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The Art Festival Plan


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Thanks Chris and Grype, and everyone else who read the post!

 

To give you a preview of the rest of the series, the four posts are:

 

Picking the Right Shows

Inventory and Pricing

Display

Marketing and Salesmanship

 

These posts take a long time to write, so I can't promise a delivery schedule at this point. But I plan to finish all of them before the end of the year.

 

All feedback and comments are welcome!

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Great write up.  Love finding another blog to follow.  Can't wait to see the rest.  The shows I attend are still the small ones since I really don't have time to produce enough for a "real" festival.  Will get there one day.

Thanks again for the info.

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Now, this is a comprehensive guide.  Extremely well done.  You are writing this for an article?  Maybe anchor it here in our guides as well?

No plans for an article, just writing it for my blog. My blog's visitor stats went through the roof yesterday. Apparently it got shared all over facebook. I didn't realize how many people were looking for this type of information. I wasn't really thinking about announcing the posts here on the forum, but now that Chris has done it for me, and the feedback has been so high, I will announce the future posts here when they're available.

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PLEASE do post notices of them as they are excellent ... I really appreciate your efforts ... not just the work of writing of them .... but your willingness to honestly share your true statistics and experiences. Though potters at shows are willing to share, they only share up to a point ... So I thank you for crossing that point.

 

Potters, newbies and veterans, are hungry for basic common sense marketing/business info. They don't want you to scare them with stuff like business plans and bank loans, but I know from personal experience they do want to know the simple steps every small business owner should consider.

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. Apparently it got shared all over facebook. I didn't realize how many people were looking for this type of information. .

I posted your Facebook notification to a couple of handmade business boards, because friggin' everyone I know is looking for this information!!!

It takes an obscene amount of time to sift through the interwebs looking for actual, tested, useful information on a successful business making quality things on a small scale. Traditional models can be helpful, but they don't apply in full, and artists don't always document this kind of thing. Never mind for FREE.

Let me offer a gracious Thank You for sharing this information. It has helped.

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Mea,

 

Why not move the series to an ebook format and offer it through your blog and on Amazon. I for one would love to both support your effort and at the same time I get a great ebook in my library that I can reference at any time. I have a couple of these already that I think I paid $10-$12 for and they were great when we were putting it altogether. I think it's great that you give so much information out freely in the spirit of helping fellow potters but I think everyone gets that things like this take an extraordinary amount of time to prepare and wouldn't mind in the least compensating you a little for that time. 

 

We have had shows much lower than your worst and actually didn't get too bothered about it because you, Mark and others had talked about some of these points in your blogs and forum post so we were able to quickly understand the reason our revenue wasn't happening. By being able to relax and enjoy the pottery customers we did get the show was not a bust in the least. Frankly if we just end our second season at breakeven I will consider the season a great success. We are also taking the advice of going to see as many of the shows this year that we can before we apply for next year. We have found at least one show that was juried that said all the right things on their site and then we found ourselves in a gigantic party atmosphere surrounded by buy/sell booths, we barely eked out 5 days of road expenses but the show still had some pluses and it was on the beach so there was that :-). 

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Thanks for the nice feedback, Diesel and Stephen.

 

I don't anything about ebooks, I'm not sure I can visualize four blog posts adding up to enough substance for a book. But maybe when the whole series is done I'll think about packaging it into a different format. Might be fun to learn about that.

 

Just to be clear, the show that I called a "bad show" on my blog was not my worst show ever, not by a long shot. That was the worst 3-day show I did last year. I was trying to compare two shows who both thought they were big deals, one that really was and one that really wasn't. I've had way worse shows than that over the years! Just last year I had a 1-day show where I only sold $425 (not returning to that one). And there will be more stinkers in the future. As long as "most" of them turn out well, then the bad ones can be absorbed.

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If you were to combine all of your pottery business operations/guidelines you'd have more than enough for an ebook ... the monthly earnings project and the art festival plan.  ebooks are not necessarily big books, they are just published electronically rather than printed on paper.

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Mea, I've found your blog so, so helpful over the last year as I've tried to get my own business off the ground.  This post especially was packed full of wonderfully candid, practical advice.  I can't tell you how much I've appreciated it.

 

I was wondering if you'd give any different or additional advice to someone right at the beginning of their career?  Someone who hasn't gotten into any big name shows yet, and is just trying to get used to the rhythm of making art shows a part of their life?  I ask because I remember you specifically advising against "music and art" festivals, yet that seems to be a large chunk of what is available to me right now.

 

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series, and everything else you blog about in the future.  Thanks so much for being so open and generous.

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Mea, I've found your blog so, so helpful over the last year as I've tried to get my own business off the ground.  This post especially was packed full of wonderfully candid, practical advice.  I can't tell you how much I've appreciated it.

 

I was wondering if you'd give any different or additional advice to someone right at the beginning of their career?  Someone who hasn't gotten into any big name shows yet, and is just trying to get used to the rhythm of making art shows a part of their life?  I ask because I remember you specifically advising against "music and art" festivals, yet that seems to be a large chunk of what is available to me right now.

 

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series, and everything else you blog about in the future.  Thanks so much for being so open and generous.

 

I did several "music and art" festivals in my early years of selling (this is how I learned they aren't great for art sales). However, if you are in your first year, I recommend doing shows that are most convenient for you now. Don't expect big sales, but instead use them to figure out your process for doing shows. There's a lot of process! Planning inventory, packing, setting up, salesmanship, processing sales, packing down, fitting everything into you car, etc. I think Stephen expressed the right attitude above. The first year or two is for figuring things out. Gain as much experience as you can. 

 

Also, I mentioned in the blog post that I am lucky to live close to many great shows. But I've met many festival artists who don't, but it doesn't stop them. You might be surprised how far artists are willing to drive for a great show. Here in the mid-atlantic, I've met scores of artists who drove from the midwest, or florida, or maine. The farthest I've driven is 4 hours, many artists would call that nothing. In other words, when you are ready for bigger shows, then "road warrior" will become part of your job description. 

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so true that they will travel.  i do not wonder why i see so many from the north at the shows in tampa and st petersburg florida during the winter.  some have a van and hit several shows on the atlantic side and then cross over to us a little later. but how do they carry all that stock???

 

i remember one young man from michigan who was planning to tear down and drive home on sunday after the weekend sale in hot sun.  hope he made it.

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ah, young is I think the key here. I can see a twenty-five year old me trying such a thing, probably out of necessity. These days we like to head back to the RV after breakdown and sleep in the next day and maybe hang out for an extra day to take in the sights. If I was heading from Florida to Michigan after a show we are probably talking about a week of meandering and a more than a few really nice meals along the way ;-)

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As far a music festivals you will find people buy small things that are easy to carry and not your larger works at music festivals. I suggest you have lots of smalls at such a show. (I did Seattle folklife show for 5 years long ago)

I'm on the road now from another Pacific Northwest show currently. ( I met Baja Mary in person at show the other day-my second fforuem person in all these years) Both where at this show north of Seattle.

Mark

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so true that they will travel.  i do not wonder why i see so many from the north at the shows in tampa and st petersburg florida during the winter.  some have a van and hit several shows on the atlantic side and then cross over to us a little later. but how do they carry all that stock???

 

i remember one young man from michigan who was planning to tear down and drive home on sunday after the weekend sale in hot sun.  hope he made it.

 

I do a couple of shows every year where I have a 6-7 hour drive after packing up on Sunday evening. It's not fun, but I have to be home to take care of the kids Monday morning when my wife goes to work. My rule is to be home as much as possible during show season. If that means getting up at 4am on Saturday and driving 3-4 hours to do a show, or driving late at night after a show, then so be it. I can be home to put the kids to bed on Friday night and feed them breakfast on Monday morning, and I don't have to pay for more nights in a hotel.

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I'm away now on a show trip-left last Wenesday for Friday Saturday Sunday show-took a liesurly two days to get there-now am spending three extra days scuba diving in Puget sound in a dry suit taking underwater photosmini vacation with a fellow diver) and will drive home on Thursday-so 8 days away. No kids juat a wife and a cat. Most shows are gone 7 days total out of state.

Mark

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I guess you all know that if you all are planning to travel,

you're way better off to avoid any fuel with ethanol. From my research

a six cylinder saves about 21% in savings by using non-ethanol.

An 8 cylinder saves 25% by using non-ethanol. Dollar wise, a 6 cylinder

saves 10-15 dollars with each fill up and an 8 cylinder saves about

20-25 dollars with each fill up. Though it doesn't seem like much, it adds up.

You have to go to www.pure-gas.org to find à gas station that sells gasoline.

Ethanol is a hoax on a national scale since a water base fuel can't work

in a hydrocarbon based engine. There is a formula to figure what the actual costs

are to run ethanol in your vehicles.

Alabama

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