How Hard Is It to Run a Craft Business in Ireland?

People often imagine running a craft business as the dream job — doing what you love, setting your own hours, and selling beautiful handmade pieces at your own pace.

In reality, it’s a juggling act of creativity, logistics, paperwork, and the occasional mild panic when a courier goes missing with half your stock.

I’ve been at this long enough to know the truth: operating a craft business in Ireland is equal parts stubbornness, passion, and learning to stretch every euro until it squeaks.

The Myth of the “Easy Life”

From the outside, it looks peaceful — a tidy workshop, a few market stalls, maybe an online shop ticking away in the background.
What people don’t see are the twelve-hour days spent sanding, photographing, packing, updating websites, replying to messages, and still finding time to sweep up the mess before you lock up for the night.

It’s not just making things. It’s making things work.

The Real Costs Nobody Sees

Every handmade item carries more hidden costs than most customers realise.
There’s the timber or raw materials, the finish, packaging, website fees, card-payment fees, insurance, petrol for markets, and the power bill that makes you flinch every month.

By the time everyone else has taken their cut, there’s not much left.
Sometimes I joke that I’d earn more stacking shelves — but at least this way I get to decide which mistakes are mine.

Competing With Cheap Imports and Algorithms

The online world hasn’t made life easier. Type “handmade gift Ireland” into Google and you’ll find thousands of mass-produced imports claiming to be handcrafted.
Trying to stand out as a genuine maker feels like shouting into the wind while everyone else has a megaphone and a warehouse.

Even social-media algorithms play favourites — rewarding trends and reels instead of real craftsmanship. But you keep showing up, because you know someone out there still values the difference between handmade and machine-made.

Paperwork, Taxes & The Joys of Revenue.ie

Then there’s the admin.
Invoices, spreadsheets, stock control, tax returns — none of it creative, all of it necessary.
Revenue.ie is a wonderful website on the days it works, and a test of patience on the days it doesn’t.
You learn to speak fluent “bureaucrat,” because nobody else is going to fill out those forms for you.

Delivery and Courier Issues: The Pressure You Can’t Control

One of the hardest parts of running a small business is dealing with problems that sit completely outside your control. You can plan production, manage stock, price realistically, and communicate clearly with customers, but once an order leaves your hands, you’re reliant on systems you don’t run.

Courier delays, missed collections, and breakdowns in communication don’t just slow things down, they damage trust. Customers don’t separate the maker from the delivery network, they just see a late parcel and a broken promise, even when the fault isn’t yours.

I’ve written more about this in a separate post, Are Couriers Failing Small Businesses? A Call for Better Delivery Options, where I look at how delivery pressures ripple through small businesses, especially during peak periods. It’s not about blaming drivers or companies, but about recognising how fragile the system becomes when demand spikes and there’s no slack built in.

For many small businesses, courier issues aren’t a one-off annoyance. They’re another layer of stress added to already tight margins, long hours, and the reality of doing everything yourself.

The Constant Pressure to Be Seen

Another hidden pressure for small businesses is the belief that you must always be advertising, boosting, promoting, and chasing attention just to stay visible.

There’s a constant hum of advice telling you to add ads to your website, push harder on social media, spend a little more here, test another campaign there. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t. And even when it does, it rarely feels like a clean win once the costs, time, and distraction are factored in.

Like many small businesses, I experimented with advertising as a way to supplement income and increase visibility. Eventually, I stepped back and questioned whether it was actually helping or just adding another layer of pressure to an already full workload. I wrote about that experience in Why I Removed Ads From My Website — And Why You Probably Should Too, because for some businesses, less noise can actually lead to better focus and better work.

Getting your name out there matters, but so does protecting your time, your sanity, and the quality of what you’re making. Not every solution scales, and not every strategy suits a small, hands-on business.

Why I Still Do It

So why bother?
Because there’s nothing quite like handing someone a piece you’ve made and seeing them light up.
Because the world still needs real things, objects that last, that have a bit of soul.
And because, for all its chaos and quiet pressures, this life still feels like freedom.

It’s not easy, and it’s definitely not glamorous, but it’s honest work.
Everything you see on my woodcraft site started as a rough block of wood, and every sale, no matter how small, keeps the lights on for another day.

Thanks for Reading,

David

About the Author

I’m David Condon, a small business owner and blog writer based in Tralee, Co. Kerry. Running my own woodcraft business means I’ve seen first-hand how much confusion there can be around shipping times, delivery dates, and what “business days” actually mean. That’s why I wrote this post — to share a bit of what I’ve learned and hopefully save you some frustration.

Every so often I step outside the workshop to write about wider business topics like this one. If you’d like to know more, you can follow the link in the Note from the Author section below.

Every so often I step outside the workshop to write about wider business topics like this one. If you’d like to know more, you can follow the link in the Note from the Author section below or visit my About Me page to learn more.

💬 Note from the Author
This post was written specially for David Condon Finds. If you enjoyed it, you might also like my other projects:

Phoenix DVD Blog – where I write about DVDs, Blu-rays, and life as a collector
David Condon Woodcraft – my main site focused on woodturning and handmade Irish pieces

If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so through the Buy Me a Coffee button below. It helps keep these side projects going — thank you!

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