by Andy McDonald
f you ask the average craftsperson why they chose a career in the arts, they probably won’t tell you it was for the money.
In a field where the word profit is almost considered a dirty word, financial success and artistic integrity seem to be two mutually exclusive concepts. Near poverty, it seems, is accepted by many as a time-honored tradition of the artisan trade.
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Illustration by Larry Knox
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Perhaps it’s for that reason that business education has often been a neglected facet of arts education. Instead, most of the focus in fine arts has been on the creative process. But without basic tools or at least the knowledge of where to get them, artisans may find themselves unable to maintain a viable crafts business.
Most artists have a fine arts degree, which often means they didn’t get trained with the business skills to become successful artists,” says Dan Rhode, lead instructor at the Central Carolina Community College Pottery and Sculpture program. “Fine arts degrees are not practically oriented enough to give students the necessary information they need to succeed long term as professional artists.”
One doesn’t need a Harvard MBA or a degree in certified public accounting to build and maintain a successful crafts enterprise. Rather, Rhode suggests that knowing a few basic business principals can make the difference between a well-intentioned failure and a viable business.
Have a business plan
Without a basic roadmap identifying what’s to be sold, who the
target customer is and how to reach prospective consumers, the artisan
is lost in the wilderness of commerce — not knowing precisely
where they are, where they want to go or how they can reach their goal.
Craftspeople not schooled in subjects like finance, marketing or accounting may be intimidated by the prospect of assembling a business plan, imagining they have to produce a dry tome that includes a dizzying array of statistics, graphs and sales projections. In fact, a good business plan can be something as simple as an outline on a few typed pages, as long as it helps identify where the artisan wants their business to go, whether it’s in six months or six years.
“Most importantly, I want [students] to realize the importance of planning,” Rhode says, noting that artisans need to take a hard look at what they want to produce and decide whether it can provide positive cash flow. A business plan can help artisans determine when their marketing plan or their products simply aren’t working. It can also identify alternatives if the initial strategy is failing, adds Rhode. “Plan to have backup strategies when plan A stumbles.”
A business plan should address some fairly basic issues, such as potential profits versus overhead (i.e. ma-terials, renting studio space, electricity and ad-vertising). Once the craftsperson identifies precisely how much profit they need to cover overhead and actually make a living, they can then formulate marketing strategies, identifying the characteristics of prospective customers, then deciding how best to reach them, whether it’s through craft fairs, a Web site or advertising.
Finally, a business plan must also be as flexible as the market in which you’re selling. Taking the time to re-evaluate your business plan every six months to a year is a good way to ensure you’re staying on track for meeting your long-term goals.
Some artisans may feel their work is beneath pedestrian concerns such as money — that they are “selling out” because they’re trying to make something that consumers will actually buy. It’s important to remember, however, that even the masters of the art world had to eat, and if you don’t have the modern equivalent of the Medici family subsidizing your work, there needs to be some balance between meeting the demands of the consumer market and your creative ideals. Formulating a business plan can help the artisan find that happy medium and build a career that is a sustainable enterprise instead of a noble financial failure.
Expertise can come cheap
Many craftspeople suggest the key to acquiring business skills is
simply a matter of knowing where they can be found.
Jeweler Dale Pilling of Marlboro, N.J., transitioned from a career in art therapy to jeweler, a process she says could have been easier if she’d made more use of government programs and artisan seminars. “If I had to begin again, I would utilize the Small Business Administration to a larger degree,” Pilling says. “I did use them to incorporate and took one or two seminars with them. Since most of their services are provided for free or for a nominal charge, I would try to get more marketing information and advice from them.”
Chambers of commerce and arts guilds are also excellent sources of free or low-cost training. Capitalizing on funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, Arts Wisconsin is an example of an arts organization that offers craftspeople advanced training in topics such as business fundamentals, career planning, marketing, financial management and developing a business plan. The seminars would normally cost somewhere in the range of $250, but because it is a government-supported program, participants can take business seminars for as little as $50.
In Rhode Island, meanwhile, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce has a program which can be described as an artist/business person mentoring program, which pairs business people with local craftspeople, allowing the local crafts economy to benefit from the business expertise in the community.
Get out of the studio and
network
Local arts guilds and medium-specific craft guilds are another vital
source of information, since they give craftspeople the opportunity to
interact with their peers and get a sense of what is selling in the
industry. That, beyond any business acumen, may be the most important
factor in the success or failure of a crafts business. After all, you
can have the finest production and marketing entities working for your
operation, but unless you can produce an item that consumers are
buying, business skills can only take you so far.
Networking can also help artisans stay informed about the latest business resources available, and help them gain valuable insights from artisans who are already succeeding in their respective fields.
For similar reasons, attending trade and craft shows is still a valuable and often under-rated business tool for gauging the potential success of a product. By interacting with vendors and consumers, craftspeople can better evaluate how much interest a certain product is generating, and through face-to-face interaction, perhaps gain a better understanding of how an item might be adapted to meet the needs of consumers or to fill a new niche in the crafts economy.
Until recently, business skills have not been part of the curriculum in many craft schools, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late or too expensive for artisans to learn. By taking advantage of government initiatives, craft guild seminars and programs offered by local governments and chambers of commerce, artisans can find ways to run their businesses more efficiently. Moreover, old fashioned networking can help craftspeople gain insights into the shifting trends of the crafts market and adapt their catalogues accordingly.
Profit may still be a dirty word in the world of fine art and craft, but learning to run a crafts business profitably can ultimately give the craftsperson a greater creative freedom that can come with financial success.
Andy McDonald is a Kentucky-based free-lance writer and journalist.