Still learning this whole blogging thing. I guess I can just email my posts in? Testing that now. Sorry for the boring post. This test is now complete. You may return to your normal internet browsing.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Testing testing 1...2...4
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.
Monday, October 12, 2009
What I've been up to
Yup, a whole year since I last posted. You'd think I wasn't very good at this blogging thing.
As usual, I stopped doing pottery in the winter. My studio is an unheated woodshed and while I can heat the shed decently with the space heater, the clay freezes and becomes difficult to work with. Not to mention how unpleasant it is to be wet and muddy in the cold.
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But over the summer I had another burst of creation. Of course I made the usual bowls and mugs. I've also gotten some new glazes. I'm loving how the two of these combine to create a cascading effect.
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I've also been messing with some new carving techniques. This mug has a lot of texture carved into the bottom half of it. Then the glaze I chose flows over it making a waterfall effect. I suppose it would be more of a waterfall effect if I had used a brown. Oh well, live and learn.
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And I've moved on to making almost all of my mugs "super mugs". They each tend to hold about 3 cups. It seems like the giant mugs are the ones that everyone reaches for and I seem to sell them as soon as I have them in stock, so, makin more!
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Personally, I find hearts really cheesy. There's nothing wrong with them, the style just isn't for me. But I had a couple of bowls sitting there, fresh from the wheel, and I pulled out one end and pushed in another, voila! Valentine's day bowls!
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I do still like doing the other carving style and have discovered a use for some horrible dark gray glaze that I've purchased. No matter how much I hate a glaze, I can't seem to throw it out until I've actually used it up. And I tend to buy glazes a lot to try them out so I have a ton of glazes in my cupboard that I don't like. But anyway, I found that if I put the gray glaze on mugs with this carving style and then clean it off, I sits in the grooves. Then this clear blue glaze goes over it and you get a kind of tiki effect. Yay finding uses for crappy stuff!
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A friend of mine was sitting with me while I was throwing and she requested goblets. Goblets of all shapes and sizes. Just goblet after goblet after goblet. These are all thrown in one piece. It makes it much faster and the final product is better. When I make them in 2 pieces, the top never seems to go with the bottom and it gets all wonky. Oh, and notice the pink with the gray rim. I hate the gray and I hate the pink, but they work pretty well together.
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And I've been messing with some other new shapes and textures.
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And then of course the agateware that I'm known for. I keep thinking I'm going to stop making this, and then I make more.
So this summer was mostly spent experimenting. Experimenting with new textures, new shapes, several new glazes, and at the moment I'm firing a little hotter than I have in the past.
I'm pretty much packed up for the winter again but hopefully I'll get out there once or twice in the upcoming months.
Oh, and I have a craft fair coming up this weekend. Wish me luck!
As usual, I stopped doing pottery in the winter. My studio is an unheated woodshed and while I can heat the shed decently with the space heater, the clay freezes and becomes difficult to work with. Not to mention how unpleasant it is to be wet and muddy in the cold.
So this summer was mostly spent experimenting. Experimenting with new textures, new shapes, several new glazes, and at the moment I'm firing a little hotter than I have in the past.
I'm pretty much packed up for the winter again but hopefully I'll get out there once or twice in the upcoming months.
Oh, and I have a craft fair coming up this weekend. Wish me luck!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The lights went out
Woke up thinking there was no power in the house. Turns out, it's just the bedroom and the pottery studio that are without power.
I've thrown every circuit in the curcuit breaker, but no luck. I don't seem to be fixing it. I'm really frustrated because now I'm probably going to have to call an electrician, spend money I don't have, and I can't do any pottery!
Argh!!
I've thrown every circuit in the curcuit breaker, but no luck. I don't seem to be fixing it. I'm really frustrated because now I'm probably going to have to call an electrician, spend money I don't have, and I can't do any pottery!
Argh!!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Meet the Buster Boy
This is Buster. He's my studio cat.
Well, he's not actually my cat. He's a neighborhood cat that just showed up and started hanging around. I mean really, we already had enough cats here. 5 indoor cats and 2 that live on our deck (ferals that I officially adopted).
But this cat was coming around regularly enough that he needed to be caught and fixed, so we did that. Sorry Buster, no more babies for you.
As you can imagine, we didn't see much of him for a time after that. But then he started showing up again. He'd hang out on the deck with the other 2 ferals. Then he started to let me pet him a bit. Then he started letting me pick him up. Then he started showing up every darned day!
Yes, every day. Ok, so now we anecdotely have 8 cats! But he still went away at night and we didn't know where he went.
Well now he's decided that he actually likes my pottery studio. My studio is a small woodshed on my property and it has a cat door because I thought the 2 ferals would like it at night. They don't, but guess who does!
So there's a little space heater in there (very safe) with an old bar stool right next to it with all the warm air going right where the tush of the stool is. And it's right behind my pottery wheel. So now I always have a cat sitting right behind my head as I'm throwing on the wheel.
When I drive up my driveway, I often see the cat waiting on the stoop of my house waiting for me to get home. When I leave the pottery studio, he waits on the stoop for me to come back. He's rather insistant that I pay attention to him. And over the last couple of days, when I've gotten up in the morning and walked out to the studio, there he is, sleeping on his barstool.
So I officially have a Pottery Pal in my studio. He's very cuddly, loves to be up on my shoulders. So much that sometimes when I'm throwing, he jumps onto my shoulder so I ruin what I'm working on. He really likes me. I really like him too.
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