Last night we watched the Netflix Documentary "Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy" which was an inside look at corporations getting it's consumers to buy more and more in order to make larger and larger profits without a thought to what the after effects were. After I watched it, my stomach churned which I'm sure was the goal of the film and I found myself questioning whether any of these terrible practices were something that our little business contributed to. Below I address the rules they sited in the film and reflections on how our business deals with that.

Rule #1 Buy More

Rule One explored how corporations made intentional decisions to shorten the life of their products such as making a light bulb only last 1/3 of it's potential life in order to get consumers to replace light bulbs more often and therefore buy more lightbulbs. Other examples showed technology saving version upgrades so that you'd want to buy a new phone or new computer before the other one wore out to get the latest technology.

I found that we as a company actually do the opposite here. We build our doll clothes, shoes, and wigs to be long lasting with the goal in mind to be able to pass down dolls from generation to generation. If you've shopped around for doll supplies in our industry, there are a lot of cheap products out there. $1.99 shoes and $29.95 dolls and it seems the price keeps driving down. It's not to provide you with a better deal folks it's to get you to buy more. In my mind I always thought it was because some corporations decided to produce quality products and others decided to produce cheap products, but the darker thought here is that they are selling this crap to churn more sales as you are continually replacing products.

Rule #2 Waste More

When you are producing more to get more people to purchase and replace, there becomes more waste. The example in this case was Amazon where the shopping experience was key in that any thought in your head that you needed something, you could simply go to your computer and purchase anything that you wanted and then it would arrive at your door without ever leaving the house. They showed examples of consumers with boxes upon boxes at their doorstep. Yes you can purchase a can opener one day and then a pair of socks the next and they would come in separate boxes. Packaging waste, peanut waste, plastic waste. The terrible truth of where this waste "goes away" when you put it in the garbage is that it goes to areas where people are already struggling in lesser economies than ours. There were pictures of clothes floating in the oceans and piles on the ground, and people crying out that there was more coming in that could even be handled by the people that lived there. And the most appalling of all, to produce products that are intentionally not fixable so that you have to buy a new one instead of fixing the one you have.

We are small, but we really try our best to re-use everything possible as we are conscious of waste in the world. We re-use packaging, boxes, ribbons, fabric, clothing, and of course dolls to try to give new life and minimize what ends up in the garbage. Our doll hospital transforms old dolls into ones that can be loved by a new child or collector. We run a doll donation center to re-home dolls to be loved once again. Most of our signature art dolls are made from dolls that were ordinary or mass produced and then made special. Our goals of "Save a Doll" are to keep dolls from the trash, even if they aren't trendy or the next "it" thing.

Most importantly, we are actively making services available to fix toys rather than encouraging them to be replaced. I was quite angry when I saw in the film that they were gluing laptops together so they couldn't be opened and shorting battery life on headphones to make you buy a whole new set when they gave out. It's incredibly wasteful and with the purpose of making a consumer purchase another one. Reminded me of Robots movie when they made the decision to not make spare parts any longer to push the older robots to spend their money on an upgraded body. I see that decision when I'm trying desperately to find parts to fix dolls. It's another reason why people move on from one type of doll to another is that you simply can't find the parts to fix the doll or no one is selling clothing or shoes or whatever you need to keep your doll collection going. We as a company, hate this concept and do everything we can to bring back parts and clothes to make it possible to keep your older dolls in better shape and in good repair.

If that wasn't all, there were examples shown of corporations destroying merchandise that didn't sell or that had been returned because they had calculated that it was cheaper to burn it than to go through the system again and sell again. That definitely does not happen in our company. We do not burn unwanted merchandise and we don't add it or donate it to landfills. Perhaps I have been lucky, but I always find a way to repurpose something that wasn't successful and thankfully it is not many instances.

Rule #3 Lie More

Incredibly disheartening that larger corporations make you feel like they are addressing any of the problems when actually they are just running feel good campaigns to make you think that they are. I always believe that you should be upfront about what you are capable of doing and what you are not.

As a small business, we have smaller goals. Oftentimes there is more that I want to do but am not capable of at the moment. For example, sometimes I get a doll that gets donated and I just can't find any solutions to fix her and I think, what I need is "this part" or something that is unavailable. It is not possible for me to start manufacturing missing needs for all the dolls, there are many and I don't have the financial capacity to do so, but I would never promise that I can fix every doll under the sun, or that I have parts for every doll under the sun. But I will give every doll the opportunity to find a new owner and be adopted and loved again. I'm happy when I can add options to our website that meet a need, and that has always been our goal. We don't just produce a bunch of stuff for kicks. In fact many times a customer will come to us and say, how about you add this to your website and I tell them 5 other sellers already have that, I don't need to add it just because everyone else has it. I want to add things that make a difference for collectors.

Rule #4 Hide More

I really didn't like seeing this one where they show you things that are supposed to be recycled or donated to a thrift store or donation center and it's ending up being dismantled into tiny pieces in a third world country that is drowning in garbage. I did even see a clip of dolls and reference to making products better for the environment. I really enjoy seeing people that upcycle with their art because I think it is an important thing in most industries. Making something new and interesting around something that has been discarded is one of my favorites for most things. I am not one of those people who over buy. You might probably laugh, but I will use things until they absolutely cannot be used any longer. Being a crafter at heart and never particularly wealthy, I like things that last. I've repaired broken necklaces, hats, clothing, shoes, dolls, blankets, belts, you name it. If it could be glued back together or sewn back together odds are that I repaired it. My fabric scraps that are too small for making doll outfits from are given to schools to do art projects with. Components left over from projects are saved and re-used in something else down the line. And if you think I'm accumulating stuff in a giant hoard, I'm not because I have a rule never to purchase something unless it is for a current project and I always look at what I have before I purchase more. This is not easy as many things call out to me when I'm shopping for fabric and such, but if I know I won't be able to sew the idea right away then I make myself walk past. Storing fabric is never my objective. I once had a friend that would always tell me that she had boxes upon boxes of fabric in a storage unit that she could sew things from and always quoted thousands of dollars worth. One day we went to that storage unit, the fabric was covered in dust, smelled wet or musty, and had been eaten away by rats. Thousands and thousands down the drain. Instead of "Hide More", this will be a "Use what you have more" as the correct response.

I hope we are all looking towards the future and do what ever we can to minimize waste and excessiveness. Purchase dolls and clothes because you love them and can care for them and want them to continue on. Keep dolls out of the trash and stop purchasing things that are made to break or be discarded. Use your items until they wear out, not because something new and flashy is out. Better world tomorrow.