Gloves, Hats, Newsletters
Finding Freemasonry's Niche
My little city has this rather odd little feature. It is the home to the world’s finest gloves.
Churchill Gloves was established here in 1895. They manufacture their gloves just about a block and a half from the Masonic Temple, and are famous for their motorcycle riding gloves. They aren’t cheap. Figure a pair will run from about $100 to $200.
Geier Gloves is the new kid on the block. The upstart. They were established here in 1927. They manufacture their gloves about three blocks from my house. They are famous for their work gloves, and again are not cheap. Figure a pair of their work gloves will run from about $90 to $120.
Both of these small businesses survive and thrive in a very tight niche. You probably have to really have a need for the best gloves in the world in order to both seek these businesses out, and to pay their prices.
But, the niche is so tight, they aren’t really competing with products imported from elsewhere, because their customers wouldn’t seriously consider any lesser product.
And that, I suppose, is the power of a tight niche. You’ll never get big and famous, but you’ll be able to survive and thrive within your own small pond forever.
Many years ago I had a hat that I truly loved. It was one of those leather outback hats from Australia. I loved the look of it, I loved how indestructible it was, and I loved the fact that it kept both the rain and the sun off my face with aplomb.
The thing was wonderful.
Except for the part that wasn’t.
It had a rough fabric headband. It didn’t feel rough to the touch of a finger, but if I wore the hat for a few hours, it certainly was rough on my forehead. After enough time, it felt like sandpaper up there. There’s a reason why good hats are made with leather headbands.
I loved that hat, but couldn’t wear that hat, so I no longer own that hat.
And it is a real shame, because leather headbands for hats are cheap. I can buy a good one, just one, on Etsy for $9 bucks. In bulk they would probably cost a manufacturer a buck or two. So to save that buck or two, the company that made my hat used a cheap as dirt fabric sweatband and ruined the actual effectiveness of the hat.
And that company is the most popular manufacturer of that style of hat in Australia. The hat I owned is their most popular model. But their entire line of hats has these cheap fabric sweatbands, it doesn’t matter how much one pays.
That is not using the power of a tight niche, even though these hats will never be widely popular, so would be perfectly poised to utilize such a niche. But, the Australian manufacturers, with the exception of perhaps one, all use these cheap cloth headbands. And that opens them up to huge competition. Competition from countries with cheap labor that can produce a hat just as good at a fraction of the cost, and competition from countries with long traditions of fine leatherwork that can create the same style of hat with much greater quality by slipping in a proper leather sweatband.
Why buy something almost unwearable from Australia if you can buy the exact same thing, equally unwearable from Pakistan for a fraction of the cost?
That’s the danger of not embracing a tight niche, even though you have a niche product.
When we were at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and I looked into Substack as a way to be able to communicate with the Freemasons of Washington while we were unable to meet together, one thing was really drilled into me.
A newsletter like this, like Emeth, has to find a niche if it is to survive.
I imagine that advice, which can be found everywhere, is correct. No one would want to read me rambling about Freemasonry on Monday, Tarot on Tuesday, Politics, on Wednesday, some story of my own idiocy on Thursday, and some rant about my house on Friday. It would all be disjointed and weird.
So, I operate here in niches. Emeth is about Freemasonry. The Keystone is about Tarot. All the other stuff I write is just posted under my name. That way if someone likes reading about Masonry, but not Tarot, he can avoid the Tarot stuff entirely. If someone likes politics and nothing else, well, that’s available under my name. You get the idea.
Newsletters like this one survive and thrive if they have a tight niche.
I think all of this is quite applicable to Freemasonry.
We were a ‘niche product.’ Think back to the founding of the United States. Our founding fathers were, by an extremely large percentage, Freemasons. But, Freemasonry wasn’t huge.
Masons didn’t meet in dedicated Temples, they met in Taverns, or military camps, or other handy places. They didn’t have philanthropic endeavors of colony wide scope or beyond. They were men bound together not by a building or corporate endeavor, rather simply because of the teachings found within the ritual, and the Brotherhood found in its performance.
But, time went on, and Freemasonry changed from being a niche product to a mass market product. The Golden Age of Fraternalism came around in the United States and Freemasonry exploded.
Huge buildings were built, Lodges with membership rolls of over a thousand men were not uncommon, vast philanthropic endeavors were launched.
We became Mass Market all the way. And it shouldn’t be surprising that this didn’t last. Fraternal organizations were never huge in the United States prior to our Civil War. That golden age was an aberration, a blip in history. Indeed most of the Fraternities that were founded, grew and thrived during that time are long gone now.
Freemasonry remains.
And it will remain. As our ritual reminds us:
“Freemasonry, notwithstanding, still survives. For the Attentive Ear receives the sound from the Instructive Tongue, and the sacred mysteries are safely lodged in the repository of Faithful Breasts.”
Freemasonry has a huge advantage over most similar civic organizations. That is the simple fact that we existed long before the golden age of Fraternalism. We can look back to the time when we were a niche product. Other groups, for the most part can not.
I have always been optimistic about the future of Freemasonry. Freemasonry will survive, and thrive, into a very bright future. Just as it has done for centuries.
But, it will do so in a niche. As an organization that appeals to, and accepts few.
It will not do so in a mass market, and it will never do so in that way again.
In my view, the sooner we recognize this, the better off our Craft will be.
Because decisions must be made.
What are those things held over from Freemasonry’s mass market age that are so important that they must be preserved?
What are unimportant enough that they can be jettisoned?
What things are held over from Freemasonry’s mass market days that are holding us back from thriving in our niche today, so must be done away with?
If we can answer these questions, we can begin making decisions that will help us forward into the future.
We can’t simply focus on membership numbers from 1957 and look for ways to regain them. Rather we must honestly look at where we are today, where we will be in the future, and figure out what our Lodges in that future will need to look like in order to thrive.
Indeed, what those membership numbers from 1957 can teach us is that Freemasonry can never survive if it looks to the mass market. We tried that, it worked just about as well as a lead balloon. It can only survive within a niche. The sooner we define that niche, the better off our Craft will be.
Another excellent article. With my lodge’s annual elections just a few weeks away, the timing couldn’t be better. Masonry cannot—and should not—try to be everything to everyone. Every time we dilute our expectations, we dilute our purpose.
We say today’s candidates “don’t have time” to learn long-form proficiency, so we create a short form. Then we allow that short form to be butchered, reassuring ourselves that “understanding the meaning” is good enough. We do the same with our openings and closings, our degree work, even our funerals. That slow erosion of standards touches every corner of the Craft.
When I joined in 2009, Colorado had around 14,000 members. Today we’re under 4500. Meanwhile, I visited a lodge in Dublin, Ireland last year. With a similar population to Colorado, Ireland has 44,000 members. Ten times our number.
It is a difficult task to guard the West Gate while improving our numbers. Yet the strength of the Craft has never depended on how many enter, but on the character of those admitted. Compromising the West Gate just to pad a roster is how we arrived at this crossroads. Integrity must come first—growth will follow.
So the question isn’t why membership is declining. The question is whether we’re willing to reclaim the standards that once built strong Masons, strong lodges, and strong communities. This election season is our chance to choose leadership that protects the integrity of the work, honors our traditions, and isn’t afraid to expect more—from candidates, from officers, and from ourselves.
If not now, when? And if not us, who?
The mass market expansion of Masonry left us with lodge buildings that eat up too much of our time and resources. Our niche will need to figure out how we continue our craft without out these grand, yet expensive, edifices. Afterall, it is a hard sell to new brother that, after first recieving his lambskin apron, we then hand him a bucket to bail water from a sinking ship.