Read Chapter 8: — THE FIRST BAD ORDER

Their first real order nearly destroyed them.

A garden-centre chain wanted one hundred handwoven poultry baskets as decorative planters for a spring campaign. Martin accepted before seeing a sample from every worker.

That was his first mistake.

His second was assuming that because people had made baskets for decades, they made them the same way.

They did not.

Some were wide, some narrow, some loose, some rigid enough to survive a minor war. Handles varied by three inches. Bases wobbled. A third of the first batch would never pass a retailer's inspection.

Martin lined the baskets in the barn.

"These aren't going out."

Silence.

Then outrage.

"I spent six hours on mine."

"Been weaving longer than you've been alive."

"Your brother asked us to help him and now you're acting like a factory boss."

Martin's temper flared.

"Customers don't pay for our feelings. They pay for what they ordered."

Half the room walked out.

Daniel stared at him.

"You can be right in a way that leaves you alone."

Martin spent the evening furious.

Then he remembered apologising to Sophie.

The next morning he visited every person who had left.

He did not apologise for the quality standard.

He apologised for humiliation.

"I spoke to you like staff I didn't respect," he told one elderly weaver. "You deserved better. The basket still needs remaking. Both things can be true."

That distinction surprised people.

Most returned.

They standardised frames, made measuring jigs, selected willow by grade and introduced a simple inspection process. Edith became the trainer. Pete checked finished work. George photographed each acceptable sample and created step-by-step guides.

The hundred baskets shipped two days late.

The client deducted a small penalty.

Martin expected disaster.

Instead the buyer called.

"Your stuff looks handmade," she said.

"It is handmade."

"No, I mean genuinely handmade. Not factory-perfect pretending to be rustic. Send me your other designs."

Martin hung up and laughed.

The flaw was not that the products had human variation.

The flaw had been uncontrolled variation.

It was a lesson that would shape everything afterward.