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Non-Traditional Craft Marketing - Part Two

Read part one of Non-Traditional Craft Marketing for more information.

Craft Marketing Tie-Ins to Other Products

While other crafters are talking to gift shop owners about placing their gift items alongside all the similar work of other crafters, think about where your products would stand out and, at the same time, enhance what the store primarily sells.

For example, if you make jewelry or crochet scarves, offer to assist a dress shop with their displays by accessorizing the mannequins. A nicely put together outfit increases the eye appeal of the individual parts.

If you make oilcloth tote bags, make some up with bright tropical fruit and vegetable patterns and see if your local farmers’ market would let you place them for sale near the checkout. Add a sign: “Choose not to pollute - with our sturdy reusable market totes.”

Take your wine gift bags to liquor stores and see if you can work out a similar display deal.

Your dried flower arrangements, decoupage trays or hand made candles would give a more attractive and real look to display rooms at a furniture store.

Barter for Space

Once I was approached by the owner of a card and gift shop in a neighborhood mall. She had seen and admired my crafts. She thought they would complement her store’s inventory and that my existing clientèle would bring traffic to the store. She offered me a very modest salary and a small corner of the store in which I could display my products.

It seemed like an ideal match; but it was doomed from the start. [This was before I understood the importance of tie-ins and one person’s product enhancing – rather than competing with - the other person’s.]

My products dressed up the store. Traffic increased significantly. I honestly worked as hard to sell her merchandise as my own.

Then one morning, the owner came in and told me to remove myself and my crafts by the end of the day. My sales had been very good while hers had increased only marginally. It just didn’t seem like a good bargain for her. I had most of the benefit.

With 20/20 hindsight, it might have worked out if I had suggested working on commission rather than for salary. That way, there would be less suspicion about where my efforts were placed.

I still thought bartering for space could work and decided that, if I found another opportunity, I would accept no salary. I also wanted to make sure that our products didn’t compete. I came up with an idea but when I asked my friends for their opinions, they looked at me like I was crazy.

There is a small water treatment, garden and pool supply store nearby. Most of the time, the owner is out on jobs and his wife tends the store. But with young children at home, she frequently needs to leave at a moment’s notice and would simply lock up the store, posting a “Back in 10 minutes sign”. Customers were getting so frustrated that they were going to the competition.

I approached the couple and suggested I could open the store earlier, tend it until the wife arrived and stay until 2:00 so she (actually we both) could leave and run errands as needed. In return they would give me a small corner where I could display and sell my crafts. They loved the idea.

It has worked beautifully. I decorated my little niche like a garden to tie in to their pool and garden products – little wicker table and chair, a trellis on which I can hang some of my things, fake stairs going up along the wall (which I use as display shelves) with a trompe l’oeil door at the top.

Online Craft Marketing Co-Ops

This is something I haven’t tried and which I’m a little leery of. The idea is to join other crafters on a website devoted to craft marketing.

Online craft marketing is hard enough without having five or six other crafters' works on the same web page. It’s sort of a miniature craft show, without providing you the opportunity to stand out too much.

But more of these craft marketing sites are springing up. I think many crafters simply don’t want to devote their efforts to online craft marketing, but want to see if there’s any money to be made that way.

One such craft marketing site is Stars and Infinite Darkness, a collective that gives the designers maximum exposure with minimal expense.

Another craft marketing option is Wholesale Crafts. Crafters pay an advertising fee to be listed in a Buyers Guide which is distributed free to retailers. This is a way of bringing crafters and retailers together at reasonable expense.

Finally there’s eCrafter which offers a place where you can sell your crafts to people all over the world by giving you a free craft marketing website, while including you in their searchable marketplace database.

Whether online or off, if there’s a will there’s a way to improve your craft marketing. Be imaginative and think outside the box.

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