Rain Rain come today

Not usually the chant you would think of when heading off to an art show, but rain can sometimes be helpful for things other than our gardens. It can even be helpful for an outdoor art show - really it can.

This entry took me a few days since getting back from my last show, in the rain. Since Monday I have been hanging up my tent, my table cloths, my curtains and cards to dry. This is definitely not the fun or productive part of a show in the rain.

The productive part is that there's less window shoppers out on a rainy day. Which means that only the die-hards, ready to spend consumers venture out in the rain. So right off the bat, you have to work less to sell more. And on top of that, you don't lose those customers to 1. getting lost 2. getting tired 3. changing their mind. On a sunny day at an art show, shoppers will find something they like, but say 'I will buy it on the way out', or 'I will come back once I've found my friends'. And then they are gone forever (lost, tired, or changed their mind). In the rain, people are more impulsive, if they like it they will buy because they don't want to have to come back if they decide later they really want it.

So, yes in general, rainy days aren't that fun, but my experience shows that rainy days aren't that bad for sales, at least for the amount of work we have to do on those days.

Ok - time to fold the drying tent and pack it up for a rainy weekend show in London!

Tips on Etsy

Early in March I participated in a set of workshops about selling on Etsy. Dianne from DiBAjewellery facilitated the advanced workshop and here are some great tips and ideas that I picked up from her session (some directly from her and others from general discussion).

1. Have an Etsy anniversary event
2. Could what you sell also fit under supply?
3. Update it frequently (throughout the day if possible)
4. Bulk up your shop - lots of inventory gives the appearance of being serious
5. Have various price points available to inspire easy sales
6. Photography is key - it's all the customer has to go on, so make it good. Use all 5 slots, all angles including the back
7. Use full descriptions with lots of detail including both imperial and metric measurements
8. Put your location in your profile
9. Use all 14 tags - ideas for tags include 'international', 'gift', colour, full name
10. Create treasury's
11. Participate in Etsy - forums, blog, labs
12. Detail your policies - ie do your items come from a smoke-free or animal-free environment?
13. Use the announcement section
14. Tools to try www.etsyhacks.com and www.craftopolis.com.

Thanks Dianne for all the great tips!

HST explained

I've been asked a lot lately and it got brought up again at the Kingston Arts Council workshop on Thursday night how the HST will work. Here's the simple low-down on how you will have to deal with taxes in 6 months time.

Basically it will be just like GST and no PST for business owners. If you currently are required to register for GST (revenue of more than $30,000 in the year) than you will be required to collect and remit HST. If you currently aren't required to and haven't registered for GST you will not have to.

PST will no longer be. You will not have a vendors permit, therefore you will not be tax exempt when you purchase supplies for resale, the tax amount will just become part of the regular expense of the item. You will not collect PST from your customers and therefore you will not remit anything to the government. So for a lot of artists this means that our prices will go down a bit in the eye of the customer! Yeah.

Sorry for the somewhat boring post today - we'll get back to more fun later this week.

Cussing Customs!

Is that what you do when you get a custom order? CUSS? When a commission comes in do you celebrate and curse all at the same time? Every artist I know does. It's definitely a love / hate relationship.

Here are some quick thoughts on how to balance that relationship out a bit more in your favour.

1. Be very clear what you're willing to comprimise on and what you're not. Although they are a paying a customer, you don't have to agree to make it if it is really going against what you want to do as an artist.
2. Be very clear about what they will get at the end - in fact, maybe check in with them throughout the process to show them how it is progressing - that way any red flags can be dealt with early on.
3. Take a deposit before starting.
4. Just in case, do you have a contigency plan if they don't like the end piece? Can you sell it somewhere else?
5. Be clear about timelines - and give yourself some buffer time - I find it's usually hard to get motivated to work on these orders so you need extra time.
6. And most importantly, before starting ask yourself is the project something I want to do, is this person someone I want to work with?

Bailouts all around

Ok, I've been trying to ignore, ok not ignore, but at least not jump on the auto industry bail out opinion band wagon. For those that know me, you know that keeping my opinions to myself is very hard and I've lasted a long time on this one. But I found some relevance to the art world that triggered some thoughts.

Yesterday, as I was getting interviewed for a story in Kingston This Week (coming out tomorrow) about the Gift Giving Show this weekend at Little Cat, Rob and I got talking about all the changes in the newspaper world. Iconic newspapers across the continent are closing, our local newspaper is making major shifts, KTW went from 2 times a week to a weekly, etc. Locally in Kingston we have seen over 80 jobs lost in the last year in the print media industry alone. And yet.... no bailout.

Today (in the newspaper funny enough) I read about one of Kingston's oldest retailers, S & R Department Store closing this summer. A lot of readers weighed in with their comments and yes it is a sad story, I make at least 1 trip there a week, sometimes 1 every day! And yet... no bailout.

When my life wasn't going as planned and I decided to leave my job and enter the art world full time, I didn't ask for a bailout (getting a credit card was hard enough). I made the necessary adjustments, planned, worked with my team and changed courses - all on my own! Just like the newspaper industry is doing and just like the retail sector is doing. Yes we will see some of these iconic stores and media groups close, and lay offs will happen; but innovation and inspiration doesn't come by doing the same old same old. You have to move with the times, in fact, in business.. you have to move ahead of the times!

What I've learned from shopping online

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's been there (or here) before, you know, buying something online and crossing your fingers that it's what you were looking for? And then, when it arrives, realizing it's nothing like it looked in the picture?

I just made my first large purchase from a new jewellery supply company and more than half the order was not what I wanted! The last two days I've been waundering around saying 'I should've just spent the extra and bought from a local shop'; but a moment a go a light bulb went off. If I'm trying to convince my customers from all over the world to buy from me online then I can't give up on it either. What I need to take from my exprience (besides frustration and product I don't need) is to make sure my customers don't have this happen to them and more importantly, feel confident that it won't!

Here's the things I learned from this expierience that will help me fix any of my online sales:

1. Images from multiple angles of the product.
2. Images large enough to see detail.
3. What to do if you aren't happy with it.
4. Who pays for shipping of unwanted items?
5. Send a confirmation email of any phone orders, or online orders before shipping it.
6. Include in the delivery box FAQ's about your products.

I'm sure there's others, but I'll start there. That will keep me busy.

The List

Well, I'm hunkering down and getting serious this year. I'm getting my beach glass art sold! So to start I took a look at where I'm currently selling my work and and where I want to be selling my work. I removed my product from one store in Bloomfield (that's a blog story in itself, but not for public consumption!) and already have two new ones on board. One is a great boutique in Port Stanley, ON (my home stomping ground and where my beach glass collecting all began) called the Sandpyper Gallery. If you're down that way make sure to have a peak, it's very cool. The other one is closer to my current home, it's Gallery ArtPlus in Belleville. What a beautiful gallery! And the staff are so great. They both met my criteria.

Do you have criteria for stores that carry your art? When I first started I would put my work in any store that would carry it, now I'm the one being picky. It has to be the right fit. Here's my criteria to give you a head start on yours if you don't have a list yet:

1. Is it on the water? (specific to me because of it being beach glass)
2. Does it communicate with me?
3. A maximum of 35% take (except in a few cases)
4. Do they carry any other beach glass work and is it authentic?
5. Do they allow my own branding?
6. Do they pass the secret shopper test?
7. Is their target market the same as mine?