Lessons from Those That Make the Product

All of Svaram’s products are handmade, and the artisans form the backbone of the company. Today, like many other days, I dropped by the factory for some casual chitchat over tea.

Over the past few months, I’ve been regularly sharing customer feedback gathered from social media and forms with the production team. This feedback loop has already led to noticeable improvements in products like the ocarina and the Indian bamboo flute.

During a frank conversation, I asked one of the artisans, who has been crafting essentially the same instrument for several years, what keeps him going. I was obviously hinting at the monotony of working on a single object all day, every day.

He looked almost puzzled by the premise.

Mind the word we.

He was still physically working on more or less the same instrument, yet his sense of identity wasn’t narrowly individualistic. He spoke from a collective frame. He seemed genuinely energized by the broader ecosystem of artisans collaborating on larger, more intricate projects. His motivation wasn’t rooted in personal novelty but in shared creation and collective continuity.