These days, I get so annoyed when shopping inside retail stores. Namely, I hate it when the cashier asks if I want to join their rewards program, then they don't take "no" for an answer. They ask several more times, using different rehearsed pitches. They know I don't want it, but are hoping to wear me down. When I finally manage to get my "no" message across, they act like I've hurt their feelings. Well truthfully, I probably barked "NO" somewhat rudely at that point. But if they had accepted my first "no" I wouldn't be so triggered. In interpersonal relationships, this behavior is considered abusive. Why is it ok for a business to do it? It shouldn't be, but in these times it has become normalized.

And I hate it when I am shopping online, and uncheck the box that says "send me updates and marketing messages," but that retailer adds me to their mailing list anyways. The anti-spam law in the US makes it legal for them to do this. Fine. But then why put that check box on their shopping cart at all, when they are just pretending to ask for permission? Again, in interpersonal relationships, this would be considered extremely flaky. But sadly, it's normalized when it comes to online retail. 

I'm certain there are "marketing consultants" teaching these "best practice" behaviors to retailers. I wonder if those who do this are actually making more money? Or are they doing it because they are struggling? It conveys a sense of desperation for sure. Is it worth the cost of creating an uncomfortable environment for their customers and employees? I now boycott stores where this treatment was particularly bad, such as Staples, Ulta, and Old Navy. 

Yes, a customer's email address is a valuable asset. But obtaining them via harassment and trickery seems like a counterproductive approach. Even if you succeed in growing your email list that way, you are only gaining low-value contacts, who are just marginally interested in your work. It's also totally unnecessary. I put an email list signup pad in my booth, but never refer customers to it. I still get plenty of signups at every show. My list might grow faster if I was prompting people to do it. But a person who signs up purely on their own motivation is an extremely valuable contact! I want my list to contain only these high-value contacts. I am interested in long-term value, not short-term gain. If I notice somebody signing up, I will say "Oh, thank you! You'll get an email from me every time I do a show. It's usually about ten per year." I want to convey that I know they did me a favor, and exactly how I plan to use their address. 

In the pottery business, I believe that your ability to turn "customers" into a "repeat customers" will determine whether your business will survive. "Customer experience" is just as important as the quality of your pots. The people who are willing to buy handmade pottery is a tiny subculture. You can't afford to annoy them, because replacing them is much harder for us, compared to retailers selling mass-produced clothing, makeup, or office supplies. I would never want a customer to walk away from my booth thinking "well, that was triggering." I want my customers to leave feeling buzzed and happy. If they don't, they will not come back, no matter how much they like the pottery.

My payment processor, Square, recently developed a new feature that allows me to send marketing messages to anyone who has made a credit card payment to me. I know that legally I am allowed to do this, but I won't. Even though these people have made a previous purchase, they did not intentionally "opt in" to receive further communications from me. I will not cross that line. 

In the early days of developing my online pottery school, I realized that I shouldn't send school announcements to the subscribers of my main mailing list. Those people signed up for art festival announcements, not for a pottery school's announcements. So I started from scratch with a separate mailing list for the school. Some of my videos are now available on a subscription basis, which I think is a better value for most people, compared to renting the videos one at a time. I know it is common practice for those who offer subscription services to try their darnedest to stop their customers from unsubscribing, even sinking as low as feigned incompetence. I will never do that! When a student asks for help with unsubscribing, I send them clear instructions for unsubscribing. I have no interest in harvesting money that someone doesn't intend to spend. Recently, Vimeo (where my videos are hosted) made a mistake (accidentally on purpose?) that sort-of tricked its users into not unsubscribing. I was pretty mad about that, and sent all of the school's email subscribers a heads-up, describing what the issue was, and making sure they knew how to unsubscribe. 

Am I hurting myself by not following what are now considered "normal" retail tactics? Apparently not. My business survived 1.5 years of pandemic shutdowns with no pain. And now that shows are back in person, I have been selling much better than before the pandemic. At a recent show, I literally sold every single pot. This is due to the strength of my high-value mailing list, that I acquired on a slow basis, prioritizing quality over quantity. By viewing customers as real people with real boundaries, not as credit cards with legs. I have maxed out all of my goals for this business, and I didn't have to trick or harass anyone to achieve this. If I had, I believe I would have a lot fewer repeat customers, and I would be unhappy with myself for making people feel obligated or deceived. That buzzed and happy feeling is not just for customers, I want that reward too. 

I've heard other artists say that their customers do not use their email list sign up pad, unless they are prompted. I have lots of thoughts on why some artists experience this. My high-value email list did not materialize simply because I DON'T ask people for their email addresses. There are many other factors in play. I am planning to write another blog post about all of these factors, which will hopefully make these modern retail practices seem really cheesy. 

I am currently taking another break from work. Yes, that's two in one year, and it's only May. I am consciously trying to cut back on working, in order to not neglect the rest of my life. This is one positive outcome of the pandemic for me. Being forced to slow down, then realizing how much happier I am when I am not staring at a long list of things I haven't gotten around to. 

This break was mostly planned so my alter ego "Harriet Homeowner" could come for another visit, before the weather got too hot for an outdoor project. Harriet's shed is now 19 years old, and its roof was totally shot. Over the winter, she was shopping for a new shed. But aside from the roof, the rest of the shed was still in decent shape, so she considered hiring a roofer to just replace the roof. While researching whether that was possible, she watched a lot of YouTube videos on replacing a shed roof. Which led her to decide to try to do the job herself. 

This is way more construction than I had ever attempted. What would be the worst possible outcome? I would be out a few hundred dollars, before buying a new shed anyways. Or, I might fall off the roof, but from that height I wouldn't be too badly hurt. I certainly wouldn't die. What would be the best possible outcome? I would save about $5000 by not buying a new shed. 

Here's a "before" photo of the shed. You can't really see the roof damage from the front. The damage is visible from the back, and from inside. However, the entire shed was very dirty! That's 19 years of dirt, moss, algae, mold, etc. So I started the whole project by renting a pressure washer. 

The guy at Home Depot expressed doubt that an electric pressure washer could clean a shed. But the gas models were not an option for me, because they were too heavy to lift into my car. It turned out the dirt was very soft, and the electric model did the trick. I was soaking wet and covered in shed crud. Having never used a pressure washer before, I admit it was kind of fun. 

This is one of two major faults with the old roof. There were dozens of staples that were in the wrong place, where they were NOT covered up by the next row of shingles. Whenever I noticed a small leak from inside, I would climb up a ladder and always find one of these visible staples. If I caught the leak early enough, a blob of caulk would solve the problem. 

And this is the second major fault with the old roof. The shingles were installed directly onto the wood decking, without any underlayment in between. 

A few winters ago, several shingles were blown off the roof in a storm. They were on the back of the roof, so not visible from the house. And because it was winter, I did not visit the shed again for a few months. And because there was no underlayment layer, there was no backup protection for the missing shingles. By the time I discovered the problem, it was really bad. 

I nailed on some new shingles, but because the wood was already warped and spongy, the new shingles were not watertight, and this spot continued to leak. The damage to the wood got worse and worse.

This is the only tool I needed to buy for this project: a small $10 shingle remover. (I like anything that is orange because I'm an Orioles fan.) The only other tools required were simple hand tools that I already owned.

Once all of the shingles were off, I had to decide how much of the decking I was going to replace. I wanted to save money and labor, and to generate as little trash as possible. I decided to keep anything with only minor water damage, if it felt solid enough to hold new nails. The major area of damage was only on one piece of wood, so that is the only one I replaced. 

After getting this onto the ground, I took its measurements to Home Depot, and had them cut the new pieces for me. Instead of one 3x8' piece, I had them cut two 3x4' pieces instead, so it would be easier for me to carry them up a ladder. 

After getting the new pieces of wood in place, I installed a proper underlayment. (Big thanks to Dave and Emily who gave me the tar paper left over from their own shed project.) I marked the areas with minor water damage, so I could avoid nailing into those spots as much as possible.

This is where I left things at the end of Day 2: shingles removed, rotten wood removed and replaced, underlayment installed, and all the old shingles and trash picked up. BTW, the drip edge from the original roof was in good shape, so I re-used it. 

The third and last day of the project was for installing the new shingles. To the professional roofer on YouTube who replaced an entire shed roof from start to finish in two hours: SLOW CLAP. For me the shingling alone took over seven hours. Granted I was using a hammer instead of a nail gun, but still I think I spent too much time trying to line things up. Much respect to the real experts!

Total cost of the project: $359. After three days of work, Harriet is triumphant! Today, she is hobbling around on sore muscles, and nursing various blisters, scrapes, and bruises. But she is very proud of the fact that she didn't fall off the roof. And she never hammered her thumb, not even once. 

It is now over two years since the pandemic first started shutting down our lives. The virus is still around, but the situation has evolved to where the healthcare systems are not overwhelmed. Art fairs and craft shows have been back since last fall. I still wear a mask when I am in indoor public spaces. And I take an at-home Covid test a few days after I’ve done a show (all negative so far). It’s worth taking these easy precautions, in exchange for being able to run my business using my preferred format again. 

I was forced to make one big change. My claybody was a mixture of two clays, and one of them became very difficult to buy, due to supply shortages caused by the pandemic. My clay was still being produced, but the manufacturer could not produce several of their more popular clays, and therefore they would not make any shipments to my local supplier. Last fall, while I was still hopeful that the supply issues would be solved quickly, I had the manufacturer mail me 100 pounds of clay, just to tide me over for a few weeks. The postage cost as much as the clay. 

When I posted this photo on Instagram, someone commented “Pre-wedged via the USPS!” Ha ha, yeah, the texture was great, after apparently getting dropped many times. It soon became clear that the shortage would not be resolved quickly. I calculated exactly how much clay I would need to get through the rest of 2021, and had the manufacturer send it to me via a freight shipment. The freight shipment was a little more expensive than USPS flat rate shipping. But as you can see, USPS beats up the boxes pretty hard. The manufacturer did not want to send 400 pounds through the mail. 

When this shipment arrived, I could finally exhale. This was very stressful, all the uncertainty and the extra expense. The situation wasn’t over, I had a big decision to make. Should I stick with a clay whose manufacturer was having serious problems? They weren’t alone, other clay brands were having shortages too. There is one that wasn’t, and they have a clay that is very similar. They sent me a sample so I could start testing it. This takes a few months and a lot of test tiles. I had to figure out how to mix it with my other clay. Was the ratio the same or different? I had to figure out how to fire it. It turns out it needs to be fired a little hotter. The new clay is a slightly different color. A little less red and a little more yellow. It also has no speckles, which is a feature I never thought much about in my old clay. But once they were missing, I realized how much I needed them! I solved this by buying some granular manganese, and adding back the speckles. That involved a whole new round of tests, to figure out how to mix in the speckles, and how much. 

The right amount of speckles for me is between 0.1% and 0.2%. Many thanks to the Digital Fire website for clear guidance on adding granular manganese to a claybody. 

So I had my speckles back and the glazes fluxing (almost) the same as before. I was still nervous about the color being slightly different. Would customers notice? Or care? It turned out I was way too close to the situation to be able to judge that clearly. I made over 450 pots for my first two shows of 2022, using the new clay. I sold all but five of them. I guess the slight difference in color is something only I can see. (Or it’s just in my head.)

Going forward, it’s possible I will switch back to the old clay, if the supply problems get worked out. The new clay does not present a shortage problem, but it does require a special order through my local supplier, which takes some lead time. (btw, my local supplier, Clayworks Supplies in Baltimore, was really awesome to work with through all of these tribulations. No doubt they were going the extra mile for countless other customers too.) Mixing in the manganese speckles also takes some extra work. So the old clay is more efficient, but only if it’s available. The way I see it, I have two good options now, which provides some insurance during times when supply chains are unstable.