If you have read Part 1 of this series, hopefully you have marked your calendars with shows you plan to visit in the next 12 months. Before you apply for them, right? Good. Now don’t get discouraged by what I say next … getting yourself juried into a “good show” does not equal instant success. It’s just the first step. Even at good shows, there are plenty of artists who are bombing. There are still many factors to consider. This post is about some factors that can be managed through good planning and objective analysis. The recurring theme of everything takes time will be apparent again. 

(side note: I got a lot of great feedback for my last post, publicly and privately. In the few instances where someone thought my advice was not applicable to themselves, I noticed that they ignored the everything takes time theme.)


Part 2: Inventory and Pricing

In my last post, I mentioned a show that was 3-days long, where I grossed $9000 in sales. I have done this show for the last three years. I grossed $5200 in 2013 (which thrilled me at the time), then $7700 in 2014, and $9000 in 2015. The show was essentially the same for these three years, so why the steady increase in sales for me? Because the beginning of 2013 is when I started using an inventory tracking system. I suppose a business school professor would call it basic market analysis. It’s not that complicated, the tools required for this system are a spiral notebook and a pen. 

Years ago I would make a written list of my inventory before each show. This was not in a proactive planning way, it was just so I knew how much work I had. This was the beginning of my system, but as the years went by it grew more robust, and my attitude switched around completely. Now, I am not just recording how much work I made, past-tense. Instead, I decide far in advance how much work I need for a particular show, plan my production schedule to meet those needs, then write down the inventory list before each show to make sure I’ve met my target. And here’s what I started doing in 2013 that turned this into a complete system: At the end of every show, before I start packing down, I make a list of the leftover pots. 

Here are my spiral notebook pages from the $9000 show. These are the pots I packed:

And these are the pots I brought home afterwards:

If you were scratching your head at my above statement “I decide far in advance how much work I need for a particular show” here is the explanation. The “before” and “after” lists that I am accumulating over time are telling me the answers. Sales patterns become clear. Bring more of this, less of that, stay steady with this, eliminate that altogether. I use all of the lists together to see general trends. And when planning for a specific show, I will study the lists for that show from the previous year for guidance. 

Here’s a specific example: In 2013, I packed only 12 mugs (which seems so clueless to me now) for the show that I’m using as an example here. Based on sales, I increased the mug inventory every year. In 2015, I packed 27 mugs, and brought home 3. At $35 per mug, that’s an additional $420 in sales, just in mugs alone. 

Everything takes time, because when you start doing this, you can only make broad guesses. That’s ok. Once I started really paying attention to this, I did maybe 20 shows before I started to feel some clarity. And I am not done with this process. It is an ongoing slow march of improvement. 

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Now on to the subject of pricing. I know this is a subject that new sellers find confusing and distressing. It’s not supposed to be easy, and there is no “formula.” Just like inventory planning, proper pricing can be figured out over time. 

When I am offering a new design for sale for the first time, it will start out with a low “prototype” price. If sales are poor, the item will be eliminated (hey I thought an individual pie dish was a great idea, nobody else agreed). If it sells well, then it will go through a feeling-out process to arrive at the right price. I will keep inching up the price, sometimes even raising the price in the middle of the show. In my experience, sales will screech to a halt when I’ve overshot the right price. Even by a few dollars, it’s funny how sales will stop cold. When I notice that happening, I will back the price down to the last price that sold well, and call that the “sweet spot.” This process takes several shows, sometimes up to a year. 

If a new design makes it this far, then it progresses onto another level of analysis. Does the “sweet spot” price match the amount of material, labor, and kiln space that this item consumes? Sometimes the answer is “no,” and therefore the item is dropped, even if it’s a good seller. An example of this is my now discontinued Personal Teapot. It’s “sweet spot” was $48, but that was not enough to make its complicated production worthwhile (the pot consisted of three parts that had to fit together, and one of them was prone to breaking).

Once a new item has made it through all of this vetting, and officially added to my inventory, that doesn’t mean its price is carved in stone. I am always open to tweaking the prices. In fact, the system that I use for inventory planning is also how I make ongoing decisions about pricing. When I notice trends in sales, my first reaction is to “pack more” or “pack less.” But sometimes “charge more” or “charge less” is the better choice. For example, my dinner plates were always selling out. But plates are hard to stack into a kiln, and I did not want to dedicate more kiln space for these. Therefore, producing more was not a attractive option, and prices went up instead. 

Are you getting the sense of how long this takes? Just like with inventory planning, it’s ok that you can only make broad guesses at first. WIth time and experience, the answers become clear. 

My final point about pricing … everyone has the right to choose their own prices. Respect that boundary, and defend your own. Don’t let anyone tell you that your prices affect other potters. This is complete baloney. Why? Because pottery customers are not shallow people. They shop based on quality and appeal, not by price. When I am figuring out the “sweet spot” prices for my work, I am not figuring out “the going price of mugs in general” but rather I am determining “the appeal value of my mug.” If I’ve done it correctly, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter if a nearby potter is charging half as much for the same item. Conversely, if my mugs are cheaper than a nearby potter’s mugs, I know that I am not affecting that person’s sales, as long as they have figured out the correct appeal value of their mugs. (And if they have misjudged their appeal value, that’s not my fault.) So don’t spend a minute worrying about anyone else’s prices. It’s much more productive to worry about making the most appealing pots you can. 

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I combined inventory and pricing into one blog post because these two subjects are two halves of the same thing, otherwise known as a line of work. You’ve probably noticed by now that I don’t make random pottery designs, pack a random inventory, slap on random prices, and shrug my shoulders at the results. I don’t really make individual pots at all. I make a line of pots, which includes about 40 different designs and their “sweet spot” prices. The designs and the prices are developed over a long time. It’s rare for me to make changes to my line, and these decisions are made with a great deal of analysis and proof. All of this time, effort, and commitment means that I show up for every festival with a booth full of proven good sellers, all priced correctly. 

I'm not going to pretend that I don't miss teaching. I miss the regular contact with other potters, and I miss the process of teaching. However, in the time since I gave up my teaching gig, my studio schedule has evolved in ways that make teaching a weekly class or two even less realistic. But why should that stop me? I am looking for other ways to include teaching in my business plan, that make sense for me time-wise. Using my own studio as a classroom has always been a possibility, because it means I can control the time requirements.

Some of my former students had asked me to teach them about glazemaking. I see this as a common issue for potters who have come up through a community studio program. Glazemaking is not taught in these studios. For good reason, the results could be disastrous. But when someone becomes interested in establishing their own studio at home, they find that glazemaking is an intimidating hurdle. 

This summer, I developed a glazemaking workshop designed for this type of potter. The workshop covered all the basics: how to buy and store the raw materials, how to mix small test batches, how to mix full-size buckets, and how to develop new recipes. The workshop met for three Saturdays in June. Then I held another session on three Saturdays in August, because there was more interest in the class than I expected. 

Everyone learned a quick method for making proper test tiles. 

They each picked a glaze recipe to start with, then they made two test-size variations of the same recipe. 

The batches were sieved ...

... then poured into a six-step line blend. The test tiles were numbered and dipped into all six samples.

It was a lot of work!

And here are the fired results. As you can see, everyone did a very detailed and thorough job of measuring and mixing.

A simple line blend is the basic building block for developing new recipes. With this experience, these students can continue to test new recipe ideas on their own. They spent a lot of time analyzing and discussing each other's test tiles, from which they gained a lot of materials knowledge. How does this oxide/opacifier/flux affect the result? They have a lot of exploration ahead of them, but they know how to find information about raw materials, and how to test their ideas. Plus, you can't learn how to do a line blend without becoming comfortable with measuring and sieving glazes, so they can start working with known recipes right away. 

To potters in the Washington, DC area: If you are interested in taking this glazemaking workshop, leave a comment here to express your interest. Or use the Contact Form on this website. If there is enough interest, I will hold the workshop again in the spring of 2016.

To potters everywhere: I am also planning to develop a series of wheel-throwing instructional videos. I have lots of great projects that I taught to my students over the years, that I'd like to share with the world in video format. I think this is another gaping need in adult pottery education ... the number of student throwers who want some expert instruction, but don't have access to it. I think I can fill this need. If you think you'd be interested in these, leave a comment here, or use the Contact Form to let me know.