My last out of state Art show

[Mark C.]

Well my local markets are keeping me busy (to busy really) and out of state shows or any show out of my county makes no sense anymore. Also I'm getting up in years and am getting tired of the driving as well.

In two weeks will be my last Anacortes art show. I have been doing this one since early 90s so its been a long haul. Its my best show by far but money is not everything.I love doing the show as its easy for me setup wise  and take down-double booth at main intersection in the middle of street and show. No hassles . Great customers really my favorites and to top it off I get to dive puget sound taking under water photos after the show for days.. I do need help to do this show as it averages for 3 days about 750 customers. My diver friend is also ready to give it up.

I'll miss the show but I will get back my  early summer  for more non ceramic working-like fishing and diving .

I have been in high production for some time now so as to do the show very well.

Looking forward to it but at the same time its the last time. Going to stop and visit a studio from another potter on this board in Portland on my 11 hour hour first drive day to Olympia Wa. Day two is only a 1/2 day drive and ferry ride.

I have done art shows for well  over 4 deacades now and they are coming to an end.

[Mark C.]

Well lets see the show was under perfect weather condions no wind in the upper 70s and 80s for 3 calm days. Best show of my life and thats saying something.

Customers heard it was my last show there after 30 straight years

They came from Canada and Seattle area,Bellingham to Germany. My largest sale was from a Jeweler from Atlanta area who flew in for show and was along time customer-she heard it was my last show and bought a few boxes of pots.. Had over 750 customers over the 3 days

My new fish plates in 3 sizes where a big hit and sold out in 2nd am.I raised the price 3 times on them.

It was tedious telling custmers over and over why I was not coming back

One thing people at shows think is you will always be there for them whenever they come. Well that was true for 30 years . They where slow to under stand that my wares sell out where I live and i have no reason to take them out of county ever again.

They get it now. It was sad and a joy at the same time doing this last of my favorite show -the show is 250 artists which 25% where brand new. Less than 10 potters left now as in most shows I see nowadays. Only less than 5 artists who like me have 30 plus years in there.

I meta youg potter couple in mid 40s and invited them down to our local art show and will if they ever come pass on some of my display racks for cheap as I have way to many sets of displays at this point-no more double booths for me. The diving was so so as the tides where not good and I picked up a cough/cold (not covid) on trip. I was masked whole time in the heat -no fun but I'm careful .

I'll miss the show and the customers as I saved them to the end.

well back to packing stuff up for 5 order drop day at local outlets

 

[kswan]

Congratulations on going out with a splash (literally)! 

[oldlady]

was anything left ?   it sounds like a bittersweet goodbye though you have more than earned it.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

Oh man. The end of an era, for sure! I’m glad your last trip there was such a good one, barring the head cold.

[Pres]

Really Professional looking booth and set up, as it has been whenever you have posted. I am glad to hear that you wear a mask at this point, I do whenever going somewhere crowded and will until the ugly covid head if finally gone. Tis a sad thing to know you are cutting back, but from your position I imagine a sigh of relief!

Great work, great presentation, now great retirement!

 

best,

Pres

[Mark C.]

Thanks Pres

As to mass wearing I have a middle 40s potter firend who has long covid as he got it before covid was testable back in February 2020. He cannot do much of anything at this point all these years later as his energy level is minus 2. He is in a Stanford group long covid group. I have also seen him with a bit of dementia and well as lauguge /memory issues. He no longer can work at all. His wife had it as well in thatearly time and she has some organ issues now also in mid 40s

Every time I may think about the mask issue I just need to think of my friend Seth. Masking works and i'm wearing one always around people til this is at a better place

I am here to tell you long covid will ruin your life and no one knows who may get that. 

About 1/3 of the public was masked at that huge show in Wa state.

My next show is 3rd weekend in Sept locally and am looking forward as we have cancelled it past two years.

[Pres]

Mark,

Another way you have been a good example for the community here. I want to live long and play in the clay as much as possible, travel, and enjoy life. Not to suffer through it.

 

best,

Pres

[Mark C.]

One thing I never whant to be is a potter making pots for unknown customers only. That is no shows or cointact with customers. That contact which started in 1972 selling pots to real people direct is one of the reasons I'm still in it today. Making wholesale pots was something I avoided for 2/3 of my career .

Wholesale is something I came to late and slowly. Now I could only do wholesale if I liked that.  I still need some customer contact.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I find I do better with in-person customer contact too. I like talking to people who like my stuff. I also find that a hard deadline where I’m beholden to someone that I have to look in the face is much more compelling to meet than an arbitrary one I set for an online sale.

[Mark C.]

I gave that up long  long long ago (hard deadline where I’m beholden to someone )

its all on my timeline and schedule-been that way since I can recall.

I have made a life my way and never have bent well to others demands-been that way since youth

As a potter you get to pick and choose thats the beauty of it 

I'm in the drivers seat and have been for many many many decades .

The only fixed dates are shows and now there are only two and one I pick the dates.

Now with no options for store galleries or shops in terms of new potters. You are really in control.

I had some customers in Wa state  last week take a gallery road trip on the Oragon coast to buy ceramics -the whole trip they said was a bust -no more potttery in the galleries.

Not sure whats going on back east or up North of the border but out west we are te last of the Mohicans

I just raised prices again when I got home on some items and dropped them off in the shops last Sunday

 

 

[kswan]

Could that be due to potters selling their work online only? With the proliferation of Etsy and other easy to create online shops, as well as marketing through social media, it seems as though that's what a lot of people are aiming for. They must figure, why go to the effort of packing things up and driving somewhere to sell when I can sit on my couch in my pajamas and sell out quickly? 

I've only begun in the last five years or so to sell at larger art fairs. Mostly the people I see exhibiting are middle aged and above like myself. I don't know if it's always been that way, because the process can be intimidating, or if it's a changing social situation. 

[Mark C.]

I cannot image selling 10,000$ in a day like I had once recently on Etsy so you must be refering to small slow amount of sales. To do a big art show you to have lots of wares. 

For me etsy is a one off deal or a small slow burn on sales. My etsy friends tell me now its full of more clay than years past and that pie is cut into many more slices .

Art show potters are usually not a small table affair but a huge booth of wares with backstock. They come for big sales and there are  now very few of them. 

The etsy deal is not at all the same folks like for example  like to feel my plates before buy the dinnerware set -same with a mug-The net is far away from that personal experience .

Yes etsy and other Venuses sell works no doubt  but customers like to touch and any venue that afords that potters with thrive better .

I have some aged out  professional potters selling thier left overs on etsy and thay say it will take a decade vs one show-that a huge difference in time and sales

Intsead of etsy how about having a shop sell it less hassle 

The etsy is good venue for hobby start ups or a line that does not require touch of for someone who wants to work at home . The potters I'm refering to who are not applying to shows  these days are those who never did etsy. The volume is to great.

For a professional like me I want to go gather a bunch of $$ in 2-3 days  and they get back to work .Etsy will never do that for me.

I have a current  costumer mail order for 200$  to 250$ and stopping to sort and pack and ship slows me down from my usual work. That sounds flippant I know but its the truth.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Mark C.

[GEP]

Online selling is definitely not “less work” than doing shows. That’s a misconception. Maybe it’s less physical heavy lifting, but that gets cancelled out by the amount of packing and shipping. Also, setting up a shop update can take more hours than setting up a booth at a fair. Sure, you do it by sitting at a desk, rather than lifting heavy boxes, but it’s incredibly tedious. Online selling is easier in terms of having much lower barriers for entry, which is why it seems more attractive to someone who is starting out. 

And then there’s the issue with social media platforms changing their algorithms when they feel like it. Take Instagram for example, they recently decided that they want us to post more videos and fewer photos. I guess they’re trying to be TikTok now? In recent weeks, I’ve seen a few potters whom I follow on Instagram complaining that their engagement has dropped steeply due to the changing algorithms. For potters who were actually selling well online, suddenly a big chunk of their audience was pulled out from under them, after spending a whole lot of time and energy building that audience.  This is a problem that an email list and in-person shows do not present. 

Who has time to make a video everyday?? Posting an interesting photo everyday is already a lot of work. Making videos all the time means you won’t have enough time to make pots. I’m not changing how I use social media, just doing the same as before. It doesn’t matter if my engagement drops, because that’s not where my audience is. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by GEP

[Pres]

@GEP, I can certainly attest to the time and effort it takes to do any type of shipping situation of late. Size of boxes, and the changes in packing materials are small compared to the picture you are painting, but still a nuisance. I shipped 20 orders last year for communion sets and baptismal sets last year with a total of near $1500 in costs to the customer. This year will probably be worse. I believe that the large online shipping companies are controlling much of the sizes and delivery situations that will make it a different world for craftspeople shipping their items. This does not even include what you have mentioned in the way of social media exposure.

 

best,

Pres

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I think Etsy, social media and in person shows are both means to an end: building a clientele. They’re different tools, but if used properly they both yield results. It’s a matter of what your own strengths and likes are, and what kind of timeframe you expect results in. They all work over time.

I know 2 in person couples that started off their careers 10-15 years ago doing shows, but have switched quite successfully to full time incomes earned with online sales. Initially the move was supposed to be temporary, but they’ve found online selling to be less stressful for them.

If you do the same show for 30 years, you build a clientele there that expects to find you there, so that’s where they show up. Not every shopper that attends that show will buy from you however, and you wouldn’t expect them to, You get enough of them though, and so you go back. Ideally you sell them something using personal skills, and get them to sign up for your email newsletter so they know when/where to be able to find you again when they want more. If you’ve vetted your shows and the organizer is a good one, they take care of your marketing. In the beginning, it takes time to weed through and find the shows that work for you. But in person shows involve having more capital investment and a delay on seeing any return on it. You can have spent thousands on booth fees, a booth setup, travel costs, more stock, physical labour, etc, and be really in trouble if the show gets called due to a big storm. With shows, there’s also a delay in betyou may have thousands of dollars set aside or paid out for booth fees before you see a dime. Your profit margins can vary because of this.

If you use Etsy like a search engine with the goal of getting in front of an audience, the same thing applies. Instead of a show organizer doing the marketing though, you have to be able to use SEO and metadata to find enough people in the shopper base that like your stuff.  Just like with an in person show, you wouldn’t expect all of Etsy’ shoppers to buy from you**. Once someone makes a purchase from you, your responsibility is to now make their experience one they want to repeat, and hopefully get them to sign up for your email list* to make said repeat purchase easier. Etsy is pretty affordable, even with all the new fee additions, and it’s a low barrier to entry. It’s much less physical labour/travel, packing materials are cheaper than building a booth setup to start, and you don’t have to have nearly as much stock as you would for an in person show. As long as you’ve got your work priced appropriately, your profit margins on each item are predictable, and most costs associated with the platform (shipping, Etsy fees other than listing fees) are only incurred after the item is purchased. But you’re at a disadvantage if and when the platform decides to change it’s terms, which it does with some regularity. You don’t own your audience on Etsy until you add them to your email list and they become clientele.

If you use social media to get in front of people and funnel them to your own website, you have to use both personal skills to sell something AND create an experience that makes people want to come back to you AND you have to be good at using the algorithm to get in front of people. And you have to have an appealing and user friendly website to send them to. Some people are super comfortable on social media. They like being able to control the interactions and only show themselves and their work to their best advantage. Others find it performative and weird. Again, you want to get customers on your mailing list so that you can communicate more directly and aren’t at the mercy of algorithms or shifts in the type of content you’re expected to provide. On the pro side, social media marketing can also be a low monetary investment to entry, low physical labour component, and you can do it with relatively few items. The cons are that it does involve a lot of ongoing learning, being consistent, and generally putting in a LOT of effort over time. It’s definitely a long game. But sometimes that long game allows beginners to hone their craft, or for people to grow their media literacy and related tech skills.

 

*As of this writing, Etsy’s Seller Policy does allow you to invite people to sign up for your email list, but you may not add them without permission. As an international platform, its worth noting that Etsy, and therefore Etsy sellers, are held to GDPR standards if they have customers in the EU.

**As a side note, with 96.3 active Etsy shoppers in 2021, I don’t think that the market is saturated. I do think that search engine optimization is a different skill set than being able to talk to people in person. Some people are better at one than they are the other.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

36 minutes ago, GEP said:

And then there’s the issue with social media platforms changing their algorithms when they feel like it.

I have some thoughts on this, but I’ll start a new thread on it. 

I accidentally went viral on Tiktok last year. Not in an “I stuck my foot in it” way, more of an “I really wasn’t expecting that” way.

[Mark C.]

4 hours ago, Pres said:

@GEP, I can certainly attest to the time and effort it takes to do any type of shipping situation of late. Size of boxes, and the changes in packing materials are small compared to the picture you are painting, but still a nuisance. I shipped 20 orders last year for communion sets and baptismal sets last year with a total of near $1500 in costs to the customer. This year will probably be worse. I believe that the large online shipping companies are controlling much of the sizes and delivery situations that will make it a different world for craftspeople shipping their items. This does not even include what you have mentioned in the way of social media exposure.

 

best,

Pres

Pres you need to be using Pirate ship-its a super deal with UPS and USPS rates-The best deal I have worked with by far. Anyone can sign up-you just need a printer and a scale and a ruler 

[Mark C.]

Callie I started in 1972 so the fairs/wholesale was the deal for a long long time. Heck I have not done a new fair since the early 90s

In my carreer I have had zero reason ever to go online but its all about timing-its a different world out there now.I would hate to be starting out.

I have left many large long time shows in past 20 years especially since my slow down plan kicked in.

I gave up Denver on Labor Day-Seattle on Memorial day-those two shows right there gave me 14 days back. Then Tempe twice a years for 25 years straight. 

Most of my fairs have over 50% return customers with some way higher 

To some degree its about drive-I have been driven in clay for so long I only know one speed. 

Many cannot handle the business aspects and they can be tough-rejection from shows (took 10 years for me to get into Half Moon Bay Pumpkin show for example ) lots of rejection and untold application fees. After 25 years I walked away from that show (15K show) about 7 years ago because I just felt like it during dinner at show Sat. night.  Leaving huge successful markets at this phase is pretty easy.

So glad I have not had to spend time promoting myself in the social  world-as that would take away making time which for me has been the key element-Heck I just loaded two kilns today recovering from some serious bronchitis 

I have gotten to the point long ago that I learned from another potter-many the pots get them to the customers then its thier issue-for example my visa card reader crapped out on a huge money day afew years ago. Just stuffed the pots into bag with a card saying the amout they owed me to send later via mail. Those customers are now for life as trust is long gone in life for most.They cannot belive you will trust them. They are now like bulldog about your wares in the future they never let go.

Etsy could never do this for me. No matter how much time I spend online. 

Make the pots and lots of them  then get them in front of humans the rest is easy.

[kswan]

I just got back from a weekend show and spoke with a customer at length about gardening and flowers (there was a lull on Sunday), and I showed her ways to arrange flowers in some of my vases. As she was leaving, she got a little teary and said my pottery was "life affirming"!!! You can't get an interaction like that online, for sure! 

What I've seen are some established potters who promote their work on Instagram (that's the only social media I have now) who then sell from their websites. They are the type who open their online shop at a certain hour and everything sells out almost instantly. One potter I'm thinking of in particular has been working for many years, and she has also built up a huge following online by posting process videos. That's very generous of her, not only to take the time to make the videos, but also to share her specific methods. I don't know if she will even do in person shows now. I managed to snag one of her mugs. It's beautiful, but it's different than I imagined it would be. She already has a customer base but expanded it through Instagram. I would have much preferred to have touched every single one of her pieces, spoken to her, and bought the one that spoke to me best.

@Callie Beller Diesel I'd be interested in people's thoughts on that if you make another thread. I absolutely hate the monster that Mark Zuckerburg has created, but it lives in the world with us now. We use social media thinking that it is there to help us, but its only purpose to exist is to make money from us in the end. It's not a free service like the library or something! @Mark C. You're not missing anything bypassing social media, clearly. It's a vampire anyway.  I hope your bronchitis clears up soon. 

[GEP]

1 hour ago, kswan said:

We use social media thinking that it is there to help us, but its only purpose to exist is to make money from us in the end.

Well said. I wish this was at the top of everyone’s views of social media. People are hooked on the dopamine from the “likes.” But you’re right, the rewards you sometimes get from talking to real people in person are on a whole different level. It puts the social media “likes” in the right perspective.

[Stephen]

Hey late to the thread but congrads on the great the final road show. Nice that you have been able to restructure your business to work like you want on your terms. Mark I have always have appreciated your post and the extra time you took to offer me advice and encouragement few years back. It made a difference. Your success shows the rest of us that making a living in this business is possible.  I don't know how many potters in the country do the kind of sales that you do but my guess is that its a pretty small number and a testament to the fact that your work is something special. Good luck with your new schedule!