Pay it forward

Last night I came across an interesting phenomenon on etsy.com. Search for "pay it forward" and 664 results pop up at list price ($0.20) or less, plus shipping. The idea is if you purchase a PIF item, "you are making a pledge to perform a random act of kindness for someone else." So you can get a bar of handmade buck soap for $0.20 plus $3.05 shipping:

And it isn't just one seller, but several, like sunnydaycreations or corilightfoot. Something tells me this idea is unique to etsy and is telling about its handmade community. People who create art inherently want to make the world a better, more thoughtful place, and this is another way of doing so. When my fiance and I source for our etsy store, we pick items that we want to see people wearing and styles we think are cool - not just what we think will sell. In that sense, we're not just sellers, we're stylists. And many of us truly enjoy searching for lost treasure - that rare vintage piece that's really going to make someone's day.

To compare, I used the same search term on ebay and only found 106 copies of the film "Pay It Forward", many of them listed over $0.20 plus shipping.