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Oh, I owe you all a thread on profit! https://twitter.com/lingerie_addict/status/1285500419750404096
This thread is inspired by a conversation over on my Instagram where someone wanted to develop a "profit-free brand" that uses only textiles with "unproblematic histories."
First of all, all textiles have problematic histories, so we'll just toss that argument out right now.
First of all, all textiles have problematic histories, so we'll just toss that argument out right now.
It's extremely easy to own a business that doesn't make a profit. That's why most businesses fail w/in the first couple years.
Businesses exist to make profit. That is their sole purpose. If you are deliberately intending to avoid profit, you either have a hobby or a non-profit.
Businesses exist to make profit. That is their sole purpose. If you are deliberately intending to avoid profit, you either have a hobby or a non-profit.
There's this idea that profits are an inherently bad, and many folks, especially on social media, believe all goods should be sold at cost.
In my ideal utopia, we'd all have UBI - at minimum - and artisans could create whatever they like while we could access whatever we like.
In my ideal utopia, we'd all have UBI - at minimum - and artisans could create whatever they like while we could access whatever we like.
However, in this current version of reality, selling goods at-cost, with no mark-up, with the intention of having $0 at the end of the year, is bad idea. At least if you actually plan to run a business and are not independently wealthy. (Some brand owners are. They own hobbies.)
Let's assume your books balance to $0 at the end of the year. It's far more likely in this scenario that you'd be in negative money, but we'll just say you found a stack of money under the floorboards and the fairies owed your parents a favor, so everything went your way.
So. You sold your goods at-cost because profit is a bad word. How do you produce the next season? How do you purchase fabrics? How do you negotiate with your factory? How do you pay yourself? How do you pay your team? How do you pay your light bill? How do you pay your rent?
How do you pay for marketing? How do you pay for advertising? How do you pay for tradeshows? How do you expand your size range? And, if you are not independently wealthy, how do you attract investors. Because no one's investing in a "business" that isn't going to make money.
The word "profit" isn't some dark, evil, Fern Gully-style shadow creature, especially if you are a small, independent business. Chances are, the profits are what you live off. Because we don't yet live in society where everyone has guaranteed housing, food, and medical care.
And if it is your intention to run a "business" without generating a profit, you honestly do not belong in business. And that's okay. Being an ideologue is fine. But businesses don't run off of ideology. They run off of money. And if that is a problem, business is not for you.
(And this isn't even getting into how you will be *instantly* blacklisted - and possibly sued - if you attempt to do this. If I sold my books at the wholesale rate, for example, everybody in publishing would be completely done with me. Forever. And it would be entirely my fault.)
