In the craft industry, there are frequent calls to become Brand Ambassadors or Brand Influencers. If the craft you’re involved in requires fabric, these are the opportunities that are likely to entice you - either as a hobbyist, or a professional like me, who designs quilt patterns - because one of the spoils is “free” fabric.
Fabric is expensive. It’s also the primary consumable of a craft like quilting. Getting free fabric is a holy grail of sorts, and many fabric manufacturers have used that to great advantage to fill their feeds with projects made by the giddy recipients of said free fabric.
I wrote about this here (blog) and here (IG) a while back in March ‘22, laying out the important considerations for choosing to be a Brand Ambassador.
Recently, Riley Blake Designs opened a call for Brand Influencers for their fabric lines, and an industry colleague, Amari Thomsen, put together an IG post questioning the terms.
Riley Blake responded in their stories (IG stories disappear in 24 hours, so I’m curious as to why this response will not live on in a more permanent space), clarifying points of the offering.
The short version of these deals is this… they give you fabric, you make stuff with the fabric, both of you post it to social media looking for the ever elusive exposure (and good luck with that because IG is currently a 💩 show). Where the questions arise is around if money will be paid to the person sewing the project. Not goods in lieu of money (see my blog post linked above) but actual pay-my-bills money.
Here’s where this gets interesting to me (screenshot from Riley Blake Design stories on IG, 08 Aug 23.)
“We know our new program is only a small step in the direction of fair pay and we want to be fully transparent that we know the sum we are offering is not something a maker can pay the bills with.”
OK Riley Blake: why not take the BIG step?
Why not design a program that fairly pays a living hourly wage for the sewing?
Women have historically been unpaid and underpaid since the dawn of time for their sewing prowess. Fabric companies are built on the faith that few people actually push back on this. Why don’t we push back? Because we’re cultured to play nice and be grateful for the crumbs we get offered.
This progress does not need to be glacially incremental. Although, if progress moves only an inch at a time, and is framed with earnest transparency and a few color-coordinated heart emojis, perhaps we’ll swallow that (“Look, to be fair, they’re trying - let’s celebrate that!”) and then they don’t have to shift more until the next round of complaints.
Newsflash: It ain’t fair. It’s not designed to be.
I have en edit for the last para of their screen shot:
“To the 500+ makers who applied for their new program, PLEASE DO THE MATH. Your sewing skills are worth living-wage-level compensation. And if we all say no to these offerings, the offerings will have to change.”