good elephant pottery

Summer Solstice

6/16/2021

Happy Summer Solstice! This is my favorite time of the year, when the days are as long as possible. I realized I need to post some updates as I head into the summer season.

Firstly, a report on how the book bindery sale went back in February. I went into it hoping to sell about 30 books, and I ended up selling 89! It was very different from a pottery sale on many fronts. I did not need to stock up on inventory in advance, because books can be made on demand, one at a time. Unlike pottery where it takes a few weeks to finish a pot, and it takes a kilnful of pots to make the kiln worth firing. The books were made to order, without needing to anticipate in advance which items would be popular or not. Whereas the pottery business involves so much analysis to predict inventory needs before every sale. My stated goal was to ship every order within 2 days, but that proved to be impossible. As soon as the store opened I got flooded with orders, and it took me four days to finish the initial rush of orders. After the first day, the pace of new orders slowed down, to a point where I could definitely ship everything in two days. But now I know I need to plan for a big rush at first.

Speaking of shipping, it is so easy to ship books! They are flat and not fragile. The only packaging involved were cardboard mailers, which are recycled and recyclable. It actually makes good sense to sell books this way. Unlike pottery where shipping really doesn't make sense.

The process of making books is also different from pottery. After spending those first four days making books for 8 hours per day, I did not have a single sore muscle or body ache. I did learn, however, that I cannot listen to audiobooks while making books. I needed my concentration to avoid mistakes with measuring, cutting, or sewing. Hopefully that will change as I gain more experience with it.

My plans for this summer is to do one more book bindery sale in late July or early August. I was really happy with the designs I sold in February, and some of them will get small upgrades for the next sale. I'm hoping to develop a design for a weekly planner later this year, which will be available around the holidays. It will be based on the weekly planners I used when I was a graphic designer. I don't really need them anymore as a potter, but they will be well-suited for anyone with a desk job.

And now for a solstice update on the pottery studio. After the book bindery sale, I went back to making pottery. I had a list of requests to follow up on after the Holiday Sale. I am blessed to have customers who were willing to wait 3 months for their pots. Then I held another "Small Pots Only" online sale in April, and one more "Free Home Delivery" sale for local customers in May. I admit that I am shocked that this format still worked after a whole year! Pottery customers are an exceptional class of people.

Going forward, I will do another "Free Home Delivery" sale for the State College, PA region, in conjunction with the Virtual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, from July 8-11. (I will write a separate blog post with more details.) I'm preparing a large inventory for this show. When I get home from making these deliveries, I will put any remaining pots for sale online, for customers anywhere in the US. That's right, I will mark the end of the pandemic by doing one last big online sale, and not just with small pots. (I'll make a separate blog post about this as well, with all the details, when it gets closer.) As much as I hate to ship pottery, I do need to show gratitude for those who bought my pots online when art festivals were not available. Just to be clear, this will be the last time I ship pottery. Of course, I reserve the right the eat my words if the pandemic takes a different turn. But right now, it looks like art festivals and craft shows will be back in the fall, and I will return to my "no shipping" policy.

As for the fall, I have been accepted into two nice shows, though still waiting for confirmation that these events will be allowed to take place. Things look optimistic. I have applied for two more shows. So I am hoping to have four shows total on the schedule. And I am planning a Holiday Open Studio, just like the ones from before the pandemic. Details will be posted on this website as soon as they are confirmed!

Again, I hope you enjoy the warmth and the long hours of daylight! It's been a very strange year, and we should be proud of ourselves for making it through. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things continue to go smoothly. Oh by the way, keep your fingers crossed for me, because tomorrow I am belatedly celebrating my 50th birthday by doing something exciting and scary. I'll report back when it's over.

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Temporarily known as ...

2/22/2021

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For a limited time, Good Elephant Pottery is becoming ...

Good Elephant Books!

Offering hand-bound, archival quality books, in a small number of designs. All books will be made to order. My goal is to ship every order within 48 hours, volume permitting. If your order will take more than 48 hours to ship, I will keep you posted via email. Allow 2 to 7 days for transit time after shipment. Orders will travel by USPS for a $5 flat rate shipping fee. I am shipping to US addresses only.

Because the books are made to order, items will not go out of stock, unless I run out of cover cloth materials. The larger books (journals and ledgers) may run out of some cover color options. I don't expect the smaller books to run out of materials.

This is totally different from a pottery sale. With pottery, I need to build up a big inventory before the sale, trying to calculate in advance what folks will want to buy, and items sell out quickly. This is refreshingly simpler! What makes it simpler is that a book takes less than 24 hours to produce, and it's possible to make just one. Whereas a piece of pottery takes weeks, and I can't finish it unless I have a kilnful of other pots to fire.

This store will accept book orders for a few weeks, until I go back to work in the pottery studio. Or, until all materials are depleted, which I don't anticipate happening.

More book sales will happen in the future, this is just the first.

Start shopping at goodelephantpottery.square.site

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A Series of Compounding Goals

2/2/2021

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This is a blog post I conceived of over 1.5 years ago, when I opened the above fortune cookie. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet when the world’s collective consciousness was bulldozed over by the pandemic. And also the 2020 election. So I back burnered it until now. I am currently taking an extended winter break from the studio, the likes of which I have always wanted to do. The ACC Baltimore Show, which is usually held in late February, meant that I had to go back to production right after the holidays. But the 2021 show was cancelled.

I had been on the fence about not applying for the show anyways, because I just surpassed a big “round number” birthday, and I was going to celebrate by skipping the show and taking a long trip to a warm location. Those plans went out the window with Covid. And skipping the show was decided for me. So here I am, staying safe at home, enjoying the free time.

“Harriet” came for another visit, and she painted my kitchen. This was another case of me choosing a non-neutral paint color years ago, then growing tired of it. I also fixed some old water damage on the ceiling. The color of the cabinets is so much prettier against a neutral background. I can’t believe I even considered painting the cabinets too, because I didn’t quite like their color. Boy would that have been a mistake! Phew. The old, too-dim fluorescent light fixture with the plastic cover had to go! The new one is glass and metal, and a blazing 3300 lumens bright. And I found a wall shelf unit that fits perfectly into a wall space that I wasn’t really using effectively before. Now I can display my favorite cups and mugs.

Ok, back to the subject of this blog post. This is about the path I took from being a recent college graduate with a design degree, to being a full-time potter, who makes a secure living, and made it to the top of the craft world in the US. This is more than simply a financial or business accomplishment. What I am most proud of is that, along the way, I discovered my values and priorities as an artist, and as a human. I get to live according to my values, one of which is that I have gained leverage over my whole life. It’s a path that is now almost 30 years long and still going. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this month, when I’ve had so much space and time to think. Sometimes I think people see me working as a potter, but they don't see what it took to get here. This is why so many start up pottery studios think they will have it all figured out within months, or maybe a year or two, and end up feeling like failures. And why such a small percentage will make it to full-time status. And a large percentage will opt for the part-time “side gig” option, which there is nothing wrong with (many years of my own path were spent in this mode).

From my perspective, there is an enormous, almost unfathomable gulf between Point A and Point B. When the hypothetical question is asked, would you want to go back to being 21 again? My answer is “not even a little bit.” I’d much rather be where I am now, and do you know how much hard labor I’d have to do again?

How I traversed this gulf can be broken down into steps. I always had a working goal. As soon as I met a goal, I had a new one. The goals got bigger as I went along, because goals can compound (just like money). Every goal you accomplish gives you the leverage and wherewithal to aim for something more ambitious and important.

“It’s about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get … who you are for who you might become … it’s about letting go.” – Peter Gabriel

Goal 1. I want to have a full-time job. As I was about to graduate from college, I already had a full-time job lined up, as a graphic designer. So that didn’t take long. Except that I was immature, got frustrated with this job, and quit before lining up a new one. I was unemployed for about two months. The next job turned out to be worse than the one I quit! Lesson learned. This time I was smart enough to find a new job before quitting. The third job was much better, stable but still very frustrating in some ways.

Goal 2. I want to have a job in downtown DC. I’m not sure why this was so important to me, somehow I equated this with real adulthood. But anyways, my next job involved taking the subway right into the heart of DC. I loved that part. The job was much better than any of my previous jobs. I learned and grew a lot.

Goal 3. I want to be a freelance designer. At this job, I was one of two in-house designers. The company also hired design firms sometimes, so I got a close view of the differences. It was clear how advantageous it was to be a separate entity from your clients. You own all of your copyrights, and you get paid much better, as long as you can handle the additional responsibilities, and the risk of not having a regular paycheck and benefits. I’m lucky I had a terrific boss there (thanks Jeanne!) who didn’t mind that I was freelancing in my free time. I spent about two years doing freelance work on weekends, evenings, and early mornings, until my freelancing income grew to a real income. At that point, I made the first big, calculated risk of my life.

Goal 4. I want to own a house. This goal arose quickly after I began freelancing full-time. I was living in a small one-bedroom apartment. When it became both my home and my office, and I was there seven days a week, it suddenly felt impossibly tiny. So I bought a cheap fixer upper in the first year of my self-employment. This was my second big, calculated risk. I had to jump through a lot of extra hoops, given that I was newly self-employed. I had an awesome mortgage broker who guided me safely through the process (thanks Joe!).

I had started taking recreational pottery classes at a community center about two years after college. It was purely a hobby, and none of my Goals 1 through 4 had pottery in mind at all. I had begun to sell my work occasionally at student-level events, but I did not yet see it as a career path.

Goal 5. I want my sell my pottery at more serious events. My freelance design practice was now established and running smoothly. I started doing pottery sales at small community events, sharing a booth with a few of my studio mates. It seemed easier to work in a group when you have never done something like this. Safety in numbers, right? No, it’s a fallacy. Some of these were fine, and some of them were kind-of a nightmare. It was always cumbersome to juggle everyone’s needs and logistics, and put together an attractive display with many different styles of work. So I started applying for shows by myself. Didn’t always get invited, given the quality of my work then. But doing shows by myself was a big step forward. This inevitably led to ….

Goal 6. I want my own pottery studio. I had outgrown my community center studio … artistically, socially, and business-wise. But I was conflicted and nervous about working all by myself. I had never mixed glazes before, or fired my own kiln. I was teaching computer graphics classes at a local college, and was chatting with a colleague there about my fork in the road. He said “if you do that you can have my kiln.” SAY WHAT?!? He said that his mom had bought a kiln 20 years earlier, but never fired it. He had moved with it several times, and was thrilled to give it away. I took it as a sign. (thanks Pepe!) I cleared out my mostly unused basement, turned it into a studio, and officially launched Good Elephant Pottery, which was meant to be a side-gig to my design business.

Let me make something clear, which a lot of aspiring potters don’t see. Even though I got a kiln for free, which saved me a lot of money, I still spent about $5000 to put together my initial studio. Pottery equipment is expensive. I could not have done this if my design business hadn’t supplied the funds. Nobody wants to say this out loud … this is not for people who are struggling to pay their bills. You need to earn your way into a position of extra cash flow first, before you can indulge in something like a pottery studio. I was 31 years old, ten years out of college, before I could justify this. It was still a big, calculated risk, not knowing if I could figure out how to work by myself, or if the expense would return any income. That was the only time I used design money to pay for pottery things. From that day forward, I financed my pottery studio with pottery sales only.

Buying the house a few years earlier was also an invaluable asset here. You can’t have a pottery studio without start up money, and you can’t do it without space either. It’s extremely messy and there are loads of safety requirements. Generally speaking, you need to own the property where you want to do this. It’s possible to rent a studio space, but that just means you’ll need a lot more money.

Becoming a freelance designer provided another indispensable paving stone for my path as a potter. It taught me how to run a small one-person business. This is another common deficit that aspiring potters face. If you have no experience with this, educate yourself before trying to start a business. I met my trusty accountant right before I made the leap into freelance design work. He is the one who taught me how to run a business, from a bookkeeping and tax accounting standpoint (thanks Paul!), and 25 years later he is still doing my taxes and giving me great advice. “You sold $6000 worth of pottery in one year?” he asked incredulously, but with a big smile, back in the early years. I used to think that was lot of pottery too, and was thrilled that I had impressed him. The pottery business grew steadily every year, taking up a bigger and bigger portion of my time. (These days I make $5000 worth of pottery every 2.5 weeks.)

Goal 7. I want to try working with galleries on a wholesale basis. About 5 years after starting the pottery business, I felt like I had hit a ceiling, doing small and medium shows in my local area. I didn’t understand the wholesale gallery industry very well, and felt that it was somewhat over my head, but I wanted to learn. So I signed up for a trade show to meet the buyers in this sector. I ended up attending trade shows annually for the next five years, and working with galleries for another four years after that. Wholesale work became half of my income. And during these years, my overall pottery income grew to a level that I could support myself with financially.

Attending a trade show (at least back in 2007-2011) costs a minimum of $3000. And that’s only if you live within driving distance of the event. If you need to fly there and ship your goods, then expect to spend up to $5000. Another big, calculated risk. I met good role models for full-time potters at these shows. And some bad ones. Plus, potters who were just breaking even on expenses. And plenty who were losing money. It worked out for me because I had been experiencing good success at local art festivals for years, enough that I had the excess cash to invest, and a track record that indicated that people liked my work.

Goal 8. I want to stop being a designer. By this time, it was clear just how much easier it was to make an income with design than with pottery. It’s just a more valuable skill in our economy. You only need a handful of good clients. With pottery, the production itself is extremely labor intensive, and you need hundreds of customers to buy it, so finding customers also takes a lot more effort. But I was feeling like I did back when I had a full-time design job and was freelancing in all of the other hours of the week. Something had to give. This was the scariest fork in the road I ever faced, because what I was giving up was much more valuable than anything I had given up before. But what I could gain in return was also so much greater! I ended up doing it in stages. I closed down most of my design practice in 2010, but I kept working for one client for three more years. This client only needed me for one big project every year, which would leave the rest of my year for pottery. I had a great working relationship with them (thanks Barb!) and the job always went smoothly. When Barb decided to move to a different job three years later, that was my sign to let go too. And I haven’t done any design work (except for myself) since.

Goal 9. I want a better studio and a bigger car. The year after I stopped doing design work for good, I was hitting another ceiling, which was that I could only produce as fast as one kiln could output. I was also feeling the limits of the cargo capacity in my Subaru station wagon. That year, I made big investments in my infrastructure, a renovated studio with space for a second kiln, and a used minivan. Both the studio and the van have served me well to this day! Once again, I paid for the whole renovation with cash. I mentioned that my initial studio investment was $5000. The renovation cost $17K, plus $3000 for the kiln. This happened 11 years after I launched the studio, which means I made pots in a gross basement for 11 years, and didn’t upgrade it until I had earned it. I did finance the van though, but it has long since been paid off.

Goal 10. I want to stop doing wholesale work. In 2011, right after I had mostly quit doing design work, I managed to put myself on the pottery map with The Hourly Earnings Project. This was a year-long project, where I tracked my working hours and my income, and calculated how much I was actually making as a potter, while comparing various selling formats. I wrote about it on this blog, and then it was picked up as an article in Ceramics Monthly (thanks Sherman!). This project made me realize that selling my work wholesale was a lot less profitable than doing shows. After finishing this project, I stopped attending the trade shows. I continued to work with my existing gallery accounts for four more years. It was another thing that was tough to let go! The people you get to work with in this industry are really wonderful. Think about it … running a successful craft gallery for decades takes people who are incredibly smart, understand both art and business, and are highly well-socialized. (thanks Audrey, Gerry, Paula, David, Sue, Steve, Ruth, Donna, Peg, Betsy, Phyllis, Stephanie, Caroline, John, Shawna, Bill, Bruni, and many others!!)

This is a very important point about doing wholesale work. Although I chose to stop doing it, I am very grateful that I did it. Those nine years provided me with another invaluable asset for a potter … speed! The only way to become fast at production is repetition, and lots of it. I would not be the prolific potter I am today without spending nine years training to be fast. Again, it was during these years that my income grew to a level that would support my life, and my business went from part-time to full-time. I don’t think I would have gotten here without attaining this level of skill.

Goal 11. I want to expand my radius for doing shows, and get into better shows. I had to replace the wholesale income, and The Hourly Earnings Project concluded that shows offer the best return on my time and energy. As favorable as my local area is for having good art festivals, I knew I would be required to travel in order to fill out a full-time schedule. Now armed with a minivan, I became a road warrior. It turns out I love this! It became part of my business plan to visit at least one new city/town every year. I also set my sights on doing all of the national-level craft shows. At that point, I had been in the ACC Baltimore show a few times, but that was the only national-level show I had done. Since then, I have made it to the Smithsonian Craft Show (DC), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) Craft Show, the American Craft Expo (Chicago), and CraftBoston. Shows like Smithsonian and PMA are what I call “the top of the craft mountain.” There really isn’t anything better to aspire to, in my opinion. I’ve had many really fun road trips in addition to these. It’s pretty safe to say that any city or town with a quality art festival is also a nice place to visit.

So that brings me to today, or rather last April, when everything went on pause due to the pandemic. I’ve been keeping the business running in alternative ways, which I’ve written about on this blog. Being separated from art festivals these past nine months made me realize that I have built an amazing audience of customers along the way, who are eager to buy pottery even when there are no festivals. Though I have always preached the importance of this, I never considered audience-building to be a “goal” with a defined finish line, just something that I constantly work on. I am currently feeling much gratitude that I placed so much emphasis on this over the years. And for the people on my mailing list! (thank you, you know who you are!)

So what’s my next goal? Like I said, I feel like there’s nothing better to aspire to within the pottery world. Right now, I’d like to see the end of this pandemic and return to my usual format for working. I do have plans brewing in my head for beyond, though no firm decisions have been made. Like I said earlier, I have gained the leverage to do whatever I want. I will say that all of my potential future goals involve making my life LESS labor intensive.

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Deadly Sin

12/8/2020

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Excuse me for indulging in a little pride. Finished pottery in my studio is usually stored on shelves, organized by item, and stacked tightly to be as space efficient as possible. These are the pots that have already been reserved for my upcoming sale, on tables, and organized by how customers are choosing to put them together. It doesn't look like an inventory monolith today. I can see the pots, as individuals and small groups. As I walked up to these tables this morning, it struck me that my work looks really good! Even when there is this much in one place, it doesn't make my head hurt from over-design or noisiness. I am recalling all of the thought and trial that went into each of these designs. These designs are about concept and function, not noise. And I love how the pieces work together. I am being true to my values. Again, sorry for the pride. This arrangement of the pottery is also making me say to myself "dang, girl, you've been productive!" For those who are waiting to shop the sale when it goes live, don't worry! This is only about one-third of the pots I made for the sale. Lots of nice pots will be in the shop!

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New Pots for This Year's Open Studio

12/7/2020

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The pandemic is partially responsible for these new platter designs. When shutdowns first began, I was watching a lot of Netflix and got hooked on a charming Japanese show called Midnight Diner. The title artwork for this show included pretty patterns that I knew were somehow related to fabric art, but I didn't know much else about them. I tried carving these patterns on some vases earlier this year, and when I posted them to facebook, some of my facebook followers (who are fabric artists) gave me the right term: Sashiko. It is a traditional form of Japanese embroidery that was initially developed to strengthen fabric and make it last longer. Carving these patterns is extremely time consuming! So I tried to develop a method that would be more productive and consistent. I ended up making stencils, cut from roofing felt. The cutting of the stencils was even more time consuming, but now that they're done, hopefully I can use these stencils for a long time.

I embed the stencil into a slab of clay, then brush over them with porcelain slip.

I also needed to make a new styrofoam mold for this 12 inch round platter. (If you are interested in learning this technique, Handbuilding with StyroFoam/Plaster Molds is available in my online pottery school.)

And here's how the finished platters have turned out. (Note: the one on the right is already sold). I am selling them now for an introductory price of $85 each. I'm hoping to sell them for $95 or $100 in the new year.

This next new design is something I've been hoping to develop for several years: a storage jar with a lid that holds a silicone gasket, making the jar airtight. Maybe not 100% airtight, given that the gasket is not being held down with pressure, but it's a lot more airtight than a typical ceramic jar. My intention is for these to be used for loose tea leaves, coffee beans, or spices. I like this design so much that I am keeping one for myself (if you know me, you know that mine is full of coffee beans now). These are being offered now for an introductory price of $48 each.

This last item is not really a new item, just a new variation on an existing form. The 4.5 x 10 inch rectangular trays now come in a "lily of the valley" design, in addition to the existing "cherry blossom" and "ginkgo leaves" designs. They are $38 each. Expect to see lily of the valley carvings on other forms in the coming year.

The holiday sale opens tomorrow, Wednesday December 9, at 12 noon. All of the photos will become visible at 9am, so shoppers have 3 hours to browse and make decisions before the selling begins. The store's URL is https://goodelephantpottery.square.site. Have fun shopping!

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This year's pandemic-safe edition of the Holiday Sale

11/30/2020

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It's not going to be an "Open Studio" this year :-( I will miss having you all in my studio space for shopping. But I will have a holiday-sized inventory of pots available, including seconds. They will all be sold online, where you can shop from the safety of your home. If you already know exactly what you want, send me an email and reserve it!

Online store hours
Store opens on Wednesday December 9, at 12 noon. It will stay open thru Friday evening December 11, or until pots sell out, whichever comes first.

Pick up at my house
On Saturday December 12, from 10am-3pm, you can pick up your purchases at my house, located at 815 Bonifant Street, Silver Spring MD 20910. The pick up station will on the patio behind the house. Masks and social distancing are required! The pots will already be bagged and paid for, so the contact will be very limited. This option is for those who would like to get their pots a little sooner, those who are suffering from cabin fever and need a safe outing, and those who live outside of my delivery zone but are willing to drive to Silver Spring.

Or get a delivery
For those who would rather stay hunkered down, home deliveries will begin on Monday December 14. The delivery zone includes: Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Howard, Baltimore (County and CIty), and Harford Counties in Maryland. Plus Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax Counties in Virginia. And Washington, DC.

There is no charge for either the pick up or delivery options.

Free gift with purchase!
Everybody gets a tiny, refillable bottle of hand sanitizer with a carabiner clip. Keep it on your purse strap or belt loop, for all those times you touch something in public that you're not sure you should have.

Store opens Wednesday, December 9, at 12 noon!
https://goodelephantpottery.square.site

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Welcome to the 2020 Virtual PMA Craft Show

10/26/2020

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Thank you for visiting my website during the 2020 Virtual PMA Craft Show! Please read this quick blog post, or watch the video below, before entering my web store. I will only be taking orders from the Philadelphia area, and your pottery will be hand delivered to your home, with no charge for the delivery. Shipping to other areas is not available during this event.

The following counties are included in my delivery zone:
In Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester
In New Jersey: Mercer, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester

My store will be open for the Preview Night on November 5, from 4pm to 8pm. Click here to buy tickets for Preview Night. The store will open again on November 6 at 9am, and stay open until 9pm on November 8, or until the store sells out, whichever comes first. Shopping on Nov 6-8 is free, but a suggested gift of $10 to the museum is requested. Deliveries will begin on November 10.

Click here to enter my store!

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"Harriet" has been busy.

8/26/2020

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I mentioned this on my blog once before, that whenever I am engaged in DIY home improvement projects, I refer to myself in the third person as "Harriet Homeowner." This summer, I have been working on my house more than I have been making pots. Partly because I am not traveling for shows, and have not needed as many pots. And partly because this is how I deal with chaos, by trying to put my environment into perfect order.

Whenever I complete a project successfully, especially if it's something I wasn't sure I could do by myself, I like to raise both arms in the air and declare "I AM HARRIET."

I'll start with the biggest and most impactful project, though technically does not count as a Harriet project, though she still managed and oversaw the whole thing. I now have what I am unabashedly calling "real f*cking air conditioning." I got a mini-split heat pump system for my whole house. I had been living with window units for 20+ years. The difference in incredible. We've had some prolonged heat waves this summer, and I sailed through them. I plan to keep using my boiler and hot water radiators for heat, but now I have a backup heat system in case the boiler ever needs work.

This was a project I had saved up for last year, and was just waiting for the spring to do it. Then came the pandemic, and I decided to put it on hold, thinking I might need my savings account for other things. As I've been writing about on the blog this summer, I have found other ways to keep my pottery income flowing. So I went ahead with the mini-split.

I had to move everything out of the way for the mini-split contractors to work. Before I put everything back into place, Harriet decided to tackle a project that she had put off for way too long. There was one last room in my house, the smallest bedroom, that had never been painted.

Although it is the smallest bedroom, it gets the best natural light in the house, at all hours of the day. So it is where I take photographs of my pottery. It also gets used to store miscellany. Before I put everything back, I purged out a bunch of the stored stuff.

The paint for the above room was free, because I had a whole can leftover from when I painted my office a few years ago, which is right next to the above room. When I was done, I had a quarter can left, and I started thinking about the guest room, which is on the other side of this room. I had painted the guest room yellow about ten years ago, and I was tired of the color. So I went out a bought another gallon of this paint, and painted the guest room too.

The walls in the guest room went from yellow to gray, which means I did not need to replace the yellow and gray curtains. Harriet was pleased with that. Now all three rooms in this area of the house (office, photo room, guest room) are all the same color.

My house was full of bad light fixtures. Old, worn-out looking, and builder grade. I spent a lot of time shopping for new ones. I tend to prefer modern designs, but my house is 85 years old. I tried to walk the line between "clean and simple" and "1930s appropriate."

All of the light switch and outlet cover plates on the first floor of my house had been painted over many times. I swear I wasn't the first one to do it! But I admit I did it too during previous painting projects. Harriet said "enough!" The switches and outlets themselves were so dingy, and many of the outlets were so loose, plugs would fall out of them.

They have all been replaced, with new components that match the ones on the second floor of my house, which was completely renovated last fall. I even installed a nifty dimmer switch for the dining room (which can now accommodate either a sewing project or a fancy dinner) and a combination GFCI outlet/light switch for the bathroom. All of the old outlets were two-prong outlets. I learned that these can be replaced with grounded three-prong outlets as long as you have metal outlet boxes and armored (or BX) wiring. This is common in old houses like mine. A grounding wire can be attached to the metal outlet box. For those who are surprised that I did all this electrical work myself, anyone who can maintain an electric kiln can easily learn how to replace light fixtures, switches, and outlets.

While I was touching up the paint around the new light fixtures and switches in the downstairs bathroom, I discovered that the paint in the can no longer matched the paint on the wall. I stirred and stirred and stirred, but it was off by a shade and a half. It looked terrible. So I repainted the whole bathroom.

Now that it's done, I don't mind that this happened, because I'm really into this new color. While I was in here painting, I decided to replace the sink faucet as well. The old one had a "chrome" finish that was corroding away. My memories are fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure it was a cheap model. This new one wasn't terribly expensive either, I chose it because it was the closest match design-wise to the tub's faucet. I hope it holds up better than the last one. I had always regarded the medicine cabinet and exhaust fan as "things that must be replaced eventually, because they are so old." I've had a change of heart. During this project, I scrubbed and shined up the outside of the medicine cabinet, and gave the inside a fresh coat of paint. The exhaust fan's cover plate had been painted over many times. I took it down and scrubbed off all the layers of paint, back to bare metal. Now it's feels nice to keep things that are original to the house, "because they are so old."

Harriet is done. For now. I can't think of a single thing that needs to be worked on right now.

Some of you might be thinking, "it looks like she's getting her house ready to sell it." My answer is that the plan is not imminent, but you're not wrong. I would like to enjoy the air conditioning for at least a while.

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Getting dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new world.

8/21/2020

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The pandemic has now been hovering over us for over five months. All of my shows through the end of 2020 have been cancelled. I’m sad, and a little angry at those who think the public health restrictions don’t apply to them. I miss doing shows, but I would rather give them up in order to take the fastest path out of the crisis. I see other countries having festivals again already, and I feel embarrassed about the US.

I do feel generally happy with my home state of Maryland, for understanding the situation and choosing smart policies. We still have pockets of dumbassery here, but it’s not as rampant as in other parts of the country. When I leave my house, which is rare, I feel safe. Everyone I see is masked, and everyone keeps their distance.

Initially, my pandemic plan was to stay home, keep making pots, and live off my savings account. I thought we would be doing shows again in the fall, at the latest. Well, that proved to be wrong. Right now, there is no clear indication that we can have shows in 2021 either.

As I talked about in my last blog post, before the pandemic I had vowed to never ship pottery again. I found a way to sell pottery without shipping it, which is to sell pots online to local DC/Baltimore area customers, then deliver the pots in person. I also did a sale like this for the State College, PA area. I am planning to do one for the Philadelphia area in the fall. These places are not too far from home. My mailing list contains many nice contacts for these areas, because of the number of shows I have done there.

I am wary about how many times I can reach out to my local customers this way. One of my business goals is to constantly add a steady stream of new fans to my mailing list. This is accomplished by doing shows, and meeting new people at every one. So by selling in the “home delivery” model, I am tapping my existing audience, but not growing it.

My mailing list also contains contacts in further places too. But the numbers get a lot more sparse. I felt like I also needed to reach places where I could not make home deliveries. I was having an argument with my brain. “Just face it you have to start shipping pots again.” “NOOOOO!!!!!” “But you can reach the entirety of your mailing list all at once.” “BUT TRASH, BREAKAGE, ANXIETY, WASTED TIME!!” “You only have to do it until the pandemic is over, which will happen eventually.”

I thought back to my previous online sales. During those long, tedious hours of packing, whenever I picked up an order sheet that only contained one small item, I would brighten up. Small items are the fastest and easiest to pack. They only require a small amount of packing materials. And because the boxes are small and light, they are the least likely to suffer damage during shipping.

So this is the settlement I negotiated with my brain. I would ship pots again, but only small pots, and only a limited number. And only until I can do shows again.

I developed some miniaturized versions of my existing designs, just for these sales.

I have now completed two “small pots only” online sales. I learned a lot from the first one. Online sales are very different from art festivals. When dealing with customers face to face, they are polite to me, and polite to fellow customers. An online sale is more like the wild, wild west. There’s no waiting for your turn in a line. Customers race to check out as fast as possible. A lot of seasoned online shoppers seemed to know this beforehand. But some of my mailing list customers were not prepared. I got several emails afterwards from customers complaining that the store “didn’t work” because items just disappeared from their cart. Most of them were nice about it, albeit disappointed. One of them was really mad.

For the second edition of the online sale, I included the following language in my marketing emails and social media posts: “Last time, the pots sold out in minutes. If you have an item in your cart, it is still available to everyone until you finish paying for it. If an item disappears from your cart, that's because somebody else paid for it first. Be prepared! Speed counts!” I did not get any complaints afterwards. I realize now that communicating how the shopping cart works, and that there is an unmoderated race to checkout, is my responsibility.

Here’s another thing I learned. I sent some marketing messages that talked about both my first “small pots only” online sale, and my “home delivery” sale for State College, PA. They were scheduled about two weeks apart, and I wanted to give the State College customers an ample amount of notice. This was a mistake. Some customers conflated the two events. When the State College sale went live, I got orders from all over the country. I had to cancel more orders than I accepted. Once again, most of the customers whose orders were cancelled were nice about it. But one customer in particular simply could not understand why I was refusing to ship his order. Argh.

I learned to never advertise two events at the same time, because this causes confusion. I need to schedule the events far enough apart, so they each have enough room for an their own, exclusive marketing campaign. It was never a problem to advertise more than one art festival at the same time. These events have clear, physical boundaries. Only those who attend in person can purchase. But the online space is just one big, vague space. Defining the parameters of an online event takes a lot more effort and care.

The entire inventory of one online sale.

I’m really happy with my decision to only ship small pots. My definition of “small pot” is one that can ship in a 9x9x9 inch box. This drastically simplified the sourcing of packing materials. I only need to buy two sizes of boxes: 9x9x9 for one pot, and 16x9x9 for two pots. One of the biggest drags about my previous online sales was when I had a large or weirdly-shaped pot, and no appropriate box. Buying boxes efficiently requires buying bundles of 25. It sucks when you only need one of a odd size box.

I offered 40 small pots in the first sale. The packing took about 4 hours, which I found manageable. Packing the boxes was so much faster, and less mentally taxing, than packing pots of a whole range of sizes.

In the second sale, I offered 50 pots. Predictably, the packing took 5 hours, which was also manageable. However, I think I will go back to 40 for future sales. 50 pots took 3.25 bags of peanuts. That’s inefficient in terms of sourcing, I don’t want to buy 4 bags of peanuts and have so much leftover. 40 pots required 2.5 bags of peanuts. Having half a bag leftover makes more sense, and the leftovers easily fit into sourcing for the next sale. Maybe I can pack 45 pots with just under 3 whole bags of peanuts? That would be even more convenient, and might be worth trying.

Sourcing the packing materials is drastically simplified when all of the pots are roughly the same size.

For those who think online selling is “easier” than shows, I’m not so sure. It certainly doesn’t involve any heavy lifting. Or dealing with bad weather. But it still takes a lot of time to put together an online sale. The pots need to be photographed, the photographs need to be edited, then uploaded to the store, along with descriptions/prices/inventory counts. The store’s user interface is a website, and all the steps are done with mousing and clicking, not keyboarding. It’s tedious and slow. It’s easy to skip a step, or to do things inconsistently. It requires paying close attention to something that is very boring. At a show, I can setup a canopy and a full display in less than 3 hours. For an online sale, even though I now have all of my item descriptions saved in a text file for copy/pasting, it still took about 5 hours to put the whole sale together. Not to mention, one of the big reasons why I was so eager to quit doing design work, and opt for a pottery studio instead, is because I was tired of sitting in front of a computer all day. It's also much easier and more civilized to work with customers in person at a show, and to convey your communications more clearly. And as I described above, customers feel more entitled to be argumentative and demanding from across an online space, and misunderstandings are a lot more common.

Putting together an online sale is actually very time consuming. All the check marks ensure that I don't skip a step.

I think it’s important to mention that I really don’t have a big social media following. I don’t have 50K Instagram followers. I have about 8K Instagram followers, and 1.2K Facebook followers. I like to use both platforms, but do not view them as sales generators. I have no interest in playing those games that drive up your follower numbers. Nor will I try to make my pottery studio look “pretty” all the time, because that’s not real. I’ve advocated for many years on this blog that a mailing list is far more valuable than a big social media following. My online sales are coming from the following sources: 1) customers in cities where I travelled once for a show but haven’t returned, 2) customers who used to live in the DC area but have moved away, 3) fans of my blog, which is a very niche audience but those who get it really get it, and 4) students of my online pottery school. My mailing list currently has about 1400 contacts (after recently purging a bunch of contacts so I can continue to use MailChimp for free). So although my following isn’t huge, the connections are more meaningful than the average social media follower. Having spent many years developing an audience of this depth has proven to be invaluable during this crisis. I’ve had to totally reinvent the way I sell my work, and this audience has responded amazingly, both for the “home delivery” sales and for the “small pots only” online sales.

Even though I got a few unhappy notes after the first online sale, on balance I got so many more nice notes! They were thanking me for making my pots available to them. Although I am still shipping pots on a “grudgingly” basis, I admit that it makes me feel good to discover that people in far off places have been waiting for a chance to buy my work.

It took some experience to get my bearings, and correct some mistakes, but I think I’ve made peace with all of my misgivings. The narrow parameters make it work for me. My “home delivery” sales are my main source of income right now, but these online sales are a worthwhile supplement. I’m willing to do it on a regular basis, until we can put this pandemic behind us.

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Improvising in a Pandemic

4/21/2020

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I’m writing down all the details of what I did this past week so that other potters can copy or adapt this idea.

So far, two of my spring and summer shows have been cancelled. I expect to lose a few more. At least. My original plan was to keep making pots as normal, and to try to make up for lost income later this year or next year. I quickly realized the flaw in this plan, which is that I don’t have room to store months worth of production. I can only store about 10 weeks worth of production at a time.

I’ve been seeing a lot of artists trying to sell online more, and that many of them are finding receptive audiences, who miss art festivals as much as the artists do. The thing is, I had sworn off online selling at the end of last year. Or, to be more specific, I had sworn off SHIPPING pottery anymore. I hate packing pots into shipping cartons. "Hate" is not a strong enough word. It’s such an inefficient use of time, and it produces so much trash in terms of packing materials. It creates an unacceptably low limit on volume of sales, due to the amount of time it takes to pack the boxes.

I was so sure that I wouldn’t sell online anymore, that I deleted my BigCartel account.

Here’s my new version of an online sale, that doesn’t involve any shipping, and works within our current strange circumstances. I called it The DC/Baltimore Area, Maximum Social Distancing, Free Home Delivery Pottery Sale

Here’s the email I sent to my customer base, explaining all the terms and conditions:

Note the part about taking reservations in advance. This is something I’ve been doing with all of my shows for several years, and many of my customers have learned how to work with me this way. I have found this to be incredibly valuable in terms of building customer relationships. As soon as I sent this email, the reservations came pouring in. Along with many nice messages of support and “go girl!”

I built an online store using the Square store platform this time. I already use (and like) Square to process credit cards at shows, and I was able to build a no-frills online store for free. Overall, I liked this platform better than BigCartel because the payment process was faster for the customers. With BigCartel, I was encountering an annoying problem with overselling, because the payment process took too long when customers were shuttled between BigCartel and PayPal. This meant a second (and sometimes third) customer could buy the same item before the first customer finished paying for it. With the Square store, the payments were processed on the same website as the store, and I did not have any items oversold.

The new store went live at 10am last Friday. By noon, all but four items had sold. I only had one item left when I shut down the store on Sunday.

Then came the next phase … I needed to deliver all of these pots! I had 46 addresses to visit. Fun fact, when I was in college, I worked part-time in a flower shop. On the busiest flower shop holidays (Valentines, Mothers Day, etc), they let me make deliveries instead of working in the store. I enjoyed this so much, being able to work independently in my car. And I got paid per delivery, thus would make a lot more money compared to my hourly wage in the shop. This was way before Google maps existed. So I was confident I could make these pottery deliveries.

First I sorted all of the purchases into neighborhoods.
Note the part about taking reservations in advance. This is something I’ve been doing with all of my shows for several years, and many of my customers have learned how to work with me this way. I have found this to be incredibly valuable in terms of building customer relationships. As soon as I sent this email, the reservations came pouring in. Along with many nice messages of support and “go girl!”

I built an online store using the Square store platform this time. I already use (and like) Square to process credit cards at shows, and I was able to build a no-frills online store for free. Overall, I liked this platform better than BigCartel because the payment process was faster for the customers. With BigCartel, I was encountering an annoying problem with overselling, because the payment process took too long when customers were shuttled between BigCartel and PayPal. This meant a second (and sometimes third) customer could buy the same item before the first customer finished paying for it. With the Square store, the payments were processed on the same website as the store, and I did not have any items oversold.

The new store went live at 10am last Friday. By noon, all but four items had sold. I only had one item left when I shut down the store on Sunday.

Then came the next phase … I needed to deliver all of these pots! I had 46 addresses to visit. Fun fact, when I was in college, I worked part-time in a flower shop. On the busiest flower shop holidays (Valentines, Mothers Day, etc), they let me make deliveries instead of working in the store. I enjoyed this so much, being able to work independently in my car. And I got paid per delivery, thus would make a lot more money compared to my hourly wage in the shop. This was way before Google maps existed. So I was confident I could make these pottery deliveries.

First I sorted all of the purchases into neighborhoods.

Then I printed out maps of the region, and plotted the locations of each delivery. I numbered the plot points in the order that made the most sense. Then I numbered and organized the purchase sheets into this order.

I divided the 46 deliveries into 3 driving routes and 3 days. Each driving route took between 3 and 6 hours, for a total of 14 hours. The night before I set out for each driving route, I sent the following email to everyone whose pots would be arriving the next day:

“Hi [……],
Your pottery will be delivered tomorrow, Monday 4/20, between 12noon and 2pm (give or take). I will assume you are home, so I will knock or ring the doorbell, then leave. If you have any special delivery instructions (eg, leave on back porch, etc), just let me know!”

That last sentence proved to be very valuable, because quite a few people responded with instructions. In particular, those who live in secure apartment buildings. This allowed every single delivery to take place without a hitch.

I followed the sorting order as I packed the pots into shopping bags (which takes no time compared to packing them into shipping cartons), and therefore the shopping bags were sorted in my car in the same order.
That last sentence proved to be very valuable, because quite a few people responded with instructions. In particular, those who live in secure apartment buildings. This allowed every single delivery to take place without a hitch.

I followed the sorting order as I packed the pots into shopping bags (which takes no time compared to packing them into shipping cartons), and therefore the shopping bags were sorted in my car in the same order.

Let’s talk numbers. While I was cooking up this plan in my head, I was thinking "it would be great to make $3000." After I sent out my email announcement, I got over $3000 in reservations alone. I had also been thinking that I wanted to make about 40 deliveries tops. But the reservations only involved 20 addresses. I realized that the deliveries-to-sales ratio was more favorable than I was expecting. So I raised my goals, and decided to offer a greater amount of pots in the online store.

The total sales from the MSDFHDPS ended being only $30 less than my 2019 average gross sales per show. Sales at shows vary a lot, between $2700 and $12500. And so do the expenses, between $200 and $2000. My expenses for the MSDFHDPS included 47 shopping bags ($0.60 ea = $28.20), and 1 tank of gas ($30). This means the MSDFHDPS came out ahead, given how low the expenses were. I am really stoked at how well it turned out.

How does this compare to selling online? In the past several years, my use of online selling has been limited to once a year. In December, when my annual Open Studio was over, I would offer the remaining pots for sale online. So I have never tried to sell a full-show-size inventory online. The largest online sale I ever had involved 35 pots, for a total dollar value of $2550. It took me about 10 hours to pack all the pots for shipping, spread over 2 days. And remember, this is labor that I hate so much, I felt like a zombie when I was done. There were also some substantial expenses. I spent $264 on shipping supplies (boxes, peanuts). I collected $315 in flat rate shipping fees from my customers, but ended up spending $441 on UPS that year (net loss of $126).

So it took me 10 hours to pack 35 pots into shipping cartons for an online sale. It took me 14 hours to deliver 154 pots for the MSDFHDPS.

Do you see how inefficient online selling is for a potter? Financially, materially, and time-wise? This is true for any artist who sells fragile, bulky, heavy items. And given the choice between spending my time packing boxes, or driving around in my car, it’s a no brainer. Especially when driving can yield so much more net profit. Driving is part of being a full-time festival artist anyways. If you don't like driving, your available choices for shows will be severely limited. When I had dropped off my last delivery, I felt sad that it was over, not like a zombie. And now more than ever, I needed a reason to get out of the house, in a safe fashion.

Does this mean I think the MSDFHDPS is better than shows? No way. As much as I enjoyed it, the MSDFHDPS was missing a very critical component, which was the opportunity to meet NEW customers. To survive for the long term, a pottery business needs a steady influx of new fans. This past week, I reached out to my existing customer base, but did not grow it. I won’t be able to do this too many times. If all of the summer shows get cancelled, I’ll probably do this again in late summer. And if all of the fall shows get cancelled too, I will hold my December open studio in this fashion. But I don’t think it would be wise to do it every month, and hopefully not into 2021. And in the coming weeks, I need to figure out places to store more inventory in my house.

On the plus side, though, the interactions I had with my best fans this week were overwhelmingly positive. They are all stuck at home too, and feeling unhappy. Some of them seemed genuinely tickled that pottery was arriving at their door. Everybody could use a bright spot right now, and I’m glad I could provide a small one. Although I did not grow my customer base with this sale, I do think I built stronger ties with my existing base.

This brings me to one last point, which I have been preaching about for years on this blog … the importance of building and using an email list. It is the best way to stay in touch with people who actually want to buy your work. The ratio of serious customers within an email subscriber base is very high. The ratio of serious customers within a social media following is very low. And even if social media fans buy, chances are you have to ship their purchase to them, which is a real bummer, as far as I’m concerned. And the best way to build an email list is to do shows, because that’s where the right people are. It’s a slow process to build a list, one person at a time. But when you have done it consistently for many years, it can provide immeasurable value, at times when the world has been turned upside down..

(This is pretty much the exact same concept I wrote about in my recent blog post about financial preparedness. Think and plan for the long-term. Practicing consistent good habits over many years will pay you back when you need it.)

Many, many thanks to all the wonderful people who made this event work! And once again, to all the artists out there whose shows have been cancelled, please feel free to copy this idea. My friend Nan Rothwell has already created the Charlottesville, VA Area MSDFHDPS, which goes live this Saturday 4/25. If you are in her area, lucky you!

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New Pots for This Year's Open Studio

This year's pandemic-safe edition of the Holiday Sale

Welcome to the 2020 Virtual PMA Craft Show

"Harriet" has been busy.

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Improvising in a Pandemic

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