Fyi:
I saw a Kickstarter offering a "one of a kind plush" that was basically them abusing their factories by ordering prototypes with no plan of follow through.

This is super wrong
Chinese factories offer discounted prototypes of lots of products EXPECTING an order.

Don't do this. Don't treat Chinese factory owners like slaves to make you money. Don't make false orders.
Sometimes you may make a prototype for something and wind up not ordering but if you NEVER planned to make that order, you are mistreating these workers

There's a reason one of a kind plush by creators like @NazFX_Studios and many others are costly and amazing. They are properly charging for their time. Factory prototypes are heavily discounted with the expectation you'll place a multi-thousand dollar order

Certain industries are starting to require a 30% down to even START prototyping which will put many of these cool products, once again, out of reach of a typical artist due to individuals taking advantage of this system for profit.

Just, if you see ANY one of a kind product offered at an inexpensive price and the artist isn't making it by hand or paying someone for it, reconsider that order.

Some of the few exceptions are things like acrylic charms which have MOQs of 1, or 3D printed objects.

Not to mention, you WILL become blacklisted from factories if you do this and rightly so. Your treating them like slaves labor.

One large company I know doing this seems to be reaching out to new factories for these "commissions" and then mailing out extremely subpar finals.

In case you're curious this is also why some 3rd party middle men who contact out to these factories are becoming increasingly picky about who they'll work with. Every order that goes nowhere hurts their relationship with manufacturers.

This is conjecture, but I think it's why ones that accept ANY client often have wildly different qualities. They likely have multiple burner accounts to work with factories who increasingly are blacklisting them.

Anyway, this is a long winded rant that amounts to: treat factories making your things with respect. They are hard working humans. They aren't paid enough for us to bullshit them around.
And if you use a middle man, they use factories, too, so make sure they treat them right.

Fyi this is why all my custom orders are like $1000+. You are paying for my time + full production cost + shipping and often with very little profit buffer for myself.

https://twitter.com/KikiDoodleTweet/status/1279482588734697472?s=19

Addendum to this: start a dialogue and ask why it's cheap. Does the person have a lower moq, or use cheaper materials, or not pay themselves for their time? But remain suspicious for the well being of the people making the product.

https://twitter.com/nightengale13/status/1279491658560700418?s=19

This thread eloquently expresses why this isn't cool from an artesian's perspective.

This isn't intended as a callout. I wanted this to be educational about the people MAKING these products.

An artist reached out to me that they were designing plush products & didn't realize why they needed to push mass production after prototyping and that is being BETTER!

That said, if you know anyone purposefully doing this be kind and reach out to them and let them know that prototyping discounts are like putting a deposit on a commission. It covers materials, but does NOT cover time. Prototyping is meant to lead to a final product.