Ten-year study of the world’s oceans makes thousands of discoveries
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"I totally support it, if it means that the price doesn't get compromised, or that the effort that it takes will get rewarded," says Lee. "I think that means that Wal-Mart and Target would have to change their value in these products because they would have to appreciate that these products are being made by artisans in the States and it's not just by machines."
Miller makes jewelry in the basement of a small boutique in St. Louis. She says it used to take her several hours to cut a single piece of metal into a pair of earrings. But now she can take her design drawings to a small fabricating shop that quickly cuts the pieces for her with a laser cutter.
"The sky is the limit almost on what you can cut now with a laser or water jet," says Miller.
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"How we have grown as a business is, anything I can get a jeweler's saw through, I'm gonna try and make jewelry out of," she says.
"And the volunteers are editing the spreadsheet to sign up and I use technology so much to automate things that it's not as much work as people think and I am able to move on to other projects," says Wiggins.
To organize volunteers for a craft fair in Ofallon, Illinois, Autumn Wiggins relies on collaborative online resources. Instead of calling or emailing dozens of people to schedule them for volunteer shifts, she sets up a spreadsheet on Google docs and emails everyone the link so they can go online and fill out their schedule themselves.
Even so, can independent artists who are spread out across the country compete with large manufacturers in places like East Asia where labor is so much cheaper?
Or maybe it's simply another creative use of technology. Holekamp says in the end, it will be up to the market to decide.