This week we are continuing along the long and winding road that is the “Market Reflection Scenic Byway”. I hope the sights and scenes I have painted for you thus far have been entertaining and will continue to delight instead of falling into the solemn slumber that is bred from familiarity. Today’s remarks will be centered around the benefit of bringing different types of products with you to markets. Paying heed to the wise old saying of “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” could really help with market sales as an artist. As it is, art prints are not always in high demand. Though they are pretty, brighten a room, and can bring back the treasured connections one has to a certain place or feeling, the sad fact remains that walls only have so much space to offer. Art prints, therefore, are a lot of the time deemed superfluous. This is why it is smart to bring with you a nice variety of options. Notecards/postcards, stickers, mugs, kitchen towels, t-shirts, bandanas—you name it—will help with sales as these products have more of a ‘functionality’ to them, more so than an art print typically does. People seem more willing to spend money on things that they believe they will be able to use in everyday life.
This strategy was not unknown to me before I began my market season last year. In fact, it was brought up to me a couple of times when I told various people which products I intended to sell at the market. I am not sure what held me back from taking the wise advice that many seasoned market artists spurred or led by example. Instead, I gathered up every single egg I possessed and placed them neatly in a single basket. Instead of ordering a couple of mugs, or kitchen towels, or similar products that have proved to be quite successful with marketgoers, I saddled up my art-prints, a couple of originals, card sets and stickers and went on my merry-way. I will give myself a little more credit for my creativity and disclose that I did try to create some variety in products as I also brought with me an assortment of hand-painted pots with plants in them. Unfortunately, the only thing that came of these fun little fellas was the horrid death to each plant that lived inside them. So, perhaps I made a light-hearted attempt at creating a variety of products but did not commit to a full send.
Infusing a wider range of available products also allows you to have a wider range of prices available to customers in your tent, doting on a larger range of budgets. Mixing in some more expensive original pieces gives the opportunity of having a bigger day if the right person walks into your booth and finds a strong connection to one of your originals than if you only prepared a vast array of cheaper art prints. Having multiple sizes of your prints also allows a customer to choose their level of commitment to a piece. If they love a print, they can find the size that matches their budget. Stickers are a great way to get at least a small sale because they seem to be the smallest commitment that most people are excited to take. I might also add that for slower market weeks these little victories do add up!
Modern technology has done wonders for creating a wide variety of products. You can find many companies online that are happy to print your designs on anything and everything under the sun. With the increase in competition many printing companies have even dropped their “minimum order” requirements, allowing you to be in the driver seat in the experimentational period of discovering what products sell best. Strategically, you can order only 2 or 3 of a product and see if it gains any interest or traction. If you sell out of something rather fast, you know you should invest more in obtaining a larger order. If it turns out to be the old maid in the ballroom, well, what do you think Christmas presents are for?
All in all, I think it a wise investment to try and play around with what products catch the most attention and sell best. Once you figure out the magic combination it should, hypothetically, be easy as wine on a summer’s day to pare down and focus on your ‘A’ list products. Have I figured this out yet? No. But these are the thoughts and ideas that have now grasped me, and I now intend to explore. From my previous experience combined with what I have observed by going to more farmers’ markets in general, have made these ideas ring truer to me now more than ever. I do believe that each person must play around and figure out what actually works best for them and what they make because we are all different and unlike baking, the same recipe isn’t going to work for every single one of us; we have to each find our own flare and own our own unique ingredients. So, cheers to muddling around! May we all find that special something that works for us.
I hope you have enjoyed this week's offbeat anecdote and will join me for the next, next Sunday at 10am! Perhaps I should mention that it is 10am MTN time…
As always,
Keep it offbeat!
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