The summer of love, and the rise and fall of the hippie-dippy business model

How many of you are old enough to remem­ber the days of the “hip­pie–dippy park­ing lot art fairs”? For those of you unfor­tu­nate enough to be born after that era, let me enlighten you. Sim­i­lar to what we are expe­ri­enc­ing today, it was a time of major social, eco­nomic and cul­tural upheaval, and it changed the frame­work of our lives. Just as before, we would ben­e­fit by  using the lessons of his­tory to help us with today’s shift­ing world. This is par­tic­u­larly true for artists, because never have we had the tools and abil­ity to really  sup­port our­selves with our pas­sion for cre­at­ing. Fail­ure to take advan­tage of our past could very well lead to a con­tin­u­ing stag­na­tion and deval­u­a­tion of our con­tri­bu­tion to humanity.

Back in the sum­mer of love there were a lot of folks drop­ping out so they could make stuff with their hands like macramé plant hang­ers, leather belts and funky weed pipes. They did this so they wouldn’t have to “work for the MAN”. So once they had their stuff made they needed to sell it to buy food and other “essen­tials”. The eas­i­est ways was for them to set up tables and cre­ate a “mar­ket” often on Saturday.

It didn’t take long for those folks who “worked for the MAN” to dis­cover the amaz­ing and cheap hand­made things for sale in the park­ing lot down­town. The “hip­pie– dippy park­ing lot artists” couldn’t believe their luck, all they had to do was show up Sat­ur­day throw few things on a table and then go home with money in their pocket. It was a great and sim­ple busi­ness model.

Build it and they will come

The great­est thing about the hippie-dippy busi­ness model was that the  artists just had to show up. Well, this model started chang­ing into the ‘70s, the hippie-dippy artists started out­grow­ing the park­ing lots and a few enter­pris­ing ones started orga­niz­ing events designed specif­i­cally for hippie-dippy artists. Those events mor­phed into art fairs which have grown ever more sophis­ti­cated until they reached their present day focus on enter­tain­ment. Peo­ple no longer came to get leather belts, clay pots, or macramé, they came to be enter­tained and pick up a few trin­kets along the way.

The prob­lem with all this evo­lu­tion was, the hippie-dippy busi­ness model stayed the same which kind of worked because there wasn’t much com­pe­ti­tion for atten­tion. All the pro­mot­ers had to do was some adver­tis­ing and peo­ple would show up. The hippie-dippy artists con­tin­ued to shun the com­mer­cial side of hav­ing a busi­ness for a num­ber of rea­sons not the least of which was the cost of adver­tis­ing i.e. The costs asso­ci­ated with being found.

Well into the ‘90s and early ‘00s, sales con­tin­ued to be ran­dom except for those few who  had devel­oped a fol­low­ing of col­lec­tors. Art fairs had expanded and those still hippy-dippy artists started trav­el­ing to far away places to sell their stuff. And they con­tin­ued to mostly just have to show up to sell. Those few with col­lec­tors gen­er­ally sent out a few post­cards to let folks know they were going to be in town.

Those post cards were now the hippie-dippy artists’ take on direct mail with­out the slime, but they still had the con­ver­sion rates of direct mail. Sel­dom more than 2% of those receiv­ing a post card ever showed up at the artists event.

The Times, they are a changing…

Some time in the early ‘80s  the folks show­ing up for art fairs and events were less and less inter­ested in buy­ing and more and more inter­ested in chat­ting with each other, art fairs became enter­tain­ment. These patrons soon devel­oped an iden­tity that could be spot­ted any­where, ladies with fanny packs, water bot­tles hung from their shoul­ders and broad brimmed hats rest­ing pre­car­i­ously on their heads. Some of these “art fair ladies” also came with their male counter part the brood­ing hus­band who hov­ered out­side booths or gal­leries afraid of enter­ing lest he lose his masculinity.

While the “art fair ladies” were evolv­ing, another evo­lu­tion was tak­ing place. At home…the Inter­net sud­denly became some­thing use­ful, peo­ple could actu­ally buy stuff on it. As we moved out of the early ‘00s into the mid ‘00s more and more folks glommed onto the Inter­net, and peo­ple started dis­cov­er­ing ways to meet each other in the vir­tual world.

Through­out the time this evo­lu­tion was tak­ing place, the hippie-dippy artists and their hippie-dippy busi­ness model pretty much stayed the same. The hippie-dippy artists lost the bell bot­toms and tie dyed shirts and some even cut their hair and a few fear­less souls even cre­ated web sites, how­ever their mind­sets didn’t change. They still clung to the hippie-dippy busi­ness model that pretty much dic­tated they remain aloof of any­thing with the slight­est hint of com­merce for fear of sell­ing their souls to “The MAN”.

Unfor­tu­nately, what they didn’t know was “The MAN” was fast becom­ing a van­ish­ing species. The MAN was being replaced by a mod­ern ver­sion of the val­ues that started up the whole hippie-dippy thing, the val­ues asso­ci­ated with com­mu­nity and engage­ment. How­ever, those hippie-dippy artists were get­ting old, many were well into mid-life, and well set in their ways and  grum­bling that “nobody wants hand made stuff” because nobody was buying.

Enter the neo-hippie-dippy artist

While the orig­i­nal hippie-dippy artists were grum­bling and gray­ing, a new breed was tak­ing their place, a breed born of tech­nol­ogy and a strong desire to sup­port them­selves well, by mak­ing stuff they liked to make. More impor­tantly, these young replace­ments, were actively revi­sion­ist, “The MAN” was not even an option to them, so there was noth­ing to “sell out “ to. They were going to make a liv­ing from mak­ing their stuff and do what­ever it took to do so.

How­ever despite their embrace of  tech­nol­ogy this new breed of artists, did so with­out knowl­edge of how to use the tools. A few ven­ture some ones, learned by trial and error how to use the tools to their own ben­e­fit. The prob­lem was there wasn’t a model to help direct them, instead they used a mash-up of old school tech­niques of “The MAN” and the mind­set of the hippie-dippy busi­ness model, nei­ther of which worked all that great any­more and worked even less when mashed up together..

See, the new breed of artists missed the mean­ing of the shift from in your face adver­tis­ing to engage­ment and vis­i­bil­ity. Their mash-up didn’t rec­og­nize the under­ly­ing force that was dri­ving things now…the ever increas­ing noise cre­ated by oth­ers com­pet­ing for the atten­tion of folks want­ing to buy. The mash-up just became more noise.

Rev­o­lu­tion, Revi­sion or???

As I said in the begin­ning, this lit­tle romp through straw­berry fields is intended to serve as a very com­pressed back­ground for what comes next.It is obvi­ous that change is upon us, but what is that change? What is its  foun­da­tion and more impor­tantly how can we as artists use it to build a bet­ter life and world for us? Do we need to revise the hippie-dippy busi­ness model or sim­ply lose it alto­gether and start over?

In the remain­der of this series I’ll start to look at how we can take the best of the val­ues that drove the hippie-dippy artist and com­bine them with today’s tools to take the “yuk” out of doing business.

Please join me on the journey…