Well, I started out being quite sympathetic to the kind of approach, or at least goal, that Cyberknight outlined. But once I got to thinking about how I could actually do it in practice, it became way too onerous. Explicitly setting myself up to be the judge of whether someone was worthy or not just seemed wrong to me. And the thought of judging someone unworthy, who actually was worthy, seemed much worse to me than the thought of losing an opportunity to make more money.
I hear you. It feels weird. But think about it this way: whatâs the alternative?
You have a limited supply of flutes - say, 500 (for example). Who gets them?
Option 1: 500 people you deem âworthyâ
Option 2: 500 random people (well, not entirely random, but itâs based on who was proactive about getting on your list, who knew what they wanted when you announced it, and who was willing/able to wait a very very long time)
Option 1 may not be ideal, but I have trouble seeing how Option 2 is any better. You may not be a perfect judge of who deserves one of your products, but surely youâre a better judge than a set of mostly-arbitrary factors that lead to a somewhat random selection of people getting your flutes.
Consider it this way: every time a random person who doesnât try very hard at flute or who just wants to resell gets one of your flutes at a low price, thatâs one less hard-working, dedicated musician who gets to buy one your flutes at a price they can afford.
All the same, yâall make valid points. There isnât any perfect solution.
I know this is a rhetorical question, but to answer it directly, and for my own specific case, I have been using the following approach.
First, I donât advertise nor have a proper website or price list. That cuts out quite a bit of unwanted traffic right away! 
Then for the few people who do the work to track me down and engage me in discussion about wanting a flute, I spend some time to get to know them, both in terms of their interests/goals etc as a musician, and I subtly try to find out how much money they are expecting to pay, and why they want a flute from me.
Then a kind of reverse haggling takes place, where I try to come up with a price that is less that I think they are expecting to pay, and I let them know that Iâm deliberately offering a discount ⌠for whatever reason seems appropriate.
One of my early customers was Laura MacKenzie (a professional musician from Minnesota). We had an interesting kind of reverse haggling that went on for a while. I initially offered to let her have the flute for free, suggesting that perhaps she could recorded a couple of tunes for me to use on my website (should I ever make a proper one). But she insisted on paying the full price. And since then Iâve seen a few pictures of her actually using it in concerts.
The point being that these kinds of positive encounters leave you both feeling good about humanity (something that is quite difficult nowadays!), and leave you feeling that the instrument you poured your heart and soul into making is actually valued by someone who is making music that others value. This is all worth a lot more than money, to me at least.
But I know this kind of adhoc approach will not scale. If I ever develop a reputation like the Olwells, Iâll be doomed! 
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Yeah, weâve seen what happens when human beings start making judgements about the âworthinessâ of others! Nothing positive has ever come of it.
In any case, good instruments have a habit of finding their players. It might be a journey through several pairs of hands, but they get there. My accordion lived in a wardrobe for nearly half a century â the owner died not long after buying it, and his widow couldnât bear to part with it. Eventually she was ready to let it go and itâs now being played every day.
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Thatâs my own gut feelingâitâs a poison cup that one shouldnât drink from.
Bit of an overstatement, donât you think? I take it youâre not a fan of music competitions, private charities, investment banking, hiring decisions, judges deciding sentences, education/grading systems, college admissions, emergency medical prioritization, democratic voting for politicians, choosing which artists to feature at a festival/performing arts center, choosing who to kick out of a session, choosing who your friends are, or choosing who you marry? 
Honestly, your approach is exactly in the spirit of what I was saying. Itâs probably the approach Iâd use if I made quality instruments that werenât absurdly popular like Olwells.
I think from my perspective itâs a matter of scale. Many of these examples you give are on a larger scale and are less personal. All of these examples of âjudgementsâ rest on some generally accepted criteria or qualification. A judge is guided by the law, by precedent, etc. and they are measuring your conduct or actions against an agreed upon set of rules. Emergency medical prioritization is about evaluating whether you are in danger compared to another (you have a gunshot wound, the other guy broke his toe). All of these examples that relate to you (or me) as an individual who is being judged have to do with qualification for a job, for a loan (our financial eligibility based upon income, etc.), meeting agreed upon criteria to enter a college (grade point average, etc.). These are situations in which there is an understood and visible (to all parties) set of criteria which will be used to make a judgement. The examples where we do the choosing, such as who we are friends with and who we marry is also not quite to scale. Hopefully, such personal choices are based upon long-lasting and intimate knowledge of the person we are âchoosingâ. I donât think any of these are quite analogous to a single flute maker, who knows nothing at all about a potential customer (their finances, their level of motivation, the degree to which they love music, or their future potential as a player) deciding if they are worthy of owning an instrument. And at some level a bit of my own quibbling probably arises from the word âworthyâ, as opposed to something like âqualifiedâ (which is still tricky at this level). Itâs a fussy distinction I realize, but worthiness seems to be more a measure of some human or moral value, some measure of merit on a more personal level. So judging a strangerâs worthiness makes me instantly recoil. But this is quite subjective and someone elseâs mileage may vary 
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Itâs just like the ticket tout thing: you try to make tickets available to people who arenât rich and the whole lot are bought by a wealthy company that sells the lot to the rich and then pockets the profit. Maybe the answer is to etch the ownerâs name onto the instrument before shipping it.
Then you can make the criteria for who you sell to crystal clear. These criteria may be a bit subjective, but no more subjective than the criteria for deciding who wins a music competition, who gets to play at a venue, or who stays at a session.
Problem solved, no?
Yeah, but I donât know anything about a sessiongoer in that respect either. So can I not kick him out, even if he plays dreadfully? I also know nothing about someone Iâm hiring for a job, except what they tell me. And I know nothing about the âmotivationâ of a whistle player if Iâm judging him in a competition.
Overall, I fail to see the distinction.
Well, yes and no. Iâm speaking as a maker imagining myself in that situation, you understand. I think by making the audition process more like a large-scale contest or something similar where people know what is expected going in, etc., then you may be closer to your stated end (deciding who is worthy to buy a flute), but you are now engaged in an onerous process. Again, my own perspective.
Then you might feel comfortable choosing who is worthy (I wouldnât)! But I do think there is a distinction here, even if itâs not easy to pin down. I expect it has a lot to do with personal philosophy and how it gets applied in differing social situations, but making that clear would take this thread down a deep rabbit hole. And even though I donât find your analogies to beâŚwell, completely analogous, thatâs just a quibble because your overall concept is clear. Basically, you are suggesting that an audition process be implemented and the maker uses that process to choose who they think should own one of their creations. Very straightforward. If the potential customers are willing to do something like an audition and the maker is okay with using said audition to weed out players they donât think are good enough, then you have a working system. I honestly donât know what makers would choose to operate this way, but since I donât have a better suggestion for solving the flute re-selling problemâŚ
I do wonder at the âopticsâ of such an approach. I would worry that it would come off as elitist. Back in the late 90âs there was a micro-brew that came on the market and it made the elitism work for them, so maybe a flute maker could do the same 
There are, in other fields than flute making, top end makers who choose who they make an instrument for. Itâs not unheard of.
Indeed. I can see how for some makers that might be the only solutionâor the only practical one.
My own views (expressed so far) are very much about my own subjective reaction to that approach, and specifically to the idea of players having to audition in order to make the list. I find it distastefulâor rather the idea is distasteful, since Iâve never been in the position of having to make such choices. I deliberately structured my own business to avoid waiting lists as much as possible. And the nature of the instruments I have chosen to make, and more specifically the price of them, makes the notion of waiting a long time to get one in order to sell it at a profit a bit whimsical.
I started out in the late 90âs making Native American style flutes, which were hugely attractive to people who loved music but who (for many reasons) didnât aspire to what someone might call true musicianship (understanding the theory, attaining a high degree of technical ability, etc.). Iâm generalizing, of course. But I saw how amazingly healing it was for many of them, how it became a major source of solace, fun, etc.. Ironically, I moved out of that niche because I wanted to make more serious instruments for players who were also inclined to a greater challenge! But a lingering sympathy for the amateur player was imprinted within. So I think I have a sort of knee-jerk egalitarianism about access to my work that might not wear so well in the face of the waiting list conundrum.
But I honestly donât know how I would manage something like a years long waiting list. I know that I wouldnât audition people, and I also doubt that Iâd raise my prices beyond a certain ceiling (which will certainly thin the crowd), so it would likely be a no-win situation. I like paddlerâs approachâthough I donât think it scales very well for what I do.
So I expect that if I were to end up in such a situation Iâd be highly conflicted, because I absolutely would not want to have to judge someone as to whether they were qualified to own one of my flutes. Heck, I wouldnât qualify to own one if there were any sort of audition involved!
One could imagine Groucho Marx refusing to buy any flute from a maker who would sell him oneâŚ
Terry McGee and others have spoken of a similar sort of system before flutes and other instruments were widely made specifically for Irish music. Good-playing instruments would be filtered through dealers and middlemen who could land them in the hands of promising players.
Classical string players have a different approach with similar effects. Stradivarius violins and other high-end instruments are just much too expensive for even great players to afford. Many are held by trusts and ultra-wealthy collectors, then loaned out to players who are deemed worthy.
I have been in discussions about this on the forum since who knows when and donât really want to do another round. I have strong opinions about this, though, but have nothing to add that I havenât said in the past.
My experience is mostly with pipes, where high end makers can only turn out a few instruments each year. So scarcity is a big factor and decade(s) long waiting lists are not unheard of.
I know a few makers who focus their efforts mainly on supplying promising young players on the island of Ireland.
It does seem as though there are only a few options for dealing with something like an over-charged waiting list (and subsequent up-selling of instruments by some players).
-One has to filter the players (i.e. audition or otherwise determine their worthiness), which seems to work for certain makers.
-The maker can find a way to increase production (i.e. the flute-factory approach) to eliminate scarcityâimpossible to imagine some of those pipe makers doing this. Personally I would never want to scale beyond what I can do myself without assistance or a lot of extra machinery.
-Auction every instrument to the highest bidder, allowing the free market to have ultimate expression. If a maker is in such demand that people are willing to wait 5+ years to get an instrument, only to sell it for a profit, then the maker can forestall them. They can put each unique creation on ebay and see how much someone is willing to pay. This will, of course, make the instruments unobtainable for many players.
I know of a Taiwanese xiao maker who seems to have blended the first option with a pretty high price ceiling. He took the paddler approach (get to know the buyer a bit to see how serious they are) and combined it with very high prices, and it seems to work pretty well for him. I donât think he auditions players, per se, but I gather that he susses them out somehow, and then if they can cough up the price they can have a flute. I donât know how much of a waiting list he has, but Iâm guessing that he has one. But he has priced his instruments high enough that the motivation for resale is probably low.
Thereâs also the option of closing the waiting list at times, I guess, which a few makers do. But it must be quite a difficult process to manage, unless they want to retire and already have enough orders to take them through.
Yes, I totally forgot about that one. I did that for six months or so back in 2024-25 so I could restock my online store. But I divide my time between custom orders and just making stock flutes, not prioritizing one over the other so it was easier to do. If a maker strictly makes flutes to order and then closes the books for a long time Iâm sure there is a risk that interested customers will just go elsewhere.
Are the Olwell birthday flutes relevant to this?
I only remembered the Olwell birthday flute tradition the other day, and itâs an interesting thing to throw into the mix. Are you asking if it is relevant as a business model? Itâs certainly and example of how a well known maker can utilize the auction model for selling a flute, but clearly Patrick uses it quite sparingly. Whether he (or any maker) would choose to use it as their only outlet for their product is something I can only speculate about. If the maker is really well known and highly in demand, they could choose that route for sure.
If people are joining a waiting list to make a profit from a quick resale I donât think it unfair for a maker to sell a portion of their output via a different channel. A few flutes appearing at auction may make it more of a risk to sit on the waiting list for gain.
If a maker had enough work and a healthy business maybe a hefty deposit returnable up to the point that work started would make the waiting list less attractive to people who didnât really want a flute.
If I felt something was worth the wait I think I might agree a price that would rise with inflation and a deposit that covered a proportion at todayâs prices.
Once work commences staged payments for work in progress are common in the commercial world. Things sometimes go wrong but thatâs a risk one has to take or make some sort of provision for. When I was in business I didnât do that and invoiced on completion but I usually knew my customers and vice versa.