The new official TOJ thread, 2011 - Page 1695

Yeah, my understanding and honest assumption is this, it's a totally honest scenario - they each just found each other in poorer days of old Korea, either working together or finding out they have the same work backgrounds, and have the kind of relationships where work rather than outright romance are what gets them through the day. They're all older and each probably has 30 years of clothesmaking experience. They're old enough to possibly have gone through the old sweatshop days, pre-labor reform/Jung Tae-il, but I try not to ask them about stuff like that as it's probably not so pleasant and not connected to the now. They all own (well, rent) their own workshops and do business on their own, and I'm not trying to change anything about that. It's a good honest work relationship. It's a little expensive at times and prevents me from bringing things to market at certain prices (because mass-made stuff can blow me out of the water pricewise, often) but for what we go through with making, and what they do well, it's much worth it and rewarding.

I think secondarily, each of these people, men and women alike, all have a 'crafter/artisan' mentality where they just zone in on their work all day and don't really talk all that much by their own doing. It's like the Myers-Briggs ISTP personality. They don't really even like to talk all that much to me or Dan, it's more like a 'ok, just leave it up me and also, leave me alone' type attitude. They tackle related but unique projects everyday and just craft them from raw to finished goods, and that's the day's work; they collect their payment and check back in for another day.

Quite simple - we have a business running here, and while we don't ask much for our product relative to the quality, we do need to make a profit from it to go forward; at the very least, we can't pay people to have our things. We hit pretty astounding levels of customer satisfaction, but of course there are those who cross over with some of the manners regarding customer/vendor relations. There's definitely been a couple of people who go beyond reasonability. We don't need to tell people they are blacklisted; we just ignore any future purchases they try to make, it's not worth the hassle. This is like 0.000002% of our customer base, historically. The blacklist is short, but existent.

There's been a guy blacklisted for being a dick to me in person, too, and generally for being a real life douche who I just don't want to deal with. Long story. lol. We just told him flat out that he was blacklisted. He ended up buying a TOJ on B+S after that.