Stand in the Place Where You Live

It started with tote bags. Or was it German hand-planes? I don't remember. There was this sneaking bit of discomfort that I found lurking in the dusty corners of Instagram. A seething Mathmos clinging to all of my Pinterests. This gray sameness. No wait, it started with beer... If you are a beer drinker in this modern age I'm sure you have encountered it. A new local brewery opens up in your town. You stick your nose in, hoping that they've got something good on tap, and suddenly you have a moment of déjà vu. Your eyes glide down the beer list. The super hoppy IPAs. The token porter or stout. A wheat. Something else that is really just another IPA, but with a different name. Maybe a Belgian or two. A Black IPA or Session Ale so that you know how cutting edge they are. There it is. The sameness. The fact of the matter is that this small town brewery could be anywhere.

So what does any of this have to do with running a business? Go to Etsy and you will see what I'm talking about. Log on to the websites of a few different independent leather goods makers. Do they have a key ring? A minimalist card wallet? How about a tote bag? Are any of them really all that different from each other? Does the guy in Utah produce anything that different from the guy in Texas? Is there a Houston style of making things?

In the world of modern communication creativity has gone viral. All at once everyone's good ideas became accessible to everyone else. Contrary to what you might expect this has really stifled ingenuity. Because now when you start a leather goods business (or graphic design, ice cream, jewelry, food truck, wooden furniture....) and you want to make a tote bag, you log on and search for images of tote bags. Now you know how to make a tote bag. You will have a tote bag just like everyone else except yours will be, you know... different (special/unique/artisanal/rugged/folksy/please-buy-my-bag).

My point is this, once upon a time there was a bookkeeper in England. Every day he had to lug the day's ledgers from his client's office to his. He needed something to carry them him. So he had a local leather maker make him something that would hold English style ledgers. Elsewhere in the world there was a rice framer in Vietnam. She needed a way to get the rice to the warehouse so she made a reed bag to carry it. At the same time a young Shawnee was fashioning a deer skin sack to hang from his belt to hold his fire starting materials. All of these folks used what was available in their region (materials, knowledge, demand) to craft something they needed. These became archetypal trends and now we have tote bags, bucket bags, and possibles bags.

Start by solving a problem. If you have a brewery you don't have to have an IPA. If you are a brewery in Cleveland make a beer that goes with pierogi, or to pair with a local cheese business, or really good plain English ale (seriously, someone do this). If you make jewelry you don't have to make geometric frames and half-dip them in pastel paint. Make jewelry that you can wear while shoveling snow. For God's sake stop drawing bison (or stags or arrows) in chalk on things for people's logos. If you are going to make a tote bag don't start by looking at what everyone else has made. Start by thinking about what needs to be carried around and build a bag around it. Clevelanders carry different things in their bags than people in L.A. Walk down the street and look for inspiration when working on your graphic design. When you shrink the vast world of possibilities down to the world around you, you begin to create new possibilities by limiting yourself.