QotW: How would you make certain a deal is straight forward and the real deal before going into business with another entity?

[Pres]

Suppose for a minute that I am wishing to contract you to make a specific line of ware for me. I am offering a decent piece price or wage, that will allow you to really get ahead financially. At the same time you, being a skeptical intelligent person, have reservations and decide you had better investigate.

QotW: How would you make certain a deal is straight forward and the real deal before going into business with another entity?

Food for thought is all it is. A few years back, I got into a good deal, but it fell through when my contact in the deal divorced from my nephew. . . . way things go!

 

best,

Pres 

[GEP]

Great question, Pres! From my perspective as someone who has been self-employed since my mid-20s, as a designer and as a potter, my approach to insulating myself from the occasional “deal gone wrong” is to make sure I never have too many eggs in one basket. In other words, I would not undertake a deal that would force me to forsake too many of my other clients/customers, making me overly dependent on one client/customer. That way, if one deal goes belly up, it doesn’t hurt me that much. 

Having all of the terms in writing is also essential, but this is not always a guarantee, just a another layer of safety. Any legitimate business partner will have no problem with putting things in writing. Anyone who balks at this should not be viewed seriously at all. In all of these years, using simple one-page boilerplate contracts with my design clients, and with wholesale galleries, I can count on one hand the number of times I got stiffed on a payment.  

These days as a potter, the largest orders I deal with are when a customer wants to get a full set of dinnerware. Several different items x8, or x12. At most, it will total about $1500. The terms are discussed by email, so I have it in writing. But I never take a deposit, and I make clear that they can cancel or change the reservation at any time. So by making it clear that I don’t NEED them to show up for the pickup, because somebody else will buy the pots instead, that’s my leverage. Again, I can count on one hand the number of customers who have cancelled, for reasons such as an unexpected trip out of town, or an unexpected surgery. 

If some hypothetical commercial customer wanted to buy such a quantity of my work that would force me to drop my usual schedule of shows and customers, I would say no. Because I don’t want all of my eggs in one basket. And knowing the pottery landscape like I do, I would view the customer as being naive or inexperienced. 

I would advise any aspiring  potter to not expect to find a big customer that represents a big leap forward financially. That customer probably doesn’t understand ceramics, which means the deal is doomed. A pottery business is built out of little blocks. 

[Mark C.]

 Big deals usually fall apart and one must be extra careful . Its got to be in writing and I would be very skeptical to begin with. I had a big deal with another potter for a slip cast deal with Frontier Herbs (national Company) in the 1994. They met us in my kitchen and it revolved around making aroma therapy lamps out of porcealin high fire (the ones they had from china where low fire and did not hold up to tea light candle heat). We had a contract to make so many the 1st year and so on.We agreed on a unit price for 1st order to see how it would go.

We made all kind of prototypes for them. I still have a few.

Both of us potters had car kilns and we each could fire about 575 lamps per glaze fire. At that time the place that frontier had bought was less than two hours awayI(one way)  so we also had to deliver them in apple boxes. We hired two slip persons and had a master mold maker make the masters.-this business was a side business for both of us .This business location moved twice and was never at my studio.  I bought out my partner after about 8 years and after 12 years the frontier got out of high fire lamps.  .By then they had moved back to the midwest and I was shipping pallets of them far away which made little sense .I just found a box of these lamps last week after going thru old stuff-I never want to make anouther lamp in my life. I gave away the mixer and masters in the last few years.For years I could see my lamps in any frontier dispaly nation wide  any natural food stores. That business name was Aura Cacia  for them. They still are a large producer of herbs in markets. They are back to using China and electric aroma therapy lamps now. 

In terms of big deals in my throwing world its like Mea dinnerware sets and soon I will give that up. I did sell over 1 k of mugs last month to a single customer who loves my mugs and realized he would not have anymore when I stop making them..I also never take deposits as I like the control of yes and no.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Mark C.