You want to start a business that creates and sells products to loads of happy customers. It’s a classic dream, and you even have a product idea in your head. The only problem is, you’re not sure which path to go down with regards to manufacturing the product. Should it be made by hand, or is it better to mass-produce it? 

If you pair these two options up against one another, you notice they both have a few strengths and weaknesses…

Handmade is usually a higher quality

Handmade products can be made to a higher standard as you can spend more time on them. They can also be bespoke to each client, as you only make them when an order comes in. By contrast, mass-producing things means you typically choose the fastest route possible, making the quality and uniqueness of a product suffer. 

Mass-produced products can be made faster

The upside of mass-producing is that you can generate a huge catalog of products in no time at all. Here, you can have stock lined up for when people place orders, shipping it right away. With handmade items, it’s harder to produce them quickly and in such high quantities. So, you may be unable to keep up with orders, forcing you to only sell a certain amount at a time. 

Handmade has fewer issues to worry about

Making products by hand puts you in control of the whole process. You know what’s happening, you can keep up to speed with everything – it’s so much easier for you to manage. With mass-producing products, everything is out of your hands. You rely on manufacturing equipment, which comes with all sorts of issues. What if something stops working, and you have no idea where the issue lies. For all you know, it could be a problem with a 4 way valve or some other small component. Things are even worse if you outsource to another manufacturing company – now you depend on them to deal with your orders, and who knows what could happen to set you back!?

Mass-produced offers more variety

The flipside of using lots of machines to mass-produce goods is that you potentially have more variety. You’re able to create things that you can’t create by hand. Thus, you could expand your product offerings and deliver more interesting products to the market. With handmade items, you’re restricted to what is feasible for you to make with your own two hands. 

You have to try and go through all the pros and cons of both methods to understand which one is right for you. Effectively, it does boil down to your products and what you want to sell. If you have started your business because you’ve already been making things by hand – and people have said you should sell them – then handmade is obviously the way to go. However, if you want to produce lots of products very quickly, mass-producing is the better way to go. It’s a hard choice, but hopefully these points will help you think about making a good choice.