Small Batch
Made In Numbers You Could Count.
Small batch is a phrase the supermarket has spent a decade quietly ruining. A gin distilled ten thousand litres at a time is not small batch. It is gin, produced industrially, wearing a nice label and a slightly rustic serif.
Here it means what it says. Runs measured in dozens rather than pallets, usually because the person making them is also the person packing them, and quite often the person who replies when you email to ask where it is.
It costs more, and here is the unglamorous reason.
Small runs forfeit every efficiency that makes things cheap. There is no machine amortising itself over forty thousand units, so the price reflects hours instead. What you get for that is a very short chain between the person who made the thing and the person who owns it, and a decent chance that nobody else on your street has one.
Things sell out and stay sold out.
Which is the honest consequence of everything above rather than a tactic to hurry you along. Some of these brands make a thing, make forty of it, and then move on to whatever occurred to them next. It is a frustrating way to shop and an excellent way to own something.
There are related ways to browse in family owned, ethical brands, sustainable brands and resell, upcycled + vintage, all gathered under shop by purpose. New names arrive regularly in new brands, and everyone is listed in the brand directory.
