I stopped today at one of those little boutique stores that’s cropping up everywhere these days. You know the kind: a place that’s only slightly bigger than a walk-in closet, run by some entrepreneurial soul who — whether through choice or job layoff — decided they’d go into business for themselves. Strike it rich. Make a buck. All without having to sit in a cubicle wearing a tie.

The proprietor of this particular place was clearly a 30-something kid who believes he should have been born at least two decades earlier so he’d have been in on that whole “Summer of Love” and Woodstock thing. At least then his tie-dyed shirt would have been “in”.

Patchouli scented the air. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida shook the walls and rattled the New Age crystals in their nice, brightly polished display case. Someone had used a Sharpie to draw peace symbols in the twin circles of the Mastercard logo adhered to his cash register.

Everywhere — absolutely everywhere — huddled displays of artisan-quality stuff. It was piled on shelves, and on top of the stuff that was piled onto the shelves. It stood in stacks on the floor, sprawled over the check-out table, and rose up in leaning towers of goods along the walls.

Interesting stuff. The kind of stuff I’d ordinarily want to spend hours picking through: herb-flavored cooking oils and home-grown potpourri; cottage-milled soaps and beeswax candles; handmade papers embedded with flower petals and one massive glass jar after another filled with organic, hand-mixed teas. The kind of stuff which, because I know the love that’s gone into it, I’d ordinarily be willing to spend a small fortune on.

Yet it all looked like crap.

Oh, it wasn’t dusty, which I suppose should be surprising in light of how jumbled and cluttered the place was. But despite all of the care that had clearly gone into fashioning each item the place offered for sale, the packaging was so much of an after-thought that I started to doubt whether everything was really as unique and carefully crafted as I thought.

Look, if you’re going to try selling artisan-quality items, what you’re selling isn’t so much that you’re capable of doing something, but that you’re capable of doing it better than your buyer could do on their own. Take herbal tea, for instance. I can grow herbs (or buy them at the Farmer’s Market). I can dry them, I can chop them, and I can combine them into a tea. That does not make me an artisan. It’s the skill involved in the making of the product that’s for sale. My tea will taste all right, but it won’t be remarkable. I expect remarkable stuff if I’m paying an artisan’s prices.

But if you want me or anyone else to pay artisan prices for your goods, make them look better than mine would. Don’t dump the tea into a Ziplock bag which you’ve written the price on with a Sharpie. Take the time to find quality packaging — recycled is always a plus — and make it look professional. Stickers don’t cost a fortune, and yet a high-quality, four-color label that’s been die-cut and carefully affixed to your product can often itself convince a customer that you really are an artist, and not just some out of work slacker trying to drum up beer money in his spare time.

I’ll never know whether those canisters of herbal tea contained the perfect blend or not. There just wasn’t much to tempt me into trying them at the prices the store was asking, not when they clearly didn’t have enough pride in their merchandise to display it attractively and to give it appealing yet professional packaging. Still, maybe I’ll get back there someday if only to listen to Iron Butterfly and breathe in some patchouli.