Cottage Industry

A cottage industry is a system of production which takes place in private homes rather than in a factory, with the tools and other means of production individually owned. Often products produced by a cottage industry are hand-made and/or unique in some distinctive way. Cottage industry products are often identified with an area or even with a specific family. Often a cottage industry is run by members of a single family, although this is not necessarily the case. A cottage industry can also be a loosely or informally organized group with each member working out of their own home. While there is often a specialized interest in the non-mass-produced products of a cottage industry, a cottage industry often faces difficult challenges in distributing its products.