Читать книгу Start & Run a Craft Business - William G. Hynes - Страница 8

Once you have identified and produced a marketable product, choosing your market is the most important decision you will make. Unless you can find markets, your work won’t be sold, and while you may enjoy making crafts, you won’t make any money and you won’t be in business for long.

In marketing your work, you leave the ranks of the amateurs and become a true professional. This important transition is marked by a change in attitude toward your work. In the beginning, the objects you made were worthwhile because “you” made them, and you were naturally very proud of the fact. At the same time, you hoped that others would also find your work attractive. You might have shown the work to your craft instructor, a friend, or a fellow craftworker.

As a professional, you retain this basic pride in your work, but at the same time you come to regard the product less as an extension of yourself and more as an object in the marketplace. It is a beautiful object, to be sure, the result of your painstaking efforts, but you now come to see it as a high-quality, well-priced, marketable product.

Your task now is to take this product and sell it!

There are three basic ways you can go about selling your work. You can wholesale to shops, sell in stores on consignment, or retail your products directly to the public from your own studio, at craft fairs, through the mail, or on the Internet. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. They are not mutually exclusive, and most successful craftworkers use a variety of wholesale and retail marketing channels.