Craft Business Ideas
Issue Number 9, October 2, 2000============================================================
IN THIS ISSUE
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1. What crafts are popular?
2. Subscription Management
3. Contact Information
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1. What Crafts Are Popular?
by James Dillehay
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Popularity can be seasonal, geographic and/or demographic to
name a few qualifications. For instance, crafts related to
gardening will be more popular in Spring months. Christmas
craft sales will swell the three months before December.
Craft sales will be higher in tourist areas than metropolitan
shops. Seniors purchase more toys as gifts than young adults.
Many craft artists say they don't follow what sells nationally
because to do so would make them manufacturers, not artists.
A friend of mine has grown an exceptionally good business
selling her wearable art to stores in tourist areas. If she
stopped creating her original designs in favor of a popular
craft, she would quickly be out of a business she enjoys and
find herself on the endless road of chasing after the next
hot trend.
There's nothing wrong with being a manufacturer if that's your
thing, but let's not confuse that with art or craft. Mass
production involves mass marketing of products -- this is
opposite to the nature of those who sell what they make through
artistic inspiration.
The popularity of well made craft, regardless of the medium,
is the attractiveness to the consumer of owning a piece made
by the craft person. This has always been the draw for thousands
of customers of hand made craftwork.
Several craft industry leaders were asked what they expected
to be the "big seller" in the year 2000. Not one named a hot
selling craft, although one did say that glass art may have
reached its ceiling. See the full article at:
http://www.craftsreport.com/january00/roundtable.html
The industry experts seemed to agree that the real
trend is the Internet and how it will affect your ability to
sell. For more help with selling crafts online, click here.
If you really want to know what's popular, wear or display
something you have made and keep track of how many people
ask you where you got it!
For some crafts, particularly wearable garments, keeping up with
consumer trends can prove useful. One year the "in" colors
were peach and lilac so I decided to weave a line of garments
in these colors to see if they would sell any faster than my
other pieces created out of inspiration. To my surprise, the
peach and lilac garments sold faster than anything else.
However, I did not enjoy the feeling that I was working for
someone else more than following my creativity.
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2. Subscription Management
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