: Why is “hand made” considered better and more luxurious ? Would a Toyota Corolla have better quality if some of it’s current automated assembly line tasks are taken care of by a human with a tool ?
In: Engineering
A common misconception is that hand made is somehow more precise than a well tuned manufacturing process. Machines operate on micrometer levels of precisions; a steady human hand shakes more than that.
Whats really luxurious is the brand, not the hand made part. Hand made just means labour was cheap, or they’re not making enough units to warrant a machine.
Hand made is also a buzzword used to make something seem better because someone touched it. In advertising there is no way to ensure something is actually handmade . It literally could be that someone put a finishing sticker on a model that was made by a machine and it is considered handmade.
Because part of luxury comes from rarity / limited supply.
Now that most products can be created in an assembly line by the thousands, having something be hand made, makes it unique (even if it is in minimal ways).
It usually denotes that it’s made with artisanal skill. And yes for some goods it’s not necessarily a good thing.
Well unless you are willing to pay 100k for a corolla, that’s not a very good idea.
Handcrafted means quality only because someone has to take the time to make it, check it, and correct any issues. All of this takes skill and time, significantly raising cost for what? Handcrafted doesn’t necessarily mean better built, just more attention to detail.
When it comes to quality control, you want consistency and nothing is more consistent than any robot designed to do one task repetitively.
Sometimes it’s not about the pure functional usefulness of an item, but the uniqueness and artistic quality provided by skilled human labor. Certain goods might also be so niche that they are only made by such craftsmen, and in small numbers, which adds a sense of exclusivity. Just knowing that they own something that very few others do is very valuable to some people.
“Handmade” does not necessarily mean something is higher quality. However, you often find high quality things to be handmade, and even in those cases, it’s often smaller, more delicate things. Of course, a human could spend hundreds or even thousands of hours building a car from scratch, but it would not be any different from a factory-assembled car, assuming the human made no mistakes (unlikely).
However, because a single person is building this vehicle, they require the expertise, ability, tools, and time to complete it. To be a mechanic that is capable of putting together a car takes years of experience. Not just that, but you would need all sorts of specialized tools needed to put everything together. You would also need to be capable of handling everything yourself, from getting down and dirty, to lifting heavy tires. Finally, all of this takes time—much more time than an assembly line—where this mechanic must be paid for his work, at much higher rates than a robot due to the required experience and ability required as mentioned. A robot only needs to do a single thing on an assembly line, and it can do it well. It can screw in a screw perfectly 100,000 times without needing to be paid or needing breaks, and its only costs are some routine maintenance and electricity.
Handmade goods also often use higher quality materials, because it helps boost the appeal of the product. The “handmade” process essentially multiplies the base worth of the product at hand. Would you buy a cheap plastic watch at $200 just because it was handmade? If it were made at a factory with the same materials, it would cost you $10. Sure, the $200 is justified because it took 14 days to build, but it’s not worth it. How about a handmade Patek Philippe watch made with diamonds and gold? At that point, even if it weren’t handmade, it would cost you thousands of dollars, and thus, the process of making it by hand multiplies that to be tens or hundreds of thousands.
Last, but not least, is the scarcity of it. Price is a supply/demand type ordeal, and handmade goods simply cannot be offered at the supply a factory can produce, so if the demand is there, then the price will rise. Price does not determine somethings quality, because of demand, but oftentimes it hints at it.
So, in the end, the cost of materials are the same, but the process is much more expensive mostly because of the different time frame and requirements involved. This is the source of the higher costs of “handmade” goods. Just because they are handmade does not make them better, but it often justifies the cost. They are considered more luxurious because you are paying for the time and the process it took to get that product rather than just the product itself. It’s up to you to decide whether that is worth it.
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