Any time you see someone posturing about supporting small businesses and their brand being a tiny team of one or two people, take some time to remember the potentially hundreds of factory workers propping them up who have gone unacknowledged.

If you see an indie artist open pre-orders for items (especially clothing, plushies, etc or enamel pins) which are obviously factory made, check their website and socials for answers to the above questions. Do not support artists who refuse to answer them.

Questions to ask artists who distribute (they are not making it) this type of merch:
Can you name the country it's coming from? Which factories produce it? How are the workers paid? If it's pins, do they contain lead? How much plastic is being generated?

etsy works but the shipping rates are unnecessarily astronomical and it's pretty flooded with junk nowadays. I have friends that use bigcartel and shopify (I'm pretty sure) but most people I see doing small scale are using Kofi

not quite out of the cold yet :'D just hoping these will be muscle memory enough to not cause issues

chromatic dragons pt 2, 2021ish commission set

a bunch of other pieces have been requested so I'll have a few other bundles of things up sometime 👍 if there's anything specific you want to see lemme know