From your blog post:

    The cheap frame from the discount store
    has unsafe hangers and it’s not sealed
    and it’s barely held together by cheap
    staples and the thin, chipped glass
    inside is a death trap in disguise.

I've spend a good deal of time today reading responses from other posters on this thread today. I think I can bucket them into three groups:

    "This is too expensive"

This represents the bulk of the responses: people who are used to buying cheap discount store frame you describe. The 80% case.

    "Are you kidding? This is cheap!"

People like me, who represent most of the other 20%. I can appreciate the $300 and the $900 designs you reference, but I'm not willing to pay either amount. I'm not framing an Ansel Adams or a Henri Cartier-Bresson print.

    "This doesn't stand up to my expectations"

As far as I can tell, only you in this thread. That's not to say that your viewpoint is invalid. Far from it. But, instead, it fails to recognize that there is a meaningfully large mid-market that doesn't want a $10 death-trap, but is also unwilling to spend as much as it would cost to buy a used Hasselblad[0] on framing a print.

Getting that personalized, one-on-one, high-end experience would be fantastic. But it's also clearly not an experience that would work well with cutting out the middleman. Especially when that middleman is incapable of providing the MFA-requiring experience you eloquently described.

[0] No really, my Hasselblad 501CM, plus an 80mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss Planar lens, plus a film back cost me about $950 earlier this year. They're all in great shape, and produce the best photographs I've gotten from any camera I've ever owned.