Pop quiz: What word shows up on a cheese menu, at a chic boutique, in a home-décor business, on handmade soaps and candle brands, in studio pottery and on Insta Reels? It also dominated last weekend’s flea market in Mumbai. We’d give you 10 points for guessing “artisanal”, but alas, we only have eight. As with everything artisanal, supply is limited.

Most modern small businesses define artisanal in the usual way. It’s a trade or craft practised using traditional skills, to make high-quality products in small batches. This supports traditional techniques and preserves fast-vanishing skills. It also offers customers an alternative to impersonal mass-manufactured items.

In big cities, where modern artisanal brands have mushroomed over the past decade, the term often just means over-fragranced, over-packaged and overpriced. “It’s overused and often improperly understood,” says Ishita Sudha Yashvi, who co-founded Tinkaa Tinkaa Clothing that made modern casual Indianwear in handcrafted cotton. “Very few consumers understand the value of artisanal labels.”

It’s only one of the challenges artisanal brands face after their initial burst of earnest success. See how some well-loved companies are struggling to stay focused and to scale up against the odds.

Distance learning

Most brands that sell in cities rely on the handwork of artisans in far-flung villages, rather than a factory. It means that logistics are a constant challenge. A single spell of rain can mean that a batch of handmade burrata will spoil before the little refrigerated van makes it to the shops. Mausam Narang, founder of Eleftheria Cheese, says that establishing a cold-chain logistics network in Mumbai was the primary challenge for her nine-year-old business. “Sourcing high-quality raw materials, especially milk, is also difficult, despite India being one of the largest milk producers,” she says.

In smaller towns, power cuts are frequent, stalling work. And even if all goes well, a successful new brand will, sooner or later, run into an old problem: How to scale up. Akanksha Batra’s The Green Collective works with rural women who forage for pine needles on the forest floor, sort them by quality and use the best ones to hand craft coils that are turned into home-décor products. “You can’t compare this beautiful process to a machine-made piece,” she says. “But the women can only make a limited number of products in a day or week. They cannot churn out large volumes like machines. This can be daunting when we receive bulk orders with a short turnaround time.”

Package deal

It’s a tough market. Artisanal producers aren’t just hoping to lure customers away from large impersonal (but cheaper) retail stores, they’re also in competition among themselves. How to convince a young Indian shopper that handmade, natural-vanilla-scented soaps offer a better experience than the 5+1 free deal at the supermarket? How might they then pick from the 50 handmade soap brands sold online or hawked out of cottage-core kiosks at the weekend bazaar?

“The majority of the online retail market, artisanal or not, is dominated by a few aggregators,” says Yashvi. They operate on larger scales, have bigger marketing budgets and are able to advertise on billboards, top-tier websites, blitz their ASMR clips on Reels, and offer quick delivery. “It makes it nearly impossible for small, artisanal brands to wrest business away from them,” she adds.

Eleftheria Cheese is routinely undercut by low-priced imported processed cheeses. But with boutique fashion, it’s possible to chart a new path. Designer Sanket Bhansali set up his label, Bougainvillea, in 2020, selling natural-fabric, hand-printed dresses, co-ord sets and jumpsuits as an alternative to fast fashion. The challenge, he says, is to survive, especially in the first two years. “Then you thrive by scaling up.” The brand has a flagship store in Pune and one each in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The bulk of the business happens on their website, via ads on social media. To expand, they simply explored new territories abroad.

Scaling up

Most artisanal enterprises have no option but to stay small, even if they build demand. So they get creative within their self-enforced spheres. Narang says her cheese brand eliminates middlemen and supplies directly to consumers, “to maintain complete control over product quality and integrity”.

Others work towards educating potential consumers on what makes their products so special, playing up the skilled handcrafts, delicate flavours that emerge from small-batch processes, the focus on sustainability and fair trade. “Good craftsmanship should not be cheap,” says Yashvi.

Around the world, customers who’ve switched loyalties from mass-produced to artisanal have learnt to live with the quirks: Handmade products will vary from batch to batch; they cost more because they’re made differently; stocks often run out; and there’s rarely a coupon code for an exploitative discount.

Bhansali says producers must do their bit, too. “Be honest with the craft and customer. Work with newer technology if it means producing the same thing with less effort,” he says. And stay focused on what makes the brand artisanal in the first place, adds Batra: “Remain original and authentic to your art, your purpose, your artisans, and the ecosystem that builds your brand. It’s what will carry your story most beautifully.”

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