July Acorn to Oak Handmade Events: Websites and Banks

             Alright, I am so excited to see that our summer bootcamp is up and running! We had a great time at the first meeting where we went over the basics for the summer sessions. Now, we are going to talk about specific elements people get stuck on. For July, we have two meetings.

July 10th: Setting up your online presence/Microwave Crafts: When I was getting started, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get a website, store, blog, etc. and made a TON of mistakes. Some of what I did was good, other pieces were problematic. We will be going over how to do the website portion of your online website ($10-20 year annual cost): registering a domain (dreamhost, godaddy), using a web platform (weebly, ipage, wordpress, google, big cartel, shopify, etc.), starting a blog, making a facebook page, and linking it all together so it functions smoothly as a whole. This can be done easily barebones in a night, but it takes time to build up a website persona. Blogs often require several hundred or thousand posts to get a following over several years. Please bring your laptop if you have one as we will be doing this in real-time. I will have what has and has not worked for me and others. We will also be doing papermaking/stamping art with the shop microwave. Because paper is just so cool! Above is a stamp I made for my fabric from a really great blog for the Animazement talk in May. Look forward to seeing everyone there.

July 24th: Banks, Accountants, and Jewelry Kiln Making: There are two really good banks in the area for small business owners: Harrington Bank and Federal Coastal Credit Union. SCORE recommends Harrington Bank. I have more experience with Federal Coastal as you can open a business account with them for free if you have a $25 checking account. We will also discuss the other big players: BB&T (bad rep), Wellsfargo (new local player), and some of the others. With Charlotte being so close the good news is small business owners have the ability to shop around. I will also be handing out business cards of local area accountants we know: pricing tends to break down by gender. Men tend to ask for monthly retainers and women charge hourly rates. I'm partial to using female accountants as they seem to be more detailed oriented and charge me 1/2 a year what a male accountant wants to charge a month for the same percieved work. This is probably a lack of understanding on my part, but it can often add up to a couple thousand a year which is significant savings. I meant to do this back in April for tax season, but we ran out of time. Lastly, we will be using the jewelry kiln to do some beginning metal casting. This is a scaled down version of the free weekly pours Evan does at Techshop geared towards making jewelry specifically.

Look forward to seeing everyone this coming month. It's going to be a great time.

April 21st: Guest Lecturing at the Visual Art Exchange

        This week, I will be downtown speaking at the Visual Art Exchange on Saturday, April 21st at 3:30 pm on selling online, specifically on Etsy and our local Acorn to Oak Handmade Team which is dedicated to helping local artists and craftsmen make a living selling online. A lot of people as me why I created a local team for this purpose and why I mention Etsy repeatedly as a good venue for up and coming artists to get started on making a living.
         Mostly, it gets down to money and time. Of the 24 some places I opened an online shop the first year I had a design company, the only place I ever sold art or crafts online was Etsy. There's a saying that without money, artists disappear. I don't know if it's true, but I do know that hunger is a great driver both into and out of a given field. As a designer, in a wonderful co-op, surrounded by great talent, I feel it is part of my job to help my fellow friends and companions grow. Since 1994, online sales are the only venue that's growing. That means for the last 20 years, the only pie that's growing is the internet pie. Having spent a decade in sales before starting Li Sashay, I can tell you that the internet is having a pervasive, eroding effect on traditional sales outlets. Traditional sales associates are being slashed out of the process as it becomes cheaper and easier to market to the online crowd. Why give 70% of the profit away when you can reduce it to 5-8% online?
        And therein, lies the problem, most artists find when they set up their webpage. You can set-up a store now for under $100 a yr. that will be interesting, well-designed, and protected. It will not however, get you traffic or sales. It is simply too easy and the bar too low for most people to be effectively heard online at this venture. Even with buying advertising on google, facebook, or starting a blog is generally useless for getting direct sales. So where can you be heard? In general there are three main selling platforms: Amazon, eBay, and Etsy for an artist to be heard on from a financial aspect. Of these, Amazon and eBay are so big, they are controlled mostly by larger corporations. 38% of eBay's income comes from a mere 14 companies. That leaves 1 place for an up and coming artist to be heard effectively: Etsy.
      No system is perfect, of the available platforms, this is the best at this time for getting traffic if you make unique or handmade items. Two years ago, a person needed between 25-50 items in their shop to make consistent sales. Today most people have increased the number to 100-300 items in a shop to sell effectively. I would place the number closer to the 200-300 mark if you want daily sales. For many part-time designers...this may represent a year or two of work, but still doable if you are willing to be patient. Etsy is a great place to get started and I highly recommend it. Alright, stop in Sat for the full lecture if you want specifics. I will have hand-outs with websites, names, and contact info for people who are looking for details. Hopefully this will help some of my fellow artists in the area. I won't claim to know it all, but am happy to offer up some wisdom from what has and has not worked for me. Please be aware that there are much more talented designers and artists in the area making a lot more than I am on Etsy at the moment. If you want to know more, I suggest talking to/contacting some of the other forum members if you want to find a good mentor or coming to one of our Tuesday night meetings.

Visual Art Exchange
309 West Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601

Ella Brooks: Assistant Fashion Designer

It is said in business, you should always try to hire people smarter than yourself because they will surprise you. Ella fits this category beautifully for me. She's a rising senior in the textile school at State and a wonderful person. While most days find her creating fabric monsters or commercial accounts for Li Sashay, she occasionally moonlights as the future talent I know she is in the process of becoming. I'm looking forward to following her career and seeing her continue to grow. If you haven't gotten to know her rising talent yet, I encourage you to check out the music video we made of the summer for saving the environment. That's Ella, holding the bag with a smile on her face.

She will be hosting the evening Etsy Berlin streaming event at the DIY Summit Saturday, September 17th from 5-9 pm. I encourage you to come out and talk to her about her upcoming hopes and dreams.

Look forward to seeing you all next weekend.