The Sea Glass Festival in PEI was a great learning opportunity for me. Not only did I get to meet the guru of Sea Glass, Richard Lamotte, and learn about appraising glass, finding glass, identifying glass, I also got to scope out my competition. My true, head to head competition; other sea glass artists. (photo by Buffy Delaney Moore)
The morning of the festival started out exactly how I thought it would... slow. Not with foot traffic but with sales. There was actually a lot of traffic. So I thought it must be the amount of direct competition. There were almost 25 vendors all selling sea glass products. The up side to this is that I never once had to explain what sea glass was, because everyone that came, came because they too were a sea glass lover. In fact, one women said to me 'I collect sea glass' and her husband swatted her arm and said 'who here doesn't'. The downside to having an 'educated' audience? Everyone photographing your work, writing notes about your work, studying your ideas, so they could go home and use their stash of glass to try and recreate your art.
The afternoon was a nice surprise though. It proved that what I always say is true; don't worry about the competition, if you offer something of value, you'll come out ahead. And so I did. The afternoon I was very busy with sales, orders and compliments about my work. It didn't matter that I had so much competition around me, it was a good show (for sales, and for learning). And besides, I got to make my own notes too..
