Fine Craft Wholesale Shows - A Review of the Philadelphia Buyer's Market Visiting Artists Program

As a glass artist new to the wholesale market, one of my first tasks was to research wholesale trade shows.

After lonely hours culling through Web sites, I'd sip wine and recite mantras from Deepak Chopra: "There are no wrong decisions. Wherever you are is exactly where the Universe wants you, right now."

This was to relieve deep anxiety over which trade shows to choose and where I'd get the cash for the booth fees.

Then the Universe said, "Sign up for the Philadelphia Buyer's Market of American Craft Visiting Artists program at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, June 21-23, 2006." The Rosen Group runs this program during its regular trade show to help new artists learn the ropes of wholesaling, and presumably to incubate a new generation of artists for the Buyer's Market juried shows.

I wavered, fretted, reserved a hotel room, and advised myself several times to "get real" and cancel the whole thing.

Then I got into the car with my 78-year-old mother and her walking stick. As we pulled out of the tree-lined driveway, Mother asked if I didn't already know enough about wholesaling. "I've done a lot of research," I said. "But this should fill in the gaps."

Chopra was right about the Universe wanting me to participate in the Visiting Artists Program, but I was dead wrong about the gaps. What I learned filled not gaps, but chasms. The presentations by gallery owners, wholesaling artists, and the Rosen Group's own staff were invaluable. Since applying the knowledge I gained, I've made enough sales to pay for the trip, and more.

Flexibility, Language, and the Artist's Statement

Craft-marketing maven Bruce Baker and gallery owner Nancy Marcoe, both Arts Business Institute faculty members, opened the program stressing that artists must be limber and flexible in business. To embrace change is to prosper. This idea of morphing with the marketplace is cliché in the business world. But Baker and Marcoe put it in the context of fine-craft wholesaling, something I hadn't much considered.

As a former journalist, I liked their take on language. Observe the vocabulary of your markets, they advised. Employ it in ads and sales pitches. Use famous designer names as comparisons and show customers why your work is better. Update color names (it's "citrus," not "yellow"). The beauty may be in your art, but the magic is in your words.

How to write the proverbial Artist's Statement had me stumped (a sociology master's makes a miserable stand-in for a design degree). But Baker noted a key tenet of marketing: Customers love stories. And despite the workaday reality, they see the artist's life as inherently exciting, fascinating, and free.

Baker's advice for writing the artist's statement: Out go the credentials; in go stories about the accidental feline scratches in your clay. Out go the awards; in go ways that owning your art will make customers feel fabulous. Think People Magazine, or hire a writer to do so.

At mid-morning the first day, the Rosen Group staff officially oriented the Visiting Artists at the "Meeting Spot," a small room off the main lobby. Fact sheets lined the walls on everything from show planning to contracts. Binders displayed examples of good and bad product slides and booths.

Buyers and Artists Look Alike, For Good Reason

After several morning workshops and presentations, the moment most of us were waiting for finally arrived: a tour of the showroom floor - 90,000 square feet of wholesaling in action, millions of dollars in fine-craft trade, real time.

We were asked not to talk to the exhibiting artists, especially if there were any buyers in their booths. We were also prohibited from taking pictures or notes - to protect artists from the "design thieves" who apparently come from as far away as China to steal fresh ideas.

The exhibiting artists watched the spectacle of us 15 Visiting Artists promenading through the isles. This made me a bit self-conscious. But brilliantly, the tour included stops at artists' booths for Q&A sessions, which helped give us a sense of belonging.

Not surprisingly, the buyers look a lot like the artists, and often one has to look at the nametags to tell the difference.

In her "Galleries as Partners" workshop, Judie Raiford noted that many gallery owners indeed are former full-time artists. Raiford herself is an artist, and owner of the Raiford Gallery in Roswell, Georgia. As a winner of the Niche Top 100 Retailers of American Craft, Raiford urges artists to step up to the plate with highly professional business practices in order to build successful partnerships with their gallery-owning brethren.

Artists, meanwhile, come from varied backgrounds, including dentistry, writing, and production work for potters and other artists. One woman from New York was making the transition from journalism to selling elaborately beaded bracelets. She bravely displayed her beadwork for a mini critique by Wendy Rosen, Rosen Group founder and author of Crafting as a Business.

Rosen has made an energetic career of democratizing the fine craft marketplace - and not without critics. She's implicated in soiling the temple of fine craft with the ignoble souk of lowly merchandising. But Rosen slays the highborn critics with the sword of economic egalitarianism. She gives artists without trust funds a fighting chance. Her presentation was gem-packed.

Afterward, clutching their treasure boxes full of creations, several artists crowded around Rosen's table to watch her generously give one-on-one critiques well through the lunch hour. I found it well worth starving through.

Later, we were allowed to walk the aisles of the trade-room floor independently. The Muses were on my side as I ran into a glass artist from my hometown - a person I'd wanted to meet for some time. He turns out to be one of the nicest people I've ever met, offering for me to call him later for advice. He said he'd never had a chance to mentor another artist, and now would be his chance.

At another booth an artist displayed sculptures of dichroic glass and plastic, the former being the material that first enticed me into kiln-working. As he described his work, I realized many moons ago I'd met him via email after stumbling upon his website during a late-night stint of Internet research.

Across the isle, a maker of whimsical wall clocks said she'd lost money on her first show. (Fortunately, the customers are buying now.) Here was a real-life example of what some of the presenters had been telling us: Artists may not realize profits with the first couple of trade shows. It can take two or three shows for a new artist to establish buyers' trust. It drove home the point that this business (perhaps like any other), requires a start-up investment and a year or two of ramp-up time.

Someone will Always Buy Orange

In the rainy Saturday twilight, I quickstepped passed several of Philadelphia's Market Street panhandlers. They are a sign of America's dwindling middle class, a downward slide that is pushing fine craft into the upper-middle, "everyday luxury" market.

Waiting at the historic Reading Terminal Market was the trolley shuttle-bus to the "Coney Island Party," a gathering the Rosen Group had organized for exhibiting artists and buyers. Onboard the trolley, a local fine-craft gallery owner sat beside me. We set out for Dave & Buster's Restaurant and Arcade.

I told the gallery owner about that morning's fascinating lecture by Michelle Lamb (of Trend Curve), chronicling current and upcoming trends in colors, forms and motifs. I had walked away from Lamb's talk convinced that artists should pay attention to color trends.

The gallery owner had his doubts.

"There's always someone who will buy orange," he opined, adding that his business model focuses on "high volume and variety."

Later, at the cash bar, the hometown artist I'd met introduced me to a smartly dressed buyer from a prominent Southern gallery. He also introduced a Toronto glass artist and a Canadian couple more than 20 years into wholesaling. It was encouraging to see that people really can make a good living this way.

Online Resources:

Philadelphia Buyer's Market of American Craft - Visiting Artists Program [http://www.americancraft.com/BMAC/artist/visitingartist.html]

Bruce Baker (tips for wholesaling and retailing artists)

http://bbakerinc.com/

Michelle Lamb - Trend Curve

http://www.trendcurve.com/

Arts Business Institute

http://www.artsbusinessinstitute.org/