At our level -we’re a micro business- we need to achieve a fairly large margin in order to survive. If we were a giant biz, a low margin would work; massive turnover, tiny margin, massive profit in cash, if not percentage terms.

But we are very small and it is very hard to make any money. Indeed, if making money was our main object, we wouldn’t being trying to do it this way. 

This is clearly a big, wide-ranging subject. But in short, we need to put a fairly large mark-up on what we sell if we are to have any chance of making a profit. This is true of all small businesses, though no one really talks about because it seems greedy.

Bear with me while I explain a bit more.

A supermarket chain might make an annual net margin of 1-3%. That’s after all costs, wastage etc. 

At the other end of the scale, Chanel seem to report a net profit of around 15%. 

Our small hospitality businesses seem to be able achieve maybe 8%. This is 8% of a relatively small sum; a minute sum when compared to a supermarket. 

This margin has recently been aggressively eroded by massively rising costs. You’ll have no doubt read about these in the last year. It’s actually a miracle that we make anything. 

We could definitely cut our costs a bit, but we choose not to because we believe profoundly in good products. 

We characterise a good product like this.

It is, first and foremost, the best available in its class. This is the foundation upon which we have built our ranges

Its maker has been paid properly, on time.

The ingredients/components are the very best (and their makers have been paid properly).

Our staff are paid properly and are well-looked-after.

The product is designed and presented beautifully, with the best packaging we can muster, so that it feels good to the consumer.

It has as little negative impact on the physical environment as possible.

So, I suppose you could say that we talk about value and not price. 

What does this product do to people who interact with it, what does it mean, how does it make everyone feel at every stage of its life?

These are our questions. Not how can we make it cheap?

This puts it in stark contrast to a mass-produced stuff in supermarkets; perhaps these have been shipped from China where they were made in dubious circumstances (I have visited many overseas factories), or perhaps the maker is in Britain but has been screwed on price time and again, and is not paid for months. 

And perhaps the people who stack and pack and ring up aren’t looked after as well as they might be. 

And maybe the ingredients/components are a bit shit.

And maybe these things have been shipped for thousands of miles.

I am not talking about anything or any company in particular. I am just asking that when you buy something really cheap, you mull on all of this, because with cheapness come consequences. You can’t have it both ways.

This is further complicated when you realise that an expensive product is not necessarily a good one. Or that something posing as ‘artisan’, ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘seasonal’ may be no such thing. Do not be duped.

So, we sell only good things because the things we sell tick all of our boxes; they are brilliant things and everyone and everything involved in their making is considered by us.

Investigate our products, interrogate them, ask them questions. Like a stick of rock, you will find them absolutely consistent throughout.

The downside, if you see it as a downside, is that our things are sometimes -not always- a bit more expensive than many mass-produced goods. I stress, not always, but sometimes.

Let me pick a couple examples of the care we take to make good products.

The box for our candles is made by the only remaining hand-stapled box maker that uses coloured stock in the UK. Once there were many. Now there is one. They have been doing it for hundreds of years; a small, family company. 

This makes them really expensive, but…

Big but.

Another example.

Our Glen Dye key bell is made using the hides of sustainably culled deer. Normally there is no market for this skin, so it is just waste. But we sent it to someone who tanned it and they sent it to someone who designed and made it, using brass components made by another small company. Then we got someone else to make a debossing stamp -again, a tiny artisan- and then we had it shipped back to Glen Dye where we got a serious photographer to photograph it.

You get the idea.

So, we are not expensive. We offer great value. It depends what world you want to live in and what you want to surround yourself with, but it does bear repeating.

A good product is one that adds real value to the world.