--- type: Article title: "Craft Is the Foundation, Taste Is the Fingerprint" description: "Craft is the foundation. Taste is the fingerprint. A grammar lesson from Mama, by way of Brahms — and what it means for your store's curation and edge." resource: https://amyfaychandler.com/craft-is-the-foundation-taste-is-the-fingerprint/ tags: [craft-is-the-foundation-taste-is-the-fingerprint] --- [Weekly Retail Tidbits](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/) | [Curate With Courage](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/curate-with-courage/) # Craft is the Foundation. Taste is the Fingerprint. — Weekly Retail Tidbits #245 By[AmyFay Chandler](https://wordpress-1600709-6279960.cloudwaysapps.com) April 17, 2026July 31, 2026 Originally published as Tidbit #245. “Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.” — Johannes Brahms Craft is the foundation. Taste is the fingerprint. In high school I took three years of Spanish. The second year was heavy on grammar. I loved it. Give me a verb to conjugate — I could do it. I even placed third in the state of Louisiana on a test that year. As good as my Spanish teacher was, it was my mother teaching me grammatically correct English since I could speak that made Spanish easier to learn. When I learned Spanish, I understood English even better. Language is a craft. The way you use it? The words you choose? That is your taste layered on top of the craft. Can you think of someone who speaks with correct grammar, but what they say is not appealing to you? Can you think of someone who speaks with incorrect grammar, but what they say is something you love? Craft. Taste. Two different things. I have been thinking about this as I build with technology. There is a lot of talk about taste in the tech world right now. Non-coders can suddenly code — the craft — with the help of AI. But does that mean what is produced will be good? Retail is a craft. And local retail varies broadly. Some retailers are experts at their craft. Some are novices. Have you ever walked into a store that just felt great? The layout, the merchandising, the ease of navigating, the ease of discovery — that is craft. But you could walk through a store with all of those qualities and not like one single thing in it. That is taste. That is curation. A retailer told me this week she did not want any more of a line because a store a few miles down the road carries it too and copies her. Debatable. I was not about to argue, but I did think: that is where your energy is going? Curation is the taste layer. You will overlap with your neighbor sometimes. That is not a terrible thing. You have shared taste. On what you will very likely not overlap is craft. One of you is going to be better stocked, better at store design, better at customer service, better at creating a great environment for your team. You can only control what goes on inside your four walls. Craft is the foundation. Taste is the fingerprint. Your competitor down the road can carry the same line. They cannot carry the same you — your eye, your instincts, what belongs in your store and what doesn’t. Get better at your craft daily. Develop your taste intentionally. Ask yourself two questions when you walk into your store: Is my craft sharp? Is my taste showing? Those two questions, asked honestly and often, will take you a lot further than watching what anyone else is doing a few miles away. I do the same. Every day I try to get better at my craft. Every day I curate my attention. The only thing I can control is AmyFay. Read on for a tech tip and an exciting announcement — our newest Tango line! xoxo, ♥AmyFay ## Technology Tips — The Phishing Red Flag You Can’t Afford to Miss The person who built Have I Been Pwned, the website that tells you if your email has been caught in a data breach, got phished last week. His name is Troy Hunt. He is one of the most security-aware people alive. And it still happened. Here’s how: he landed on a fake Mailchimp login page that looked completely real. He typed in his email, his password, and his verification code. The attackers used those credentials instantly on the actual Mailchimp site, downloaded his entire mailing list, and disappeared. The whole thing took seconds. There was one red flag he missed. His password manager didn’t auto-fill the login form. That was it. That was the signal. Password managers check the website address before they fill anything in, and this one didn’t match. His password manager knew the page was fake. His eyes didn’t. Here’s the one rule to remember: if your password manager doesn’t auto-fill a login, stop. Don’t type it in by hand. That hesitation is the tool doing its job. This goes for Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Kit, Shopify, Square, Clover, your bank, your wholesale portals, all of it.