I'm going to tell you my secret, how I select the products for Real Fábrica
Real Fábrica would not be possible without: the team behind it, both the physical store staff and everyone behind the screen, administration, photography, marketing...you don't see them but there are a few of them. What can I tell you, I am very happy with the team that little by little I have been forming.
The second most important thing, you can imagine, “ my artisans” , that's how I consider them, a little bit of my own, I like to go meet them, take care of them, chat with them and tell me about it. I love being able to contribute my grain of sand so that traditional crafts are not lost and give value to the artisan, the beautiful, the slow.
The trips to visit them are one of my favorite parts. The trip begins by researching and making the route, I almost always go in my van so I take the opportunity to get lost on secondary roads. You never know where a new artisan or a new product may appear to bring to Real Fábrica.
Plus we have such a beautiful country... that I don't mind arriving at my destination a day later, the van gives me that freedom.
I already told you about my trips to see Celso and also Nano .
And last but not least, the products , would you like to know how I select them? The products we have in the real factory are carefully selected basically by me :)
This is my list of essentials:
- For quality (this is the most important thing of all)
- Because of the story behind the product
- For its sustainability
- If it has the old design, all the better.
How is the selection process?
The first thing I think about is something that I would like to have in the store and that I think you might like, I spend many hours researching, many, looking for the best product, the best artisan, it is not something that can be done in a couple of hours, I look for , I look, until I find what I like the most. I analyze those four essentials and if it meets those 4 it goes into the catalog :).
In food for example, one of my favorite parts, hahaha I try everything before it gets to the store, everything. In my refrigerator and my kitchen there is always some product “under review”, if they pass the filter great, if not nothing. During the process I put on my boots:) . Right now I have a Galician cheese that I'm really liking...maybe it's one of the new additions to the Real Fábrica family.
The usual products, I like to bring them, for example, the gajo candies , take me back to my childhood and the same thing I want to happen to the clients of Real Fábrica, or the Álvarez Gómez neighborhood that I told you about in the post about the cosmetics .
Other times I take the map of Spain and start province by province looking for craft products from each community that I think you might like. Associations like Artesanía de Galicia in these cases help me a lot in this search. Ceramics, blankets , berets , glassware, babutxes , ceramic swallows , chestnut baskets... all carefully chosen for you.
Do you understand why selecting products is my favorite part of the job?
If you think there is a product that should be in Real Fábrica, I'm all ears.