It has been apparent for some time that the appetite for the hand made is on the rise. The crafts council recently launched a report to identify and gauge the appetite for British craft. Here are some of the amazing, well to me, figures.
The current pandemic has highlighted the growing craft trend – the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee has shifted to a prime-time BBC TV slot and attracts audiences of close to 5.5 million, and sellers of craft supplies for the domestic market are seeing a surge in sales.
With 20% of British consumers indicating that they would pay to attend a craft workshop, it is no surprise that such a significant number of people are turning to online tutorials and craft kits to learn a new skill while they have more time at home.
- 73% of UK adults bought crafts in 2019.
- 25 million hand made objects were purchased.
- 10.3m of us are buying craft online – a figure that has more than tripled over the last decade. However, the majority of people still prefer to buy in-person
- Online platforms have fuelled much of this growth: in December 2018, Etsy reported that there were 220,000 active sellers in the UK with a further 9,000 makers on Folksy
- Jewellery is the most popular craft discipline to purchase by volume, but glass and metal have seen the most sizeable growth since 2006
- 85% of Americans surveyed would buy a piece of craft compared with 88% here in the UK. 28% have bought from a UK maker and 59% would consider doing so – pointing to considerable potential for growth.
- There are 10.5m untapped, potential consumers living in New York and LA.
- The under 35-year-old craft buying market has grown by 32% since 2006
The report is available on the craft council’s web site http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk.
creativecolour.org 