I'm proud to be working on an early-stage startup that hopes to expand on this model and its successes, incorporating artisan materials and stories into affordable-luxury fashion products while opening dialogues between artisans and end-users (they're more than just consumers!).<p>This article raises some interesting points. Seemingly unlikely occurrences like accidents or geopolitical/remote events disrupting the only internet access point for an artisan collective become important risk factors for a startup to account for in their timelines, especially when they rely on artisan partners for dependencies early on in the Gantt chart for a product cycle! As if we didn't have enough uncertainty just by virtue of being a startup... :) Good planning, redundant communications channels, and relationships with multiple people on the ground at various distances (and therefore in multiple internet connectivity zones!) can mitigate this... to a point.<p>Something that startups like us do need to think about is resistance within artisans' communities. As the article mentions, "men’s resistance was rooted in the fact that their control as resellers of the rugs would decline as the women learned how to do it on their own." Only regular on-the-ground presence can have a chance of detecting these scenarios and mediating them, and that's tough for a startup to prioritize - but it often has to be done.<p>Finally, when the authors cite youth who avoid training for artisan skills because they fear that "in the best-case scenario, you live a life as an organization’s beneficiary," this scenario is something that even the article's success story needs to mitigate. While the successful Imelghaus cooperative is in many ways independent, it's still the case that Imelghaus' revenue stream largely depends on the continued appeal of a foreign-operated brand, as well that brand's continued commitment to Imelghaus even as they onboard other artisan collectives. This is especially true for artisan products being incorporated into the fashion industry, where seasonality and freshness of products is considered highly desirable (to say the least). Our team's hypothesis is that at scale with multiple product lines incorporating different artisans' products, we can continue to drive sales to artisan groups that were highlighted in previous seasons, by promoting them in the same way any data-driven company would promote related products to new and existing customers; to put it mathematically, we'd add regressors for the success of our artisan partners into the optimization algorithm for recommendations, rather than recommending simply by user preferences alone, and leverage the strength of our brand to make this strategy viable. We're still at the product development stage, so only time will tell if this bears out. But it's an intriguing and fulfilling space to dive into!<p>(If you're interested in discussing more, feel free to contact me in my profile!)