I've been brainstorming it for a while because it is an important subject.
Let's start out with answering this question:
What IS a WAHM?
The easy answer is : a Work At Home Mom
The more descriptive answer is: a Mother who is not only a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) whom does not work outside the home, but rather, spends her days at home with her child or children performing all of the duties necessary to care for her offspring, including but not limited to: cooking, feeding, cleaning up after said littles (food, toys, diapers, clothes, spills, etc), laundry, dishes, vacuuming, toilet scrubbing, bathroom bleaching, floor mopping, dusting, organizing, chauffeuring, doctoring (puke, runny noses, fevers, tummy bugs, more puke, boo-boos), playing, imagining, teaching, and more!; BUT ALSO does something during her time at home in order to create income.
This post is going to specifically talk about the "crafty"WAHM- the WAHM who creates hand made items for resale.
I am one of these moms. That is why this post is so important to me.
All you have to do is use your search engine and you can find a plethora of worldwide WAHMs. In just etsy, hyenacart, artfire, and ebay (to name just a few) there are hundreds (probably thousands) of 'crafty' WAHMs.
Being somewhat on the 'inside' of the WAHM world, I have learned this one important rule: word of mouth can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
The stigma of the WAHM is simple- if your products aren't perfect you may be blackballed.
Stray hairs, loose strings, crooked stitches, misaligned snaps/buttons/zippers, distorted appliques/printings/screenprints, uneven lines.... any of these imperfections will render your product less than awesome, and begin your vertical leap down the slope of blacklisthood.
And once you hit rock bottom, (even ON the way down) it's a struggle to fight your way back up. And it's you against the world it seems. You'll have your handful of followers, friends, and loyal customers, but potential new customers are going to be more influenced by the quiet whispers of the unhappy customer.
The funny and interesting thing about the WAHM consumer world is that unhappy customers are very quiet. When something happens at WalMart that makes a customer unhappy you can bet that it will be made very public. The trash talking and crap slinging will run wild- especially thanks to social media and the anonymity of the internet. But this is not quite so in the WAHM world. Unhappy customers will quietly discuss problems with their friends, give the WAHM multiple chances to correct the problem, be slightly more patient with the WAHM. But you can bet, despite the patience and multiple counts of forgiveness, you can put money on the fact that these customers ARE talking. They are talking to their friends. They are talking to other WAHMs. It's not loud. It's not in public. It's not on the main wall or forum of their facebook or discussion board- it's in private groups, private messages, texts, phone calls, emails. It's not in feedback forums, or quality comment questionnaires, or product reviews even, which is exceptionally strange.
You can go to just about any corporate retail website- home depot, walmart, overstock, amazon, ebay, etc. and look at any product for sale, and see product and/or seller reviews. Happy or unhappy, positive or negative, the facts and emotions are there.
This is not always so in the WAHM world.
The reason is that many times the customers are friends with the seller. And nobody wants to talk crap about their friend. Nobody wants to talk crap about their friend's product. Nobody wants to make their friend feel bad.
Even when the customer doesn't know the seller personally, they know their situation. Or they know friends of the seller. And nobody likes to get personal. If you get an unsatisfactory product or service, and go public with your unhappiness YOU, as the customer, could get backlash from the seller's friends.
The WAHM world is a round robin of whispers and cliques. You never know who is buddy-buddy with who, and if you make the wrong comment to the wrong person, you could wind up being shunned. Or get the reputation as a 'picky' or 'impossible to please' customer.
The other funny and interesting thing about the WAHM world is the "bad publicity is still publicity" rule. So even if you purchase and receive a sub-par product/service, going public with your unhappiness only drives up the seller's publicity. So by saying nothing, a customer feels like they're not helping the word of mouth advertisement.
Because of all of this business vs. emotional world, a WAHM has a TON of pressure on them to be absolutely perfect.
Now, here's what makes me so nuts about this.
When I go to a brick and mortar retail store (a store within a building where you have to physically be there to make purchases) or make online purchases from commercial retailers online, I find I don't always get perfect items. I've purchased t-shirts with loose strings, crooked stitches, floppy buttons, screwed up screenprints, broken zippers... the list goes on. Yet I'm expected to pay full price for these items. I haven't ever gotten a "seconds" discount when bringing said product to the attention of customer service. Usually it's either "take it or leave it" or "the store will keep it and send it back as defective".
In the commercial retail world there's usually multiples of each item. So when you find a shirt with unsatisfactory topstitching, you can just grab the next one on the rack.
In the WAHM world there's, more often than not, only one item just like that one you want. Either the seller wants the items to be 'one of a kind', or to save overhead costs, only purchased enough material to make that item one time.
The other problem with the stigma of the WAHM is that when a customer does wind up unhappy with their product/service, the WAHM then generally has to eat the costs of return shipping, fixing or replacing the product, and then shipping the new item back to the customer. Which can be devastating to the WAHM. Customers want high quality items for the least amount of money necessary. So actually making a profit in the WAHM world is hard. We have to be our own accountant and break down actual costs of materials, and somehow pay ourselves an hourly wage to do something that commercial retailers outsource to multiple areas, and the overhead is spread around to different areas. Something that may normally be on an assembly line- person A cuts the fabric, person B sews the fabric, person C adds buttons/zippers etc. is all done by the WAHM. So paying ourselves a respectable hourly wage then increases the price of the item to a level that the average WAHM shopper is uncomfortable with. So we sacrifice our hourly wage and only focus on making a profit on material cost.
Too many times I've heard/read comments that consumers expect WAHM products to be perfect. If they're going to pay the money for the product, they expect perfection.
So the stigma continues.
I only wish that it was easier to be a WAHM without 'just making enough to support my fabric habit'.
