handcrafted T-shirts and pillows and dresses and glassware on Etsy, an online marketplace they had read about on a friend's blog. In 2007, their first year, they made $25,000. Business grew so fast that after another year they gave notice at their jobs. "We'd always felt we were do-it-yourselfers while we were working for other people," says Crystal. "We had to go out on our own to see if we were right."
It seemed perfect, but there was a secret hanging over Brett and Crystal's venture. Sales were so good that they needed to bring in temporary help to meet demand--a handful of workers they found mostly through word of mouth or via their Facebook page. For just about any small business, that would be an obvious and logical move. Not so in the world of artisanal products: the people who buy handmade items want to imagine their furniture being hammered together by an urban free spirit in a gritty loft and their cashew brittle being hand-stirred with love in a country kitchen. Rent-a-workers squeezing in a shift to earn a few extra bucks between construction gigs simply aren't part of the vision. Etsy even had a rule: anyone selling merchandise on its site could employ only people he or she knew--in effect, relatives or people living under the seller's roof. Hiring strangers to produce in large quantities was a no-no. So the Childses kept quiet, unsure if their extra help was a violation and fearful that they might be banished from Etsy. "We rationalized it to ourselves," says Crystal, "because we couldn't handle the volume."
There is a peculiar war under way for the artisanal soul, and survival on the front lines can be complicated, as eager entrepreneurs like the Childses are finding out. These days, craftsmanship isn't just about the quality of the work. It's also about selling a lifestyle as carefully calibrated as any Ralph Lauren scene of equestrian bliss. The collision between artisanal purity and capitalist ambition is playing out among thousands of amateur carpenters, potters and condiment makers who have turned household arts and hobbies into thriving ventures. But it is a movement as much as an industry, and many of its leaders insist that remaining virtuous means staying small.