<story><title>The Knife Maker</title><url>http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kitcar</author><text>I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&lt;/a&gt; .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>diego_moita</author><text>&amp;#62; I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;This. I live in a 3rd world country (Brazil) and see a lot of truth in what you say. This film talks about art, not about consistent production of quality.&lt;p&gt;Take a man with passion, resources, intelligence and immense dedication and he will produce a work of high quality; doesn&apos;t matter if it is shoes, painting, engineering, suits or knives.&lt;p&gt;But it just doesn&apos;t scale. You won&apos;t find many more people with the same skills. You won&apos;t be able to produce as much as 15 robots in Germany. And you also need an extremely up-scale market for your product (NY food scene, in this case). And you also need very efficient marketing (in this case a photographer to introduce him to the chefs community).&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: this guy is like a panda living in a extremely rare and delicate niche environment. Once the NY food scene vanishes he is toast. Find someone in India or China willing to do the same for 1/10 th of the price and he is toast. Have smarter knife making robots in Germany and he is toast. Any tiny little perturbation can get him out of the market.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a reason why industrial revolution succeeded. There&apos;s a reason why families of hundreds of years of pottery makers in India are going extinct (lighter, cheaper and uglier plastic bowls). There&apos;s a reason why my wife&apos;s father gave up on beautiful handmade carpentry. The reason is that ugly but cheap and good enough is what almost everyone wants.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Knife Maker</title><url>http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kitcar</author><text>I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&lt;/a&gt; .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subpixel</author><text>Making and selling handmade products does not guarantee happiness or success (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://nyti.ms/srgRtu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nyti.ms/srgRtu&lt;/a&gt;). I think in the vast majority of cases, &apos;doing it by hand&apos; is probably not the answer.&lt;p&gt;What&apos;s inspiring about this guy is that he&apos;s succeeding by serving a vibrant professional market. The chefs who drop a grand on a couple of his knives are using them in the kitchen to make money. They want the best tools for the job, and everyone wins. It&apos;s product/market fit.&lt;p&gt;So kudos to him.&lt;p&gt;But don&apos;t get so inspired you drop everything to build the most beautiful product in the world believing people will buy it _because_ of how hard you worked on it or how awesome it is.</text></comment>