Lorrie talks about business and art

One of the my pri­mary rea­sons for ini­ti­at­ing the Fea­tured Artist series last year was to spot light artists who are suc­cess­fully sell­ing their work so other artists, whether emerg­ing or vet­er­ans, could have exam­ples and role mod­els. Each of the artists selected are in var­i­ous stages of turn­ing their cre­ative energy and pas­sion into a sus­tain­able liv­ing. They may not be doing it over night but each has a strong com­mit­ment to find­ing ways to both share their art with the world and make a liv­ing from doing so.

Not every­one is suited to under­take the jour­ney, but those who do have decided that their pas­sion for cre­at­ing out­weighs any other c0ncerns. Con­sciously or not, they all share in the vision that a world with­out art would not be very nice, and they rec­og­nize the effect their abil­ity or inabil­ity to pro­duce has on us all. Our abil­ity to expe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of their cre­ative visions is directly linked with each and every artists’ abil­ity to sell their work.

Like many of the pre­vi­ous Fea­tured Artists Lor­rie has been work­ing steadily towards her goal of artis­tic sus­tain­abil­ity. Each artist has also been able to rec­og­nize the role risk plays in their adven­ture and each has cho­sen to accept the up and down process inher­ent in growth.

Please read on as Lor­rie shares her adventure…

You recently decided to aban­don Etsy in favor of your own self hosted sales venue, talk to us about your deci­sion, your goals, and motivation.

As I said, my goal is really to try and make some kind of suc­cess for myself, not nec­es­sar­ily mon­e­tary to any grand extent, but more impor­tantly, artis­tic recog­ni­tion. I decided to close down my Etsy shop pri­mar­ily because I felt that Etsy is such a hard nut to crack for an artist, and that if I was going to put so many hours into pro­mo­tion and mar­ket­ing, I would rather do so for my own online shop.

My plan is to con­tinue sell­ing from my own shop, Art4Sale,  add to the prints cat­a­logue and intro­duce more orig­i­nal art there, includ­ing hand pulled prints from my Gocco printer.

How­ever, I have decided also to try and raise my artis­tic pro­file locally, and show my work pub­licly within my home  area. To that end, I am look­ing for gallery rep­re­sen­ta­tion. This is not easy, as many gal­leries have closed down due the reces­sion, but I remain opti­mistic. This is quite a big deal for me, as I have not shown my work in a gallery for many years now. I am also think­ing quite seri­ously about putting on my own solo show. This was some­thing I did when I was younger, and in the days when the only way to gain any kind of audi­ence for your work was to exhibit.

My ulti­mate goal is to con­tinue to draw and paint, improve my craft, and hope­fully gain some recog­ni­tion. I already have quite a solid fanbase/following which is con­tin­u­ing to grow, par­tic­u­larly online through my web­site, blog and Face­book page, and friends are very sup­port­ive and encouraging.

Tell us about your mar­ket­ing jour­ney, what has worked for you and what has not

My mar­ket­ing jour­ney has not been as well planned as I would have hoped or advo­cate. How­ever, I did write down some SMART goals of what I wished to achieve, and wrote a loose busi­ness plan, which I need to update. Hav­ing done some busi­ness courses, the skills and tools I learnt from those have stood me in good stead, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to plan­ning, mar­ket­ing and mea­sur­ing performance.

It is impor­tant as an artist in today’s tech­no­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment to have an online pres­ence, whether that is a web­site or a blog. Social net­work­ing is also impor­tant as well, uti­liz­ing plat­forms like Twit­ter, Face­book etc. I did have a My Space page, though it did not work well for me. I feel that My Space is intrin­si­cally for young peo­ple, and took more work than I felt it jus­ti­fied. Face­book has worked very well for me, and peo­ple who are not nec­es­sar­ily net savvy like it for sim­plic­ity of design and use. Face­book is a level play­ing field. Because of its tight design and lay-out, you don’t need any design skills to make it work, and that makes peo­ple feel more com­fort­able in many ways, there is no competitiveness.

A blog is a great way to mar­ket ones work and keep peo­ple updated with works in progress, ideas, projects etc. Plus which, peo­ple like to feel they can inter­act with you and have a voice, which makes a blog an ideal choice as they can com­ment and pro­vide feed­back. Also, if you have lit­tle or no web design skills, then a blog is the next best thing to pro­file your work on the Internet.

Do you have a mar­ket­ing plan, strat­egy, if so please tell us about it?

As I said in the last para­graph, I do have a loose busi­ness plan and a set of SMART goals, which I try and adhere to. SMART stands for:

• Spe­cific

• Mea­sure­able

• Attain­able

• Rel­e­vant

• Timely (or time bound)

The impor­tance of set­ting goals and objec­tives was some­thing I learnt when study­ing busi­ness, and it’s a per­ti­nent and nec­es­sary task. They help one to main­tain focus and direc­tion, rather than cast­ing about wildly and  becom­ing unfo­cused and hap­haz­ard and help to mea­sure and keep track of per­for­mance. Even if you don’t have a spe­cific ‘Busi­ness Plan’, it is impor­tant when under­tak­ing any kind of project or busi­ness ven­ture to have con­structed some kind of plan, which includes goals, objec­tives and tar­gets. E.g. what do I want to achieve, what do I need to do to get there, what tools do I need, what skills do I need, how long do I want to take to reach my ulti­mate tar­get? It doesn’t have to be writ­ten in stone, and indeed shouldn’t be. A project/business plan and objec­tives should be organic to some degree to keep pace with a chang­ing envi­ron­ment and economies.

What is your great­est chal­lenge as an artist/business person?

Main­tain­ing a healthy bal­ance. This is a con­stant chal­lenge for any­one who is try­ing to make a busi­ness from their cre­ative endeav­ors. Try­ing to mar­ket, pro­mote and sell as well as paint and cre­ate is an exhaust­ing one. Also, take into account run­ning a home and rais­ing a small child. I am con­stantly try­ing to jug­gle the two, and always feel I am strug­gling to main­tain an even and fair bal­ance.  I don’t know if this is some­thing I will ever be able to get quite right.

What do you wish some­one had told you when you started out?

Don’t become dis­heart­ened and don’t expect quick results. Just because you have some­thing to sell, doesn’t mean to say peo­ple will rush to buy it. It’s all about vis­i­bil­ity and pres­ence. Hav­ing a shop in the High Street will attract sales, because it pulls in pass­ing traf­fic. Try­ing to sell online is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ball game. No one knows you exist unless you tell them. Also, I wish I had devised a clear pric­ing struc­ture at the start. Ini­tially my prices were up, down, up and down again. It’s impor­tant to work out what price you want for your art, tak­ing into account costs, time and cre­ative effort, and then stick to it. Don’t become drawn into what other peo­ple charge for their art because it’s all subjective.

Find Lor­rie .…

| blog | shop | face­book | twit­ter | flickr | deviantart