Tuesday, March 18, 2008

resolved

Remember back in January when I said I thought making resolutions in the deepest depths of winter was ridiculous, and it should be saved for the first day of spring when one may actually feel motivated to make some changes? Well guess what people? The Vernal Equinox is upon us in two days!

I have several resolutions. The first one is to start posting ceramic websites and blogs of people beside my immediate circle of friends. I've been very non-reciprocal in that area. I recently put a site meter on my blog to monitor how many people actually read this thing, and was surprised to learn how many beautiful fantastic awesome people have me bookmarked, and how many people come to me through other blogs websites. I found some very cool artists whose work I'd never seen before, and I thought I knew everybody. Well, apparently I do not, and god knows what else I'm missing. So if you are a ceramic person, please put your blog and/or website in my comments or email them to me and I will post it.

Second resolution is to start working my retail angle a lot harder. Last week I was all bunged up because I was considering doing the Las Vegas wholesale craft show (a relatively new show on the wholesale circuit) with Rae Dunn and a couple of other people. In the end, we couldn't pull it together and I found I was relieved. Why? Because I hate frickin' wholesale. I've started shipping my spring orders and these collections I send off are so beautiful. I mean really, it makes a momma proud. But I'm sending these babies off for less than half of what I could sell it for out of my studio or on Etsy. And that kinda hurts. Could I sell it all off myself for retail is the question.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago about how I developed my wholesale. I've been thinking a lot about that question because I want to answer it in an intelligent way that is helpful to people. I'm not going to do that right now other than to say I never wanted to do wholesale, but the retail shows were drying up in the sales department and I needed to do something to keep things going, hence the New York Gift show and Philadelphia Rosen. But if you read those posts you know I never come back all happy and stoked, I come back feeling depressed and used.

So my resolution now is to take that dough I was going to pour into Las Vegas and pour it into my marketing instead. I just uploaded a new website-- check it out-- and I'm going to take out some online ads and push etsy as hard as I can. Now the question is, what is your spring resolution?

7 comments:

  1. The new uploaded site looks great!
    This wholesale retail thing is a real question to me... so I truly enjoy your opinion....
    p.s.Thanks for the comment on my blog!

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  2. The new site is great, very clean and user-friendly.

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  3. been reading your blog for quite some time and i love your posts. my blog isn't nearly as interesting but i do have a few works posted from flickr and plan to post more about my projects and process...i'm an art student focusing in ceramics as well as photography.

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  4. Anonymous3:02 AM

    Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Wireless, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://wireless-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.

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  5. Anonymous5:25 AM

    Arghhh, here I thought wholesale was the answer...I just signed up for wholesalecrafts.com and am choking a bit on pricing and making a living. You don't make it sound glamorous.

    I am glad to see that you are able to retail and wholesale simultaneously despite what I've been reading elsewhere.

    Love your blog!

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  6. Retail is so much better- Less work, less stuffing around and way more money in your pocket- I am in a group called the Umbrella Collective and we joined together because the gallery system is failing artists. We found that you can't make al living on the gallery system alone. Over the years we've cultivated a great mailing list and we have really successful retail shows ans sell individually through Etsy and our studios
    http://umbrellacollective.blogspot.com/

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  7. these cake stands are just lovely!!!

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