Local crafters face extinction at hands of federal bill

FARMINGTON – At a small baby boutique in downtown Farmington, owner Heidi MacIsaac smiles at her little assistant.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Writing invoices,” Maia, MacIsaac’s young daughter responds, pen in fist.

“You’re doing invoices,” MacIsaac said. “We play store all day long.”

She’s standing in Blessed Baby Boutique and Mother’s Center on Front Street. There are four or five other people in the store, chatting while they shop for baby clothes, handmade stuffed animals and wooden toys. Since May 2007, MacIsaac has had brisk business in her own handmade cloth diapers as well as selling other local crafters’ products on a consignment basis. The store is typically packed with chiefly locally-made crafts, with tags that say “Farmington,” “Wilton” and “New Sharon.” 

Today, however, it’s half empty. Some products have been picked back up by MacIsaac’s vendors, others sold during her going-out-of-business sale. She plans to close her store on Jan. 31.

“A lot of my stuff has hit the road already,” she said looking around.

Things were going well for MacIsaac’s store before the holiday season in 2008. She had just finished stocking up for the season when she received a letter from a cloth diaper maker. The letter said that the business was working on completing their certificate of compliance and would get the paperwork to MacIsaac soon.

MacIsaac had no idea what they were talking about. Researching the subject, she stumbled across the little-known Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress in August 2007 in response to the product-safety concerns about unsafe toys. Specifically, the act aims to prevent children from being poisoned by lead or other toxins. 

To ensure this, the Consumer Product Safety Commission requires that products be tested. 

“The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children’s products made after Feb. 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban,” the CPSC reiterated in a press release on Jan. 8.

“I read this,” MacIsaac said, “and I was like “‘Oh my God, we’re done.'”

The testing process requires the use of an X-ray fluorescent light gun. This instrument costs $400 a day to rent, or vendors could send their goods over to a local environmental attorney who charges $100 an hour to run the tests herself.

That’s an added expense that many crafters, who hardly have large profit margins to begin with, cannot afford to pay easily. However, MacIsaac acknowledges, it’s probably possible to adapt to the added expense.

However, in August 2009, the law changes again. After that point, all testing must be done by a third-party laboratory. To make matters worse, because local crafters make so many of their goods by hand, each individual item must be tested. This can cost as much as $400, per toy or piece of clothing.

The law, which kicks in on Feb. 10, is constantly being modified as more and more store owners begin realizing the impact. MacIsaac recently learned that items made of simple cotton, wool, wood and some gemstones may be exempt, but isn’t sure if that applies to the materials that are undyed, unpainted or untreated. A lack of accessible information, she said, has been one of the central problems with the whole mess.

Asked to give a rough estimate, MacIsaac said that 75 percent of her products were made locally and would be affected on Feb. 10. Walking through her store, she picks up things like blankets, crocheted frogs stuffed with cotton, handmade dolls. Some items, such as otherwise-legal baby clothing which has decorative designs painted on the front, would need to be tested because they were modified by the crafter prior to sale. All illegal after Feb. 10.

She holds up some booties as an example.

“These are made in Strong,” she said. “They’re cute, they’re cotton and they’re contraband. Cute, cotton, contraband. Maybe we could be a black market baby store.”

MacIssac has done what she can to bring attention to the problem, doing research and talking to local crafters before writing Maine’s congressional representatives. She hasn’t heard back yet.

“This affects everyone,” she said. “It affects everything. Books, in the library. I mean, come on. Home schoolers can’t get a lot of the materials they used, people don’t make them anymore.”

Thrift stores were previously afraid they to would fall under the law. Recently, however, the commission passed a ruling that goods resold for children were exempt from testing, as long as they didn’t contain too much lead. How do you know if it has too much lead, MacIsaac asked rhetorically, if you didn’t test it?

“I feel that it’s ridiculous,” she said. “The premise is good, no one wants our kids to be poisoned, but they didn’t think through these details. We’re hoping for more changes soon.”

However, MacIsaac feels its already too late for the Blessed Baby Boutique. Many of her vendors had already packed up their businesses. MacIsaac says she intends to keep making some of her own items at home, as well as teaching nursing classes out of Franklin Memorial Hospital. For now she’s hoping to get rid of most of her inventory before she closes up shop.