Head-to-Toe, a Sales Profile: Susan James

  
     When I do a show, it’s fun and very informative to meet other artists and crafters. At the JFS show May 6^th, I met Susan James, who was showing and selling her beaded jewelry.

     I learned that Susan’s business actually encompasses two crafts. You can check out her jewelry and also the hats and capes that she crochets, at www.design-site.net/headtotoe.

     I have a hard enough time pulling together one category of handmade objects. I interviewed Susan for this blog to find out how and why she works with two.

     Susan said, “I started selling original design jewelry at the Aspen Saturday Market in 2001. It's a long selling season--from mid-June to mid-October.” 

     She reflected on the seasonal aspect of her sales. “When the weather got cool in September -- winter comes early to the Rockies -- I noticed the customers were too bundled up or chilly to try on jewelry, so my sales dropped."

     "I needed a fashion accessory product that could take me through the fall selling season in Aspen. Taught as a girl by my grandmother to crochet, my primary experience had been making afghan blankets for family and friends, and I hadn't crocheted in years. I started experimenting with shaping hats, and after pulling out many errant rows of crochet, I developed a line of hats for adults and children.” (Note: She also does capes. These are two of her customers:)

     Impressed by Susan’s perseverance, I wondered how she could make the hats pay off. I realized by her answer that, at least to a certain degree, she thinks through who she is selling to, before she even creates her inventory. She bases her analysis partly on prior sales, but also on certain external factors.

     “Over the years, three things changed my hat-selling business. The first was global warming. In recent seasons, Aspen stays hot until the middle of October. So I was selling winter hats in hot weather for four months! The second was that certain styles sold way better than others. And the third was the Great Recession, which caused shoppers who used to buy colorful caps for every kid in the family and hats for all the adults to pull back their purchases to perhaps one token hat as a souvenir.”

     So how did Susan adapt to meet these challenges?

     “This winter," she told me, "I designed a new cotton fedora, which was instantly popular, and works well in warm weather climates all year round. And I narrowed the collection to include only the few top-selling styles. The warmest designs I only sell at a store in Aspen during winter season. The cotton hats, flower headbands, and brimmed winter hats I sell at my booth at farmers markets year-round.”

    She added, “My biggest problem going forward is that I've been crocheting for 6-8 hours a day for so many years, that I've overused the muscle and nerve paths in my neck and shoulders, so now I must limit my crochet to as few hours a week as possible, and sometimes avoid it entirely. Thankfully, my jewelry design business has been growing, so the hat business is supplementary and not primary at this point.”

     As a potter, it was interesting for me to note this challenge, to which I could relate. It is sometimes hard to live with the beating on the muscles, joints and neural pathways, that comes from repetitive motion. I relate to it when my wrists and lower back ache after working too long at the potter’s wheel. If the problem gets bad, it requires that the crafter modify technique, or adjust to making a less body-stressing product, like Susan did.

     Making craft pay is quite a challenge. Thanks, Susan, and hats off to you for sharing your experience.

After the Show: More About the Business of Craft!

The art show at Evalyn Dunn’s Gallery in Westfield, NJ, was Sunday. How was the show, you ask? (Remember that question, and how difficult I find it to reply?)  Short answer: it was a good show, but not because I made so much money. It was a particularly good show because of the intangibles, which are what I learned while interacting, questioning and observing.

I did a sort of post-mortem after a show. What sold? What did not draw interest at all? Did a particular texture or color turn the people on or off? What price point sold better than others? Was the one-of-a-kind work more interesting? Were people willing to spend on a unique piece? Did they want Judaica? Serving pieces? Decorative ware? Did I get names and addresses (email and snail) to add to my mailing list?

Yesterday, I went back to the gallery to help out for a couple of hours. My work is still there for the duration of this week. Susan James, a jeweler who had been in the show, was also helping out. Since the gallery is not usually open Mondays, few customers showed up, and I took the opportunity to rearrange my display. Susan makes her living from her craft all year round, mostly at outdoor shows. She has a sense of what makes a good display. She and Jacie Civins, the owner of the gallery, gave me great feedback, very helpful for my show post-mortem.

By the end of our discussion, I had packed up at least a quarter of the items I had on display. The table and shelves looked better. It now had few multiples of anything. I had shifted groupings by color, instead of by type of object. Jacie pointed to a large vase. “When did that get there?” she asked me. It had been there all along. It was just highlighted now with better placement.

So. "How was the show?"

1)  Because each piece has its own carving or a plate fitted especially to suit it, I believed I make one of a kind work. But it didn't necessarily look like it at the show. Because my carved goblets, for example, were of similar size to one another and stood in a row on one shelf, regardless of differences in their carved decoration, if you didn't look closely, you would have assumed they were all alike. This, Susan told me, is not "special." Unless he or she really wants a pair, or a set, a buyer will usually prefer to have "the only one like it" at a show like this. The remedy is to place objects separately, not as a group of similars, and limit their number- otherwise you get a herd effect. A herd effect can be gorgeous; think of a herd of horses running- but conversely, can also can lower the effective beauty of an individual thing.

2) Price should not reflect only the time, effort and cost expended to make the object. That should just be the floor when setting the $$ amount. Charge for the specialness of the piece. If necessary, get a knowledgeable friend or colleague to help. If you are like me, knowing too much about the making process clouds your objectivity.

3) Each item should be what I want to make. There is a buyer somewhere for every single handmade thing, if made well.  It's not much use planning too rigidly what to make. Jacie and Susan chose to admire pieces that were quite different from one another's. Susan loved a simple, easy to make bowl with a subtle stony glaze, that was particularly graceful. Jacie liked two carved and complexly colored vase forms.

4) Display: Less Really Is More. Clear up a little. If planning to show 8 teacups and saucers that are the same, make them different colors from one another. Or show only one to three at a time, not ten.

5) Yes, this should be obvious, though it wasn't to me-- Color contrast is extremely important. Ware that is green should not be on a green cloth. Put it on a black cloth. And make more of the ware some other color. Not everyone likes green.

6) Again- color! Develop a good palette for more color! More, more, more color! People have a visceral reaction to red. Or blue. Or pure white. Or variegated golden brown.

7) People actually want to pay more sometimes. If the price is too low, it will seem apparent that as an artist, I do not especially value the objects I  make, and neither should the shoppers. Usually, unless it's a mug or a cereal bowl, (and even sometimes then,) a customer has no set of criteria to assess the value of a piece of handmade pottery, except to look at the price tag. If someone wants to give a gift, and the bowl they are looking at is $22, they assume it would be perceived by the recipient as a cheapie gift, and they won't buy it. This is faulty thinking, but common. It does no good to explain that the recipient would not know what the giver had paid. The gift giver will buy a bowl that cost the potter next door just as little to make as your bowl did, but they will assume it is a “better” bowl, because it is marked $42.

Think of it this way. If the bowl is beautiful, and I still price it according to the time it took to make and the cost of materials. I am totally ignoring the intangible something that makes a piece special. So remember- a buyer who "gets" that certain "something" in the work will pay real money for it.

Well, it’s been a busy and informative couple of days. As ever, onward and upward