Manx Quilted Cushion | EXCHANGE MADE

How we price our products

A big part of The Exchange’s work is our community production workshops. In these workshops, we employ and commission some incredibly talented designers and craftspeople to work alongside our incredibly generous community volunteers (the Makers) to develop their craft making skills, and to produce things – from furniture to crockery to textile goods – that we can either use within our community building, or that we can sell to raise money to sustain our community programme. This community programme includes these free-to-access workshops and skills development opportunities as well as our events programme, which includes free and subsidised activities that aim to bring people from all backgrounds together and be part of something.

We believe in valuing people’s time, skill and commitment properly – craft techniques are not quick skills to gain, and quality production is not an easy thing to deliver. We want to ensure we are valuing the effort of our volunteers (who give their time for free to support the survival of The Exchange), staff and commissioned designers and craftspeople fairly.

We also believe in providing volunteering opportunities that not only encourage people to give back by supporting us as an organisation, but which are also fun and rewarding; we want these to be space for not only craft skills development but also spaces that encourage new friendships and local connections, and spaces that support positive wellbeing. We therefore do not put production pressures on our volunteers or expect heavy time commitments – people give what they want to or can commit to.

In order to value this time properly, and to ensure we create welcoming, safe and fun environments to make collaboratively on behalf of a wider social mission, we need to value the things that are made in a way that is sustainable, fair and properly respectful. We therefore benchmark our product prices against other professionally handmade goods, rather than mass-produced products, but keeping as low as we can afford to. We know that this means that for some these prices may be high, but they are fairly valued, and without fairly valuing what we do, we don’t believe we are valuing community or craft properly.

A final note is on “the system” and the cost-of-living crisis. Things are really bad at the moment, and we recognise that - we see it every day when we walk to work. The system isn’t working, and there are so many parts that need addressing, which we alone cannot do, which we do not have the power to do. This includes changing the cost of raw materials or bringing down the cost of living.

What we can do is 1) pay staff properly, and value volunteer commitment properly 2) keep prices as low as we can and make things at different price points 2) focus on ensuring that The Exchange survives as a community organisation in the long-term 3) work hard to ensure everyone is welcome to participate in what we do here, in some way. That’s our mission.