Why you don’t need bargain hunters

First a lit­tle back ground

The cur­rent rebel­lion over under­pric­ing soc­cer moms on Etsy has got­ten a lot of other artists’ undies in a bun­dle. There are few options for artists to sell their work on-line so the sites that offer all the things that make us cre­atives shud­der like credit card pro­cess­ing, store front design etc., are very entic­ing. At first, using these sites as venues to sell stuff we make, seems pretty log­i­cal, set­ting up a shop basi­cally only requires time and we know us artists have all kinds of free time.

There are how­ever,  a few big honkin’ down­sides. Like any­thing else that is sim­ple, requires lit­tle mon­e­tary  invest­ment, and only costs our “free” time these online sales venues nat­u­rally draw folks look­ing for those things in a place to sell their stuff. It’s just the way things work…

Another big down­side is the low invest­ment at the start and rel­a­tively low skill require­ments that make these sites mag­nets for peo­ple look­ing for a place to make some money from their hobby, they see sell­ing on-line as a way to pay for their hobby. Other sales venues, like gal­leries and art fairs are  not options for them for a vari­ety of rea­sons not the least of which is the need to make a liv­ing off what they make… I say this with no ill intentions.

So as the on-line mar­ket places evolved, con­tin­u­ing to grow the num­ber of ama­teur sell­ers,  these amat­uer mar­kets attracted more and more bar­gain hunters. The bar­gain hunters are com­mod­ity shop­pers whose pri­mary focus is price, because few value the emo­tional labor invested by artists ded­i­cated to their work.

In turn, these bar­gain hunters set the price level with­out argu­ment because the hobby cre­ators were more than will­ing to sell at any price. This will­ing­ness to sell at any price has its’ basis also in the men­tal­ity of cheap and deval­u­a­tion of cre­ative work and I doubt much of it is inten­tional at least on the part of the hob­by­ists.

So, with more and more folks watch­ing their bud­get, focus­ing mostly on price, we soon noticed a decrease in sales of high end work on these on-line sales venues. Not know­ing the cause, a tsunami of fear started to role through the ranks of pro­fes­sional artists.Unfortunately, this fear was gen­er­al­ized across the hand­made mar­ket as a whole caus­ing pro­fes­sion­als to blame the con­sumers, the ama­teurs and any­thing else they could think of for decreas­ing sales. What these folks didn’t real­ize was that the hob­by­ists and the bar­gain hunters were no where near a threat, not to the mar­ket or to the abil­ity of full time artists to make a liv­ing from their work. The prob­lem was not know­ing or real­iz­ing that the bar­gain hunter mar­ket was not the only one and more impor­tantly, the bar­gain hunter mar­ket was a waiste of their time.

So should full time work­ing artists worry about this issue?

Here are a few rea­sons I answer no to that question:

• The bar­gain hunter’s mar­ket niche are not look­ing for art they want same, they want safe and they don’t care about know­ing who makes the stuff they buy as long as it is “handmade”.
• Hav­ing a mar­ket for bar­gain hunters frees up pro­fes­sional artists from hav­ing to deal with peo­ple who don’t value emo­tional labor, edgi­ness, or any­thing else that doesn’t fit a mold.
• Pro­fes­sional artists seri­ous about mak­ing a liv­ing from their work should not be in the bar­gain hunter mar­ket niche for any rea­son. Instead they should be focused on the mar­ket that appre­ci­ates and val­ues their work, the mar­ket that val­ues emo­tional labor.
• By focus­ing on work­ing with the right buy­ers pro­fes­sional artists add value to the art mar­ket through their buy­ers who get to share the gift they receive from their artist. In turn, every­one who gets to expe­ri­ence that gift will have expe­ri­enced change because they to get to receive the gift as well. The gift of love, atten­tion, cre­ation and emo­tional labor trav­els a cir­cu­lar route touch­ing each per­son who sees it.
• The right buy­ers will help oth­ers under­stand and appre­ci­ate the value of the emo­tional labor that each piece of your work holds. In short, while they value your work they real­ize the work doesn’t cre­ate itself, it is cre­ated from your vision of the world and is real­ized through your efforts mak­ing you the source of the value.

So, instead of spend­ing energy wor­ry­ing whether the ama­teurs are effect­ing your sales, turn that energy around and focus it on build­ing your net­work of believ­ers, in a year you’ll likely won­der what all the bother was about.

Ask your­self the one ques­tion you’ve been dodging…Why am I doing what I’m doing and who wants what I’m making?