Ugh, I caught a cold at the ACC Baltimore Show. I started feeling mildly ill on Sunday, the last day. When I woke up on Monday, there was no doubt. I've been slogging around since, generating small mountains of used tissues. I guess it's no wonder, given the super-dry air of the convention center, and the number of people there. Today is Wednesday, and I'm starting to feel better. I managed to unpack my car, and start writing this blog post. 

As many of you know, ACC Baltimore is two different shows. The first two days are for wholesale to trade buyers only, followed by three days of retail sales to the public. I did this combination show once before in 2007. Back then, I was brand new to wholesale. I set up one display and used it for both shows. In other words, I considered all of my pots to be available to wholesale buyers. Now it's six years later, since then I built up the wholesale side of my business at the Buyers Market trade show, then reached a point where I realized I needed to shrink that part of my business, before it swallowed me whole. 

Last year, I took a break from all wholesale shows, while I tried to figure out a smarter way to proceed. I wanted to make my wholesale business more efficient, but still profitable. My new ideas sprouted last August. I received several new orders that month (this is the time of year when galleries place orders for their holiday season), and one of them stood out. It was the largest order in terms of dollar amount, but as I read down the purchase order I thought "piece of cake" because the order consisted mostly of dinner plates. My dinner plates are not wheel-thrown; they are hand-built out of clay slabs, using templates and molds. They are far more efficient to produce than anything wheel-thrown. In fact, someday I ought to do an Hourly Earnings calculation comparing my hand-built dinner plates to wheel-thrown pots. I bet it would show a significant difference. So in the months that followed, my wholesale line was reconceived around this idea. It is now focused mostly on hand-built dinnerware, with very few wheel-thrown pieces. I've also included my upscale line of oversized, carved serving pieces and vases. Because as my Hourly Earnings Project revealed, this segment of my work has always been worth wholesaling. Here is my wholesale display from the ACC Show:

Pretty sparse, huh? In past years, when I was deciding what to include in my wholesale lineup, I would keep adding more and more pots, thinking "somebody might want this." But I am no longer trying to guess what everybody might want, instead I am focusing on what I know I want, what makes the most sense for me. And here's another insecurity that I've overcome ... I've known for years that my hand-built plates were more efficient to produce. I tried not to place too much emphasis on those pieces because I wanted to be known as a wheel-thrower. These days, I feel confident that everyone knows I'm an excellent thrower, and no longer feel like I need to prove it. I was very satisfied with the amount of orders I took. I am on track to increase my wholesale gross this year, but doing so with a far more efficient use of my time.

So the reason I chose the ACC wholesale show over the Buyers Market is because of the retail show that follows. While I'm trying to streamline my wholesale business, I want to grow my retail business as much as possible. In between the two shows, I added a whole lot more shelving to my display, and a whole lot more pots, including the entire spectrum of my wheel-thrown work:

If you look in the lower right corner of this photo, you'll see that I am trying to grow my dinnerware sales in my retail business too. This is by far the most stock of dinnerware I've ever prepared for a show. I'm happy to report they sold great, along with just about everything else. Of the eight boxes I packed for the show, five of them came back empty. Hell yes. Despite catching a cold, the show was totally worth it! 

Looking forward now, there are two items that I think I need before I can expand the business further: a second kiln, and a larger vehicle.

I did manage to get all of the pottery boxes in my car. My wholesale display is setup and ready to go for tomorrow. I hope you are planning to visit this great show! Find complete show details at http://shows.craftcouncil.org/baltimore. And preview the work I'll have during the retail portion of the show (Friday thru Sunday) on the Recent Work page of this website. It will include my updated Square Dinnerware (below), a few more new designs, plus lots of old favorites.

I've got eight tightly packed boxes of pottery for the ACC show. For an average two-day festival I will pack four boxes. The most I've ever packed for a show before was six boxes. Will they all fit in my car? If I truly cannot make them fit, I live close enough to Baltimore to make two trips. After all, I only need my wholesale lineup for the first days of the show, which is only two out of these eight boxes. 

My wholesale display and my retail display are going to be completely different. If you follow this blog, you know that my feelings about wholesaling are very complicated. After six years of doing it, I realize that wholesaling is vital to a solid business plan. In fact, becoming a wholesaler is what took my business over the crest of the "earning a living" climb. But I also know it's possible to overload myself with wholesale work. It's a tricky balance. Last year, my wholesale strategy was to skip all of the trade shows, focus on growing my art festival capacity, and see exactly how much wholesale income I really need. This year, I'm back at a trade show, ready to meet new galleries again. But with some major changes to my wholesale lineup, and a clearer perspective on my needs and limits. 

After the show, I'll post pictures of my wholesale and retail display, and explain what I've done. 

I made new curtain walls for my pottery booth, which I will use at the ACC Baltimore show for the first time. My existing curtain walls were just fine, except that they weren't fire retardant. There are a lot of show venues, including the Baltimore Convention Center, where all of your booth materials must meet fire code standards. The exhibitor manual for this show literally says that a fire inspector is allowed to try to set your booth on fire, just to make sure they can't. The first time I did the ACC Baltimore show, back in 2007, I bought a gallon of fire retardant chemicals and treated all the fabrics in my booth. By the end of the show, my throat was burning from the harsh smell of the chemicals, and I was pretty sure I had shortened my life span by a little. I also never caught whiff of any fire inspectors. So since then, I've been doing shows with untreated fabric curtains, and just crossing my fingers that the fire inspectors wouldn't notice me. But not anymore. I found an affordable, white fabric from Rose Brand, a company that sells theatre backdrop supplies. It is made of fibers that are inherently fire retardant, rather than chemically treated. It doesn't smell like anything, and this also means I can wash and dry it without affecting the fire retardancy. Now I'm hoping a fire inspector will visit me!

Also, notice the name I applied to the backdrop. The name of my company is still Good Elephant Pottery, but from now on I'm going to use this shorter version whenever it makes sense. Such as when someone is standing inside my booth at any show, I think the word "pottery" will go without saying. 

I think it's been about three years since I last made a major change to my web look. It was time, and the new look fits with some new directions that I am planning to take the business starting this year. I'm still using Weebly and loving it. Though right now I'm feeling grateful for my brilliant dad, who insisted on teaching me HTML back when I was starting my graphic design business years ago. This allowed me make a Weebly template look totally custom. I hope you like it!