For Idar, where handmade wooden toys are made below the granite hills, against competition that cannot be beaten on price.
Wooden toys under a hill of granite
Idar, in Sabarkantha, makes handmade wooden toys - lathe-turned, brightly lacquered, a craft carried in families. The town sits beneath enormous granite boulders, and quarrying is the other local trade.
The toys face competition that is not really competition: injection-moulded plastic at a fraction of the cost, and beyond that, screens, which have removed a category of play altogether.
A craft losing to something it cannot fight
Plastic can be argued with on quality, safety and durability, and toy makers here make that argument. A tablet cannot be argued with at all. The child is simply not in the room.
What that produces is a slow, undramatic decline that never delivers a crisis clear enough to force a decision. Orders thin gradually. The workshop stays open. Ten years pass.
What the work addresses
Forcing the decision that circumstances are refusing to force. Craft revival, premium and export markets, heritage retail and tourism are all real routes, and each requires a deliberate choice and actual effort. Continuing unchanged is also a choice, and it should be made rather than defaulted into.
Guilt is the main obstacle. Changing what your father made feels like judging him, and that feeling keeps workshops running on autopilot for a generation.
Sessions
Online, in Gujarati.
Frequently asked questions
- Can coaching help me modernise the business?
- It helps you decide and commit. Product and market strategy is a different discipline, and I will point you elsewhere for it.
- Is it disloyal to change the family craft?
- That question is usually the first session, and it is worth examining rather than accepting.
