The challenge of stocking inventory that reflects your values

As a small shop, how do you balance what you know will sell with what's best for the community and planet?

Planters at Fernseed’s South Tacoma Way location

I spent a lot of time in thrift stores in my twenties and thirties because it was what I did for a living. I started by selling used books on Amazon, then vintage housewares on Etsy.

From 2004 to about 2012, I spent about 16-24 hours a week in thrift stores, church rummage sales, and estate sales. If you do the math, I actually accrued the 10,000 hours required to be an expert in something, so I guess I’m an expert in the second hand marketplace.

When I started thrifting, the average merchandise was probably about 10 years old, about the time a household would wear something out or tire of the design. By the end of my vintage career, thrift store goods were maybe 3-5 years old, because things didn’t last as long. They were hastily designed to be on trend, cheaply manufactured, sold at IKEA, Target, Wayfair, or Urban Outfitters, then discarded a few years later when they were no longer stylish or fell apart.

I got my 10,000 hours witnessing that decline first hand, and it was horrifying. Quality old stuff got harder to find, because quality new stuff wasn’t being manufactured.

Me, shopping in a thrift store in Indiana circa 2011.

When I opened a retail shop years later, I decided I wasn’t going to sell cheap goods destined for a landfill. I made a commitment to ethical, sustainable sourcing. In this post, I explain what that looks like in practice. I’ll talk about the criteria we use at Fernseed to vet our vendors, the difference between handmade and manufactured products, and how I judge good design.

I’ll also talk about consumer expectations, in particular the conflict between what people say they want and what they’re willing to spend, and how I balance our inventory to ensure we can generate revenue while staying true to our ethics.

Vendor Criteria

On the Fernseed vendor criteria page on our website, I wrote the following:

Our shop is committed to sourcing product as locally as possible, while avoiding crossover with products available in other local shops. We are aware that handmade products are offered at a higher price point than some of our customers prefer to pay when shopping for utility. Therefore our shop sources some products from companies that mass produce ceramics.

Wherever possible, we have attempted to ascertain where these products are produced, and looked into the ethics, production and labor practices of these businesses. Above all, we do not stock mass-produced products that copy a technique or give the impression that they are handmade or hand finished when they are not.

The only mass produced products we carry are either focused entirely on utility (terra cotta cylinders with no extraneous features or details, for example), or are produced in small batches by companies who design the products in-house, and are careful to partner with manufacturing facilities that prioritize worker health and the health of our planet and their surrounding communities.

We also list the following vendor criteria:

• Ethically/sustainably manufactured or made by hand

• Commitment to environmental or sustainable production practices

• Commitment to inclusivity and anti-racism

• Shipping and product packaging that emphasizes sustainability and is plastic-free whenever possible

• Original designs. We are not interested in stocking products that are simply copies of popular products already in the marketplace. When we source products that are produced at scale (versus handmade), we prefer to work with companies that create original designs in-house, who pay for that design work, and who design for utility and durability over novelty.

• We're committed to stocking products with an emphasis on function and plant health. We avoid trends and the kind of kitsch that's already been co-opted by Target.

• We believe decorative elements (hand painting, stickers, etc.) should convey an intentional message or artist story, from a culturally-appropriate source.

The Challenge of Selling Handmade Goods

When it comes to sourcing handmade products, one of the biggest challenges Fernseed faces is consistency. I’m not talking about quality control or uniformity here. Rather, so many of our best selling handmade vendors simply stop producing within a year of us connecting with them. Many burn out, or return to full-time work. Some pivot from working in one medium to another, or change their style to a format that’s not consistent with our aesthetic. Sometimes vendors can’t keep up with market demand, which is a good thing until you consider that in order to sell as many planters as our customers want to buy from them, an artist has to spend 60-70 hours per week in the studio making only that product, which is exactly the grind many came to handmade work to avoid.

The most heartbreaking situation for me is when a vendor—rightfully!—raises their wholesale prices, and in doing so exceeds what our customer is willing to pay. I can’t absorb these costs, so we stop carrying their products.

These disruptions in our handmade supply chain have a similar impact in our business as employee turnover. It takes time to establish a relationship with a new vendor, from the email back-and-forth, to adding SKUs to our system, to photographing products for the website, to finding product-market fit, to marketing and employee education. When a handmade vendor disappears, we lose all that work.

To mitigate this risk, I’ve recalibrated our ratio of handmade to mass produced products. We carry fewer handmade items now than we did when we opened, but we do it with intention.

• We carry fewer variant SKUs from vendors we have longevity with, so maybe we no longer stock all color or size options, but we keep what products we do carry regularly in stock.

• We tie new vendor relationships and products to specific seasons or themes, and put marketing behind those products. For example, this summer I’m planning a clouds-and-rainbows theme, so we’ll stock handmade ceramics with painted cloud motifs. When they sell out, we may not carry them again.

Handmade is more of the cherry-on-top for us now, versus the bread and butter.

So we rely more on mass produced products, but in doing so, I try to stay as true to our ethics as possible.

Buying Ethically When Buying Mass Produced

I try to work only with companies that employ in-house designers and create original designs versus “borrowing” popular designs from other artists. Here are a few vendors we work with who produce at scale and design in house:

• Group Partner: Brooklyn-based ceramics designer who stopped making everything by hand and partnered with a factory in Portugal for production

• LBE Design: California-based ceramics designers who base their planter designs on classic styles and partner with factories in Mexico and China to produce them sustainably and ethically

• Bergs Potter: Denmark-based garden supplier whose designs tend toward the traditional, but whose simple Hoff series has been a best seller for us and is produced by a ceramics factory in Italy

One question I ask any high volume vendor interested in working with us is, “Have you visited the factory?”

For some, the answer is no. For the ones I establish long-term relationships with, the answer is often something like, “We go four times a year, and we have a very close relationship with the family that owns the production facility.”

Video still of Jon and Veronica Denne, co-owners of LBE Design, at the factory in China where their Revival Ceramics line is produced. You can watch the full video here.

Not All Chinese Factories

Jon and Veronica Denne, the owners of LBE Design, were the first to open my eyes to the fact that not everything made in China is terrible. They embarked on a global search for a manufacturing partner for their Revival Ceramics line before launching, and in their exhaustive research discovered that despite the stigma, not all Chinese factories rely on unethical labor practices to reduce costs. Because China has invested so much in manufacturing in the past few decades and there are so many factories, it is possible to find facilities that operate ethically and sustainably. There are still plenty of terrible factories in China, but I no longer look at a “Made in China” label as a blanket dismissal of something we won’t carry at Fernseed.

I was also surprised to discover that when I contacted Accent Decor—a company I love to hate because they steal designs*—to ask about factories, the customer service representative told me to submit a list of SKUs I wanted factory information on and they would send me the list of individual factories in China where each item is produced. I was astonished at this transparency (and frankly a little disappointed that their honest answer meant I couldn’t cut them out of my life as a supplier).

*I wrote more about Accent Decor ripping off artists’ designs in this post.

What is Good Design?

The German industrial designer Dieter Rams defines good design by the following 10 principles:

1. Is innovative

2. Makes a product useful

3. Is aesthetic

4. Makes a product understandable

5. Is unobtrusive

6. Is honest

7. Is long-lasting

8. Is thorough down to the last detail

9. Is environmentally friendly

10. Involves as little design as possible

When sourcing products for Fernseed I am looking mostly for utility, honesty, durability, sustainability, and understandability.

Utility: ceramics are focused on ease of use and plant health. For example, they can be displayed on wood without leaving a moisture ring, but are also made of a breathable material that aids in moisture balance and allows room for root and foliage growth.

Honesty: “Aesthetic” is a tricky term, so I rely on “involves as little design as possible” and “is honest” to guide our buying decisions with large-scale producers. I will not buy anything made at scale that apes a motif made popular by handmade artists or that includes festooning designed to make a pot look like something it is not. If it wasn’t made in a 19th century Italian villa, it shouldn’t look like it was. But also if it wasn’t made by an Ohio-based RISD ceramics dropout whose edgy designs were recently featured in Paste Magazine, it shouldn’t look like it was. That’s not honest.

Durability: It’s long-lasting, it won’t break easily.

Sustainability: If breaks or degrades, it won’t poison the ground in the landfill it ends up in. Also it was made with minimal environmental impact, from materials to production.

Understandability: There’s only so much innovation that can occur in the indoor plant space, especially with vessels. If something is innovative, it should also be easy for the customer to understand. For example, we’ve carried a variety of self-watering planters in the shop, and only the Wet Pot passes the “easy to understand” test. Customers just get it.

Style changes. I don’t try to determine what is beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. I leave it to the cutting edge handmade vendors to do that. Handmade is where I am willing to allow festooning and decoration, even bordering on the absurd. Why? Because the artist who painted the cowboy snake on this ceramic planter was saying something rather than trying to sell something. Is it beautiful? I think so. You might not. But at least it’s honest.

What People Say They Want Versus What They Buy

The only way I learn what products sell in the shop is by offering them for sale and trying to collect at least a 50% margin. Since opening the shop in 2019 I have learned the hard way that the only vote that counts is the dollar.

I’m sure most retailers and product businesses get feedback from customers about company values reflected in inventory choices. We see this a lot with size inclusivity in clothing, for example. I think one of our greatest challenges as retailers or manufacturers is figuring out how we ensure our values, and the values of our shoppers and community, are reflected in our inventory while also making sure that we’re not sinking too much cash into inventory that demonstrates our values but doesn’t sell quickly enough to justify shelf space.

Cash tied up in inventory that doesn’t sell is like dollar bills frozen in blocks of ice. The more slow-selling inventory I have on hand, the more cash I have tied up that I can’t use to pay rent, make payroll, or buy new inventory. We all have to make trade-offs to stay financially afloat. How, then do we decide what those trade-offs are?

When it comes to planned “ice block” inventory (stuff we know will sell slower), I look at the following:

• Does this product differentiate our shop from other plant and gift shops in the area?

• Is this product made by a local artist or an artist from a marginalized community or identity?

• Does this product fit in with our seasonal themes and help us tell an overall story in our merchandising?

• Does the design of this product elevate the look of the entire shop?

• Is this a high quality, durable, functional product that we can recommend confidently even if there are cheaper versions in the marketplace?

If the answer is yes to any of the above, then it’s okay to freeze up a little cash to meet our goals. To be clear, this doesn’t mean everything that fits in the criteria above will be a slow seller! These are just the reasons I feel it’s okay to hang on to something that doesn’t turn over as quickly, or reduce our margin (and still buy it again even though we technically discounted it).

That said, we need to make sure that we don’t have half our inventory dedicated to values and aesthetics-based products if they sell slower or have lower margins. As much as we can, we try to identify what these products are and tag them in Shopify so we can get a real picture of just how much inventory is frozen in blocks of ice. (This is a tricky task and always done imperfectly.)

There will of course be times when customers challenge us on whether they see our stated values reflected in our inventory. It’s happened before, and it will happen again! After four years, I feel much more confident (less defensive, really) that we are refining a work in progress versus failing our community if on any given day our inventory doesn’t adequately reflect the balance we’re trying to achieve. Progress, not perfection.

Goals for the Next Few Years

Sometimes I look back at photos of the shop from four years ago with horror. We didn’t always adhere to these “no fast fashion” rules for buying. I’ve sold some trendy, mass manufactured planters that I cringe at now. There have also been times where we were overstocked on handmade merchandise from a particular vendor because we were treating it like it had a high turnover when it did not.

In the coming years, I would like to:

• Better define those slow selling products in our inventory and reporting so we can plan for them

• Create measurable goals related to diversity in sourcing, track, and report them

• Better tell the story of our ethics by highlighting the artists and companies we do buy from and telling their stories

• Create a system for spot-checking our inventory to ensure that we are reflecting our values on any given day, despite the many constraints of operating small

• Better train my staff on talking points for all products in the store and why we stand behind them

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I’m always interested to hear about how other small shops or small batch producers handle the balance of inventory that reflects your values and the stated values of your community versus stocking what sells. Do people really care about organic cotton and ethical manufacturing or do they just say they do and then buy cheap? Have you lost money producing or stocking something that reflects stated customer values but ended up not selling? Conversely, did you make or start carrying something values-based that you weren’t sure would sell but that did become a best seller? Hit reply and let me know about it or leave a note in the comments.