Craft and Maker Businesses Editing and Proofreading Services

A customer orders a bowl and receives one that is a slightly different green from the photograph, a centimetre shallower, and three weeks later than they expected. Every one of those is normal in handmade work and every one of them is a complaint, because nobody told them beforehand that variation is the point rather than a defect.

We edit what craft and maker businesses produce — product descriptions and variation statements, made-to-order and lead time information, care and use instructions, commission and bespoke agreements, wholesale line sheets and stockist terms, craft fair and market applications, maker statements for exhibitions and galleries, and customer correspondence when something goes wrong. Our editors work on the writing that manages what a buyer imagines.

The variation and lead time statement is what separates a delighted customer from a disappointed one, and its failure is a phrase about the beauty of handmade things doing the work that a specification should do. Nobody objects to variation they were told to expect. We work through these so the range of variation is described concretely — the dimensions within which pieces fall, the colour range across a firing or a dye lot, the marks that are inherent to the process — since "no two are the same" is a sentiment and "between 14 and 16 cm across" is information; so the features that read as faults are named and claimed as characteristics before purchase, because a customer who finds an iron speck or a tool mark and has not been warned has found a flaw; so the photograph's status is stated — whether it is the actual piece, a representative one, or an example from a previous batch; so the lead time is given as a date rather than a duration, given that "3–4 weeks" starts from a moment nobody agrees on; so what happens if the maker is delayed is stated with when the customer will be told; so care instructions are written as actions with consequences, since this is where handmade goods are ruined; so a genuinely bespoke commission has an approval point where the customer sees and confirms before the work is finished; and so the return position for made-to-order work is stated plainly. Descriptions written this way turn a first order into a fourth.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including product material, commission correspondence and business documents. We are editors rather than makers or consumer law advisers, and we offer no view on materials, technique or your obligations to customers. What we can do is set the buyer's expectation before the parcel arrives.