I think that's what they targeted as their market niche post-ipo. It may even have been non-deliberately incremental. I'm cynical enough to think it's deliberat

I think that's what they targeted as their market niche post-ipo. It may even have been non-deliberately incremental. I'm cynical enough to think it's deliberate though. For my part, a fair number of my items are non trivial to duplicate without a distinct loss in quality, so I still get reasonable sales and could probably ramp things up of I wanted/needed to. However some things I sell have been SEO squated with crap quality items that don't even look remotely the same quality, but I don't have the energy or need for additional sales to optimize my own SEO. So, right now, I sell items that mostly average out to $40/hour profit, which isn't too bad for a hobby I enjoy. About 80% are items that are pretty routine but still fun to make knowing the recipient will like them. The other 20% are truly unique items that I love making as more of an artistic endeavor, even though the time:cost ratio is much less in my favor than the other 80%. But that's also why mass producers can't poach my sales -- the market is way too small for these niche items to create a production line to copy them. I'm working in a medium (leather tooling) where you really can't reproduce handmade quality at a mass scale. At least not economically: custom die cuts w/ embossing plates and personalization aren't economical for unique designs where I can offer 50 variations even though some of them might only sell 1 every 3 months, and the handmade version looks better than the mass produced stamped-out design anyway. It's very hard to find a niche like this though. A lot of things are easier to replicate in exact detail than hand-carved leather.