This chapter explores methods by which existing local manufacturing industries reframe and reshape themselves in relation to local, regional, national and international networks to survive through changing economic, social, technological, political and cultural conditions. It articulates how Colon Design and Chobundo, a Yamagata iron-casting firm, have engaged with new actors and technologies in local, regional, national and international networks to reframe local crafts products as lifestyle goods for new markets, as a way to secure a future for Yamagata crafts. A key theme is ‘the local’ and how the various actors – at the national as well as local level – understand and employ the concept within crafts promotion activities in Yamagata. I suggest that ‘the local’ is subject to interpretive flexibility and that actors have varying investments in Yamagata as a locale, but that these differing understandings and investments do not impede collaboration. Rather, the interactions discussed here are pragmatic collaborations to achieve differing aims through shared results. A further hope is that presenting some actors and interactions might offer a model for carrying out similar initiatives elsewhere. The chapter builds on research conducted in 2012 through an AHRC Early Career Fellowship and in 2013 through British Academy International Mobility Grant, and forms part of Teasley's research into methods for contemporary history - social, economic, political and cultural - through the lens of design, craft and industry.