* For those of you looking for tips on selling and just the highlights of this article, skip to the summary at the end.
As I get a little more serious about selling my pottery, I've started to look into venues other than Etsy. While selling pottery isn't my main goal in life, it's important to me to appear professional in every way when I present myself to the world.
I've opened an Artfire shop just to see how it compared. Oh by the way, this is going to be a long ass post. You may want to grab a cup of coffee and a snack. Don't worry, I'll wait. Need a mug for that cup of coffee? No? Ok, can't blame a girl for trying. We all settled in for a nice long read? Ok, let's go.
In my twenties, I worked for a marketing research company. Not the career for me, but I learned so much while I was there. So in the spirit of what I learned there, I conducted a little Market Research on Etsy VS. Artfire - what do the buyers see?
Our players:
Me! Yes yes, I rock. No please, sit down. No, no, really I don't deserve it. PLEASE! No applause, just throw money!
Bryan - Internet friend of mine. In his early 20's. We only chat every few months and it's usually brief. Doesn't know anything about my pottery. We've never met in person. Zero knowledge of my preferences.
Paula - My BFF. My biggest fan. Insists on being present at every kiln opening and all of my rejects end up in her kitchen. She does know my preferences on the experiment at hand so her opinion might be a tad tainted.
My Hubby - Tends to be a bit removed from my pottery hobby but loves that I do it. Might have heard my preferences but is never shy to disagree with me so I trust his opinion.
The mission - Compare and contrast my shops on both Etsy and Artfire. Then go to the front pages of each and try to find my stuff.
In order to show that I tried to conduct this experiment in such a way as to elicit real opinions and not just telling me what I want to hear, I'm now going to post the conversations I had with Bryan and Paula unedited.
[13:20] AlexMMR: do you have a couple of minutes to conduct an experiment for me?
[13:20] Bryan: Yes I do
[13:21] AlexMMR: Ok. I've gotten so good at pottery at thsi point that I really do need to start selling it. I've had an etsy store for a while but I'm thinking of moving over to artfire. So What I'd like you to do is to check out both shops
[13:21] Bryan: oh fun i'm all over this
[13:21] AlexMMR: tell me which one you would like better if you were shopping. Check out the main pages of both sites and tell me which one you would be more likely to purchase from
[13:22] AlexMMR: The first one is etsy. My page is http://www.etsy.com/shop/alexmmr and the main page is http://www.etsy.com
[13:22] AlexMMR: take a minute and look around. Go to the main page and see if you can even find my products, that kind fo thing
[13:23] Bryan: ok
[13:23] AlexMMR: Then after you've experimented there, try artfire. My page is http://ugabugabowls.artfire.com and the main page is http://www.artfire.com
[13:23] AlexMMR: I'm goign to make my husband do this too and blog about the results
[13:24] AlexMMR: brb while you experiment. Potty break.
[13:25] Bryan: Etsy was really easy to find you by searching by your name....your stuff is gorgeous on here too. Looking at artfire now....
[13:28] Bryan: oh artfire by a longshot! Etsy seems very one-off, buy a bowl, never see you again....artfire invites you back, it seems. They're equally user friendly, but artfire is much better to build clientelle or to get your name out
[13:28] Bryan: Girlfriend is here. I'll be back later. Glad i caught you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, so we have one vote for Artfire. Let's hear from Paula.
[21:57] AlexMMR: wanna take a break from the sound and help me with an experiment on which pottery store I should focus on?
[21:57] Paula: ?? still trying to decide?
[21:58] AlexMMR: I just want to quantify my opinions iwht other peoples opinions. it will also give me something to blog about
[21:58] AlexMMR: I'm running an experimetn with people. I'm sending them to each of my stores and compare. And then the front page of each site and have people try to find my stuff.
[21:59] AlexMMR: So http://ugabugabowls.artifre.com vs http://alexmmr.etsy.com
[21:59] AlexMMR: then http://artfire.com vs http://etsy.com
[21:59] Paula: Well the Art fire site is WAY easier. I spent about a hour and played there the other day
[21:59] Paula: Looked up bowls, mugs, color - whatever
[21:59] Paula: WAY easier and your stuff came up a lot
[21:59] AlexMMR: oh awesome
[21:59] Paula: ya
[22:00] AlexMMR: how much would it matter to you if you had to join a site in order to purchase?
[22:00] Paula: your blue ruffle bowl came up a lot as did the heart bowls and the ...shoot - the light gold mug??
[22:00] Paula: I am totally screwing up the description
[22:01] Paula: honestly - if I have to join a site to by something. unless I REALLY REALLY love the product and literally can't find it anywhere else, I would move on
[22:02] AlexMMR: ok, that's what I thought about the joining thing too
[22:02] Paula does artfire require you to join??? I didn't notice that
[22:03] AlexMMR: no, etsy does
[22:03] Paula: oh - gotcha
[22:03] Paula: ya....I'm totally liking artfire
Okey dokey, that's 2 votes Artfire. Believe it or not, that was the brief part of this blog post. Now we get into the research I did with hubby. I took 5 pages of notes on that conversation. You might want to refresh that coffee.
You're back? Brave soul. Here we go.
We started out at Etsy. He did a search for "Mugs" and immediately said "oh forget it!". There were 7760 listings on 370 pages. Totally overwhelmed. Wouldn't bother looking at any of them because there were so many. Knowing my inventory, he looked up "Mugs Carved". My stuff was on page 2.
I asked wht he thought of the competitors. His general impressions on the quality he would find at Etsy. The quotes I wrote down were "definite mix. some plain. some amatuerish and some professional and well done. Half look like they were made by kids. Some look very good."
We moved to my etsy shop and I asked his first impressions. I got a half hearted "It looks ok". I asked if having to join a website would prohibit him from buying. He said yes.
We moved on to Artfire. First impressions at comparing the two? Artfire looks like you're buying from an artist. Etsy, you could be buying from an amateur.
Artfire front page - it shows you more stuff. It looks more populated with product.
Did a search for "Mugs" and got 23 pages of listings. He said he would be more likely to search through all of those pages since there weren't hundreds of them.
He really liked the "Search within the search" function and said it made things a lot easier. At this point, we discovered that my stuff wasn't showing up. After troubleshooting, we discovered it was because he was searching "Handmade" and Artfire has their pottery in the "Fine Art" category. I immediately posted a plea to Artfire to move the pottery category based on this finding and then recategorized all of my stuff to be found under "Handmade".
When we did search under "Fine art" (again, the average customer ain't looking for mugs there), my stuff was on page 1 of 14.
I was very surprised at what happened when we went to my shop. The first thing he did was click on the artist blog. It never occurred to me that he would be the type of shopper to give a hoot about anything other than the actual product. Then he clicked on my bio. He felt that there was more information about the artist on the Artfire shop page. The tabs were not only visible to him but they invited him to click.
I asked what knowing the artist does to his perception of the products. He said that he had a better feeling about the artist [since getting to know them a little] and that purchasing would be a more personal transaction. "I'm more likely to like what I get."
In general, the Artfire page looks more like an actual company website as opposed to a listing on Ebay. On Artfire, the add to cart button was easy and he expected to be able to add to cart and keep shopping. He also liked that he could easily see the various categories within the shop to narrow down his search.
We went back to Etsy to explore the means of getting to know the artist there since he didn't see those links the first time. I pointed out the add to cart button there. He said it was smaller and doesn't invite you to click it like it does on Artfire.
Here are my next notes, I don't remember exactly what elicited these answers. "If I know what I'm looking for - Artfire." "No info about artist on Etsy." "More artist connection on Artfire." "Artfire looks better, pure and simple" "[he] wants to get to know the artist so when [he] purchases a gift for someone, [he] has a story to with it" "quality of products about the same on both sites"
Ok, I think we can agree that this is now a 3rd vote for Artfire.
*** So here's the summary
1) Three out of three voters preferred to buy from Artfire
2) Etsy has so much stuff, it's too overwhelming to actually look through
3) Joining a site just to purchase an item will prevent them from buying
4) I need to write more tags
5) Artist blog and bio make a connection to the customer which increases their chance of buying
6) Pics of my studio in my blog give the buyer confidence because the buyer knows it's not just someone who took a class and is selling off their rejects but rather someone who is committed to the craft.
7) Artfire - Buyers are not looking in Fine Art for their functional pottery!!!
8) Artfire looks like an artist commerce site. Etsy looks like a random listing on Ebay.
9) Artfire invites you to shop around, stick around, and buy again. At Etsy, there's a feeling of buy your damn thingamajig and get the hell out!
10) The various links from the Artfire store (blog, etc) are visible and inviting to click on. On Etsy, you have to really want to find them to look. This leads to a more enveloping shopping experience.
11) Customers generally prefer Artfire. Period. Game over.
Rock on folks!
Showing posts with label tips and tricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips and tricks. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
More randomness
Selling tip - Amazon now allows non amazon items to be in your wishlist. You just grab the link they provide and as you're websurfing, you click on the link and it clarifies what item on that page you want on your amazon wish list. Now all your friends know to buy you that special glaze from the shop across the country.
Pssssst: you can add stuff from my etsy shop to your list if you want. here
And now back to random crap in my studio.
This is an old cd rack. When I'm throwing mugs with the insertable bats (more below) the mug and bat fit perfectly on this. And it's easy to cover all at once with a giant garbage bag or leave to air dry. Got it for a buck or two at the thrift store. The bottom is cased in concrete so it don't tip over.
I love this bat system. I mostly throw mugs and cereal bowls and I don't need 10 inch wide bats for that. With this, I just pop a small bat into the square, throw, and then pop that bat back out and set aside. Brilliant! Space is major commodity at my studio so anything that saves space makes me happy.
Pegboard. Brilliant!! Thank you previous owners who lined a wall of my studio with the stuff. I'm one of those people that if I can't see it and grab it immediately, it may was well not be there. Look at all the crap hanging on my wall.
I'm still trying to figure out how to do the protography for my etsy site. This was one option. I just ordered a table top light tent kit which comes with lights and stuff we'll see if that increases the quality at all. Tell me, when you're shopping for this kind of thing, what do you want to see in the pictures? What's important to you? This was taken on my bar with a blue suede jacket toss over a shelf. The bar provided most of the light and I put tissue over my flash to diffuse it. They say the flash is pure evil but it was really the only way to properly light the darned thing. What do you think?
Pssssst: you can add stuff from my etsy shop to your list if you want. here
And now back to random crap in my studio.
Shop towels. I LOVE THEM!! They are thicker and lusher than papertowels but otherwise function the same. These will smear the clay off your hands pretty well when the phone rings while you're in the middle of throwing. I get mine at costco. And yes, this one individual does go through a coscto size package all on my lonesome.
I love this bat system. I mostly throw mugs and cereal bowls and I don't need 10 inch wide bats for that. With this, I just pop a small bat into the square, throw, and then pop that bat back out and set aside. Brilliant! Space is major commodity at my studio so anything that saves space makes me happy.
Pegboard. Brilliant!! Thank you previous owners who lined a wall of my studio with the stuff. I'm one of those people that if I can't see it and grab it immediately, it may was well not be there. Look at all the crap hanging on my wall.
These are brilliant as well. Pegboard shelves. The perfect size to set a drying mug on when I need to get it out of the way. It's a place for little things like my clay inkstamppads, or the flower pot that I'm going to do something with some day, honest! Or to hold the random rolling pin.
I'm still trying to figure out how to do the protography for my etsy site. This was one option. I just ordered a table top light tent kit which comes with lights and stuff we'll see if that increases the quality at all. Tell me, when you're shopping for this kind of thing, what do you want to see in the pictures? What's important to you? This was taken on my bar with a blue suede jacket toss over a shelf. The bar provided most of the light and I put tissue over my flash to diffuse it. They say the flash is pure evil but it was really the only way to properly light the darned thing. What do you think?Please comment below! My ego is fed by your comments and it's getting hungry!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Random tips and things from my studio
So a few random things about my studio that some might consider tips or tricks.
What you're looking at here on the left is how power gets into my studio. It was like this when we moved in. There's a light switch which turns on power to the rest of the outlets immediately adjacent.
Odd thing to blog about I know. But I have it here because I need a space heater in my studio but space heaters are notoriously dangerous. And since I need to heat the studio for a while before I actually enter it, I get nervous that I'll leave it on, forget it's on, and have a burned down studio several days later. So I plugged it into this outlet. It only turns on when I actually have the light on. Because the light shines into my bedroom at night, no risk of me forgetting it's on!
Here is said space heater. It's up on a table because the power cord to reach the outlet that's on the ceiling is kinda short. I used those wire shelving things that everyone seems to use in college to build a little cage around it. Now I'm less likely to knock it over and I can put drying pots on the shelf above it to speed things up a little bit.
Here is said space heater. It's up on a table because the power cord to reach the outlet that's on the ceiling is kinda short. I used those wire shelving things that everyone seems to use in college to build a little cage around it. Now I'm less likely to knock it over and I can put drying pots on the shelf above it to speed things up a little bit.
Ok, let's talk lids. I often throw them right side up. Use about twice as much clay as you want in the actual lid and then carve the big pad of clay off the center when you trim it. And I roll the rim over to make it thick and strong. I also tend to make my lids on the large side because it's very easy to shave them down once everything has dried but you certainly can't expand them if they are too small. And I guess that's the only advice I have about lids.
This is one of those nets used to strain paint. The top is held open with an embroidery ring. The ring is then set on top of two posts from my pegboard. What possible use could I have for this?Reclaiming clay! I scoop all of my slurry and trimmings from the reclaim bucket into this bag. Of course it has a bucket underneath it to catch all the icky the oozes through it. Because I don't reclaim massive amounts of clay, and this bag will hold almost a full bucket, it's just the right size for me. And because it hangs in the air yet with a nice net around it, it dries evenly all the way around and nothing gets into it. The day after I put the slop in, I scrape the outside of the bag to get rid of the semi dried clay that is now attached the outside. This way when it dries enough, I just turn it upside down and peel the bag off and the bag is not actually embedded in the clay but rather sits around the clay.
I had a problem where all of my pots would get little clay crusties embedded into their feet. My whole pottery studio is coated in a layer of clay so there's pretty much no place to put finished pots where the crusties won't attack. So I bought some bisque tiles to set things on when they are finished. Haven't needed to clean them yet and the crusties have stayed away. Yay!I hope this gives some of you ideas of how to solve the problems you run across. More silly ideas tomorrow!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Vending Table
I did a vending table at an event today. Kind of hard to describe the event. It was kind of a performance competition in the Bardic tradition. It was the first annual Eisteddfod. Yeah, I don't know either, but that's what it's called. My best friend was running it so surprise surprise! I was one of the vendors.
Some might say the event was a failure. Due to torrential rains, the economy, and possibly not the best advertising, I'd say that all in all about 30 people were there all day. That includes us vendors and other staff members. There was not a lot of cash changing hands.
And yet despite this, I walked away feeling pretty darned good about it. A lot of times when you're vending, you're staring at the clock, bored out of your mind, just wanting to get the hell out of there. I didn't find myself doing that this time. Everyone was very enthusiastic about my work with the kinds of compliments that tell you they know what they're talking about and actually mean what they are saying.
For this event, I had raised my prices significantly. I used to be drastically underpriced and now I'd say my prices are modest but average. Not a single person commented on my prices! I was afraid of that "oh, I like it but I can't afford it" or "oh gee, can you let this go for $5 cheaper?" Nope, not a single comment. The few people who purchased my stuff simply handed over the cash, a few compliments, and seemed very pleased with their purchase.
All in all, I'm very inexperienced at vending, but here's a few things that seemed to work for me today.
1) Levels
I was given a standard 6 foot table. I found that by taking the leaf out of the old dining table in my pottery studio, I had an additional surface that was 4 feet wide by 1.5 feet deep and about 2 inches tall. I took some kiln stilts and layed them sideways and put them under each side of the leaf. This raised it an additional 2 inches or so. This gave the table a raised platform on the back half of the table in the center. Once I laid the tablecloths over it, it looked wonderful.
In addition, I now had a 4 inch high cubby hole for me to put my money box, book, phone, food, extra bags, etc. It was almost like being given a whole new table space. In addition, I had an overturned cafeteria serving tray which was about 6 inches high under the tablecloth on one corner of the table which I put a laptop on (more on this later).
I also had a set of 3 box-frame-shelf thingies (here) along the back of the table which gave me not only small shelves to set various mugs on, but also framed some of my showpieces. Since they are all different sizes, they make for some nice visual variety and they embed into one another when packing up.
When you spread out pottery on a flat surface, it's all chaotic and just a mess to the eye. You can't actually see any of the pieces. With these little changes, my whole table looked organized, everything was visible, a few items were highlighted, and it was visually appealing. I'm a dork and didn't take any pictures, but a friend did so I'll edit a few in as soon as I get them.
EDIT: Adding a picture!
2) Video - USE IT
In my real life, I'm a videographer. So my real life and my hobby life needed to come together. I gave up a precious square foot of table real estate to house a laptop with a video on a loop. You can see it here. It has no sound because I don't want to bother other vendors or listen to it myself all day.
Best use of table real estate EVER!!! I suck at striking up conversation. I usually rely on my best friend to do it for me because she can chat up anybody about any topic. But she was doing other things today and I couldn't use her as a crutch. This video did more for my table than anything else could. It made everyone take notice of my table, they stopped at my table to watch the video, and they then asked questions about it which made me able to converse comfortably.
When I made the video, I just thought that having something moving would be a little eye-catching and it might make people pause long enough to give my wares a quick once over. I had no idea it would be as effective as it was. People would actually watch the entire 8 1/2 minutes of it and then talk to me about it as it played through again! They would laugh at the snarky comments I embedded. Then they would pick up all sorts of mugs and stuff at my table and really look at them while chatting like crazy with me. And for those who just stood and watched, I was able to simply say "Oh, this is the finished mug that you see being made in the video" and ta-da!! Instant conversation!
If you clicked over and watched the video, you'll probably see that it's not the most fascinating thing ever. But in the context of a craft fair, it may was well have been the yet to be made next Harry Potter movie. People were just so fascinated by it!
Seriously, if you can make a video of yourself on the wheel, do it. Totally. Recommending it again, make a video.
3) Trading
Very few people can go to a craft fair and walk out with more money than they went it with, usually because all of your income becomes outgo as you peruse other tables. Trade with people. They will probably love your work, you'll get what you want from them, and they will give you all sorts of tips and tricks to selling at fairs. Not to mention it really tells you a lot about what people like and don't like if you can watch someone look over your stuff when they can choose to take anything they like. You'll get a really good idea of what people are naturally attracted to so you can call it "marketing research costs".
You also build up good will with other vendors. Be nice to them, they may be the ones who sell for you while you're in the potty and they might let you use their credit card machine if you don't have that capability.
4) Be near the coffee
This is kind of a no brainer but for potters, this advice is ten-fold. Knowing that this particular crowd might be more inclined to prefer a reusable mug to a styrafoam cup, the organizers let me put a bunch of my crappy mugs on the table with the coffee. Now this not only gives you more table space to spread out on, but it also gives you a chance to get rid of all of those crap mugs that you want a couple of bucks for but don't want to sacrifice your own table space for.
I put half a dozen of my "seconds" next to the coffee with $5 price tags. It was my first sale of the day. A woman liked one of the mugs (one that I can only see flaws in), turned to me and asked if I was the person to pay, she bought the mug and got herself a cup of coffee. I tossed a buck back into the "suggested donation" bucket to pay the event back for the coffee. She likes her mug when she wouldn't have been able to afford one of my better mugs, less environmental impact, and I get the damned thing out of my house plus an extra $4! I would have been just as happy to give the damn thing away.
If you're next to the food, people will naturally come to you. If you're selling something that will assist them in eating the food, sales are imminent. And if you're willing to keep an eye on the coffeepot and money bucket, the organizers will be thrilled to just let you handle it (and spread your stuff out on their table) while they do more important things.
5) Packing it in
Bring extra newspaper. I have no idea how, but when we were packing up at the end of the day, we had less packing material than we started with. Theoretically this can't be possible since we didn't use any of the packing material when selling the pottery and we had less pottery needing packing material when we were leaving, and yet we ran out when packing back up. I have no idea how that happened.
Remember those $5 mugs on the coffee table? Not worth repacking. While everyone is breaking down, just shout out that if anyone wants one, they should simply take it so you don't have to pack it. Go ahead and announce that these are your crippy crappy mugs that you don't like and you'd rather give them away then deal with them anymore. Anyone who would have bought a mug at this point has done so and has left. Now those who couldn't afford it or were too shy can now grab one (with a business card in it) and their last impression of the day is that cool pottery person who gave them a mug. That's a good last impression. Not to mention, they usually can't find any flaws even though you can't see anything but them. Now you have a group of people who are looking at what you consider crap, they love it, and wow if this is crap, your good stuff must be fantastic! And again, you get that crap out of your house.
6) Donate to the raffles
They had raffles at this event where anything worth less than $45 would be raffled for $1 and anything over that would be raffled for $5. As people won, they were able to select an item from a variety of stuff donated by the various vendors.
My stuff kept getting selected. A woman is now treasuring a vase that has been the bane of my existence since the day I created it. Too nice to take a hammer to, but I couldn't find any purpose for it and couldn't figure out how to market it. It was a round brown vase for goodness sakes. How do you get noticed on Etsy for a round brown vase? But now someone loves it. And it's out of my house. And she came over to my table to tell me how much she loved it and then went on to tell me how much she loves that mug, and that bowl, etc etc.
So I kept donating more stuff. Lots of people now have my stuff and they consider themselves lucky to have it. That's good marketing. And I didn't have to carry it back home.
Now I know what you're thinking. It seems like I gave away a whole lotta stuff. Well, yeah, I did. I don't create pottery to make money. I have a day job for that. I refuse to turn pottery into a bona fide business because I want to purely enjoy it. If I collect a ton of it and someone gives me the opportunity to sell it off, swell, but that's not why I make it.
However, over the years I've become pretty good and pretty fast at making it. My house is overflowing with stuff that is too good to throw out but not so great that I want to keep it. So yes, I want to sell it. So I'm investing in some long term marketing. As far as I'm concerned, these are all just big business cards. If you have stuff that you want gone and it doesn't really cost you anything to give it away, just give it away. People will remember you and your name gets out there. There's no way to calculate how this will come back to you, but trust that it will. I really believe that my pottery is far more valuable today because of what I gave away in good marketing karma yesterday.
7) It ain't all about the Benjamins
All in all, I took in a total of $60 today. The organizers were unhappy about the lack of turnout so they waived all the vending fees as an apology. That cash paid for the gas and food for the day for me and the hubby so I'd say I broke about even.
However, It was a great exercise in market research. This is my third (I think) experience trying to sell my pottery at an event like this. My table looked SOOOO much better than it has in the past. I learned that the video will not only make people pause at your table, it makes them engage with you and your wares.
And I'm a flattery whore. True compliments, and I don't mean the empty "you have nice stuff" compliments, I mean the "ooohhh, you throw these so thin! This feels so nice in the hand. Wow, I've never seen that style before, how did you make it?" compliments are worth more to me than any amount of cash. And that's because I now feel like my stuff is actually worthy. It's worth what to me is a high price. It is good enough to stand side by side with those who craft for a living.
I'm now excited to do my next event when before I've always dreaded it. And if I'm excited to do an event, and will now seek them out and actually enter them, I'll eventually earn a whole lot more $$$ than I would have if I were still feeling inferior and hiding my stuff from the potential customers out there in the world.
Some might say the event was a failure. Due to torrential rains, the economy, and possibly not the best advertising, I'd say that all in all about 30 people were there all day. That includes us vendors and other staff members. There was not a lot of cash changing hands.
And yet despite this, I walked away feeling pretty darned good about it. A lot of times when you're vending, you're staring at the clock, bored out of your mind, just wanting to get the hell out of there. I didn't find myself doing that this time. Everyone was very enthusiastic about my work with the kinds of compliments that tell you they know what they're talking about and actually mean what they are saying.
For this event, I had raised my prices significantly. I used to be drastically underpriced and now I'd say my prices are modest but average. Not a single person commented on my prices! I was afraid of that "oh, I like it but I can't afford it" or "oh gee, can you let this go for $5 cheaper?" Nope, not a single comment. The few people who purchased my stuff simply handed over the cash, a few compliments, and seemed very pleased with their purchase.
All in all, I'm very inexperienced at vending, but here's a few things that seemed to work for me today.
1) Levels
I was given a standard 6 foot table. I found that by taking the leaf out of the old dining table in my pottery studio, I had an additional surface that was 4 feet wide by 1.5 feet deep and about 2 inches tall. I took some kiln stilts and layed them sideways and put them under each side of the leaf. This raised it an additional 2 inches or so. This gave the table a raised platform on the back half of the table in the center. Once I laid the tablecloths over it, it looked wonderful.
In addition, I now had a 4 inch high cubby hole for me to put my money box, book, phone, food, extra bags, etc. It was almost like being given a whole new table space. In addition, I had an overturned cafeteria serving tray which was about 6 inches high under the tablecloth on one corner of the table which I put a laptop on (more on this later).
I also had a set of 3 box-frame-shelf thingies (here) along the back of the table which gave me not only small shelves to set various mugs on, but also framed some of my showpieces. Since they are all different sizes, they make for some nice visual variety and they embed into one another when packing up.
When you spread out pottery on a flat surface, it's all chaotic and just a mess to the eye. You can't actually see any of the pieces. With these little changes, my whole table looked organized, everything was visible, a few items were highlighted, and it was visually appealing. I'm a dork and didn't take any pictures, but a friend did so I'll edit a few in as soon as I get them.
EDIT: Adding a picture!
2) Video - USE IT
In my real life, I'm a videographer. So my real life and my hobby life needed to come together. I gave up a precious square foot of table real estate to house a laptop with a video on a loop. You can see it here. It has no sound because I don't want to bother other vendors or listen to it myself all day.
Best use of table real estate EVER!!! I suck at striking up conversation. I usually rely on my best friend to do it for me because she can chat up anybody about any topic. But she was doing other things today and I couldn't use her as a crutch. This video did more for my table than anything else could. It made everyone take notice of my table, they stopped at my table to watch the video, and they then asked questions about it which made me able to converse comfortably.
When I made the video, I just thought that having something moving would be a little eye-catching and it might make people pause long enough to give my wares a quick once over. I had no idea it would be as effective as it was. People would actually watch the entire 8 1/2 minutes of it and then talk to me about it as it played through again! They would laugh at the snarky comments I embedded. Then they would pick up all sorts of mugs and stuff at my table and really look at them while chatting like crazy with me. And for those who just stood and watched, I was able to simply say "Oh, this is the finished mug that you see being made in the video" and ta-da!! Instant conversation!
If you clicked over and watched the video, you'll probably see that it's not the most fascinating thing ever. But in the context of a craft fair, it may was well have been the yet to be made next Harry Potter movie. People were just so fascinated by it!
Seriously, if you can make a video of yourself on the wheel, do it. Totally. Recommending it again, make a video.
3) Trading
Very few people can go to a craft fair and walk out with more money than they went it with, usually because all of your income becomes outgo as you peruse other tables. Trade with people. They will probably love your work, you'll get what you want from them, and they will give you all sorts of tips and tricks to selling at fairs. Not to mention it really tells you a lot about what people like and don't like if you can watch someone look over your stuff when they can choose to take anything they like. You'll get a really good idea of what people are naturally attracted to so you can call it "marketing research costs".
You also build up good will with other vendors. Be nice to them, they may be the ones who sell for you while you're in the potty and they might let you use their credit card machine if you don't have that capability.
4) Be near the coffee
This is kind of a no brainer but for potters, this advice is ten-fold. Knowing that this particular crowd might be more inclined to prefer a reusable mug to a styrafoam cup, the organizers let me put a bunch of my crappy mugs on the table with the coffee. Now this not only gives you more table space to spread out on, but it also gives you a chance to get rid of all of those crap mugs that you want a couple of bucks for but don't want to sacrifice your own table space for.
I put half a dozen of my "seconds" next to the coffee with $5 price tags. It was my first sale of the day. A woman liked one of the mugs (one that I can only see flaws in), turned to me and asked if I was the person to pay, she bought the mug and got herself a cup of coffee. I tossed a buck back into the "suggested donation" bucket to pay the event back for the coffee. She likes her mug when she wouldn't have been able to afford one of my better mugs, less environmental impact, and I get the damned thing out of my house plus an extra $4! I would have been just as happy to give the damn thing away.
If you're next to the food, people will naturally come to you. If you're selling something that will assist them in eating the food, sales are imminent. And if you're willing to keep an eye on the coffeepot and money bucket, the organizers will be thrilled to just let you handle it (and spread your stuff out on their table) while they do more important things.
5) Packing it in
Bring extra newspaper. I have no idea how, but when we were packing up at the end of the day, we had less packing material than we started with. Theoretically this can't be possible since we didn't use any of the packing material when selling the pottery and we had less pottery needing packing material when we were leaving, and yet we ran out when packing back up. I have no idea how that happened.
Remember those $5 mugs on the coffee table? Not worth repacking. While everyone is breaking down, just shout out that if anyone wants one, they should simply take it so you don't have to pack it. Go ahead and announce that these are your crippy crappy mugs that you don't like and you'd rather give them away then deal with them anymore. Anyone who would have bought a mug at this point has done so and has left. Now those who couldn't afford it or were too shy can now grab one (with a business card in it) and their last impression of the day is that cool pottery person who gave them a mug. That's a good last impression. Not to mention, they usually can't find any flaws even though you can't see anything but them. Now you have a group of people who are looking at what you consider crap, they love it, and wow if this is crap, your good stuff must be fantastic! And again, you get that crap out of your house.
6) Donate to the raffles
They had raffles at this event where anything worth less than $45 would be raffled for $1 and anything over that would be raffled for $5. As people won, they were able to select an item from a variety of stuff donated by the various vendors.
So I kept donating more stuff. Lots of people now have my stuff and they consider themselves lucky to have it. That's good marketing. And I didn't have to carry it back home.
Now I know what you're thinking. It seems like I gave away a whole lotta stuff. Well, yeah, I did. I don't create pottery to make money. I have a day job for that. I refuse to turn pottery into a bona fide business because I want to purely enjoy it. If I collect a ton of it and someone gives me the opportunity to sell it off, swell, but that's not why I make it.
However, over the years I've become pretty good and pretty fast at making it. My house is overflowing with stuff that is too good to throw out but not so great that I want to keep it. So yes, I want to sell it. So I'm investing in some long term marketing. As far as I'm concerned, these are all just big business cards. If you have stuff that you want gone and it doesn't really cost you anything to give it away, just give it away. People will remember you and your name gets out there. There's no way to calculate how this will come back to you, but trust that it will. I really believe that my pottery is far more valuable today because of what I gave away in good marketing karma yesterday.
7) It ain't all about the Benjamins
All in all, I took in a total of $60 today. The organizers were unhappy about the lack of turnout so they waived all the vending fees as an apology. That cash paid for the gas and food for the day for me and the hubby so I'd say I broke about even.
However, It was a great exercise in market research. This is my third (I think) experience trying to sell my pottery at an event like this. My table looked SOOOO much better than it has in the past. I learned that the video will not only make people pause at your table, it makes them engage with you and your wares.
And I'm a flattery whore. True compliments, and I don't mean the empty "you have nice stuff" compliments, I mean the "ooohhh, you throw these so thin! This feels so nice in the hand. Wow, I've never seen that style before, how did you make it?" compliments are worth more to me than any amount of cash. And that's because I now feel like my stuff is actually worthy. It's worth what to me is a high price. It is good enough to stand side by side with those who craft for a living.
I'm now excited to do my next event when before I've always dreaded it. And if I'm excited to do an event, and will now seek them out and actually enter them, I'll eventually earn a whole lot more $$$ than I would have if I were still feeling inferior and hiding my stuff from the potential customers out there in the world.
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