Four lessons learned and Why I’ll Do It Again
That’s me at the start of the 2007 Steamboat Triathlon
A few years ago I was strategizing with my triathlon coach about managing my energy and body throughout an upcoming race to make sure I finished strong with my best performance. The run is the final of the 3 legs of the race (after the swim and the bike) and not my strongest sport, so I had asked, what muscle groups should I be focused on most when I get to the run? At that point in the race she said, use everything you’ve got.
Preparing for and exhibiting at my first ACC Show was a similar experience – I put everything I had into it.
Lesson #1: Make use of all your available resources
I have 2 artist friends that have done these shows in the past. The first thing I did after committing to doing this show was to set up time to meet with them to learn any tips and pitfalls they could share. The second thing I did was to watch/listen to the free professional development webinars that ACC made available to artists to help us learn about wholesale show prep and marketing. All of this was invaluable in helping me prepare for doing my first wholesale show.
Lesson #2: Do the (Business) Work
There were many hours of research and thankfully, I had help with this. Barbara took on figuring out and ordering the booth, floor, lights as well as the shipping logistics (a HUGE part of doing these shows if you’re not driving your own vehicle). I did web research to find galleries & shops to send pre-marketing materials to and we worked with a design team to do some branding – created a new logo, professional post cards and banners for the booth.
One of the most painful, yet important learning for me came through the number crunching I was forced to do to figure out what my wholesale prices needed to be, to cover costs and make sure I can have a profitable art business. There were some dark days as I came to realize that the prices I had been selling my works for previously were not even enough to cover my costs!
I took some solace in learning that this is very common and lots of artists go through this when they get serious about wholesaling their work – they often find that what they’ve been selling their work for at retail is in fact really their wholesale price point.
My booth at the ACC Baltimore Show (photo by Bob Barrett photography)
Lesson #3: Get Real, It’s a Business, it needs to be Profitable
This is a wrestling match. After number crunching, I’m very confident of my prices for my work and also navigating figuring out the markets for my work because I’ve had to raise my prices to be profitable. My sales and orders from the show were enough to cover my booth fee (floor space) and most of my shipping costs.
My entire costs of doing the show were 3-4 times more than what I made in sales. Even though my costs were way more than my sales at this first show, I view it as a success. About half of my costs were re-usable booth, floor, lights that I won’t have to pay for in future shows.
Lesson #4: Do Your Best, Observe and Learn From the Experience, Adjust and Keep Going
We went “all in” to make this booth the best it could be. As visual artists, we learn by observation and there was plenty to observe and learn from the other exhibiting artists around us. All of our neighboring artists either drove and delivered their own booths, avoiding having to pay the ridiculous drayage fee to the union (especially those that had big booths like us), or they had very minimal amount of booth set-up and artwork shipped on a pallet. Going forward, we’ll be making some adjustments to the amount of work and booth set-up we ship to shows and are discussing other possibilities for a more lightweight booth design and even considering driving.
I’ve got more to share about my neighbor artists and learning from them, worthy of a post in itself.
One of my artist neighbors, Elaine Unzicker in her booth at the ACC Show
Why I’ll do it Again
Making a living as an Artist, developing a profitable art business is going to take time – it’s a marathon not a sprint. While I didn’t make a profit at this show, I hadn’t expected to given the one-time outlay of costs. I actually did make more sales/orders than I had expected going into it.
I envision this show and other shows I’m doing this year and next as business investments, big buckets of flares that I’m lighting and sending off into orbit. I’m putting myself and my art out there like never before, and already I’m receiving responses and interest from museum stores, galleries and art consultants that otherwise would not have known about my work. Doors I didn’t even know about before are opening.
Doing the work required to have a successful ACC wholesale/retail show has forced me to get clear and make some big decisions about truly treating my art as a business, and viewing it through the eyes of a profitable business owner – having come through that knothole, I’ve grown up some and am thankful.
And I’ll have a chance to put the learning from this first show into practice right away. My next ACC Show in St. Paul, MN is only a couple weeks away, on April 11-13. I’ll be in booth #1023 in that show at the St. Paul RiverCentre.
If you’re in the vicinity, I hope you’ll come to the show – I would love to see you! Discounted tickets can be purchased using code: MSP2014GUEST at this link
