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Non-Traditional Craft Marketing - Part One

As a crafter and a small businessperson, you can do your own craft marketing or pay someone to do it for you. It’s a balancing act. If you do it yourself, you must go to shows or run your own store or website. The more time you spend doing that the less time you can spend crafting.

Giving up some of the retail price of your craft items, gives you more time to devote to your art and generally a broader market reach for your wares. Gallery and shop owners advertise, promote your work and provide a place with regular hours where your work can be viewed by many more people than you can reach on your own.

However don’t think of these approaches as the only options of craft marketing. They are merely the two ends of the spectrum: from doing all your own craft marketing and as much crafting as time allows; to using all your time crafting and paying your marketers.

Along the spectrum are a myriad of other approaches, some very simple, some quite high tech. If you’re looking for a better way to sell your craft items, try thinking outside the box. Go beyond the traditional methods of craft fairs, galleries and retail shops.

Below are a few craft marketing approaches that have worked for me, as well as some intriguing ones I’ve read about, but haven’t tried personally – yet.

Breaking Away from the Pack

After three years of doing craft fairs and flea markets, I noticed several negative aspects. My work was being copied by other crafters who saw it at the last show.

I had to keep coming up with new ideas to differentiate myself.

I got tired of lining up alongside and competing against very similar products.

Plus I got just plain tired. Craft fairs are a lot of physical labor.

I needed a better venue and couldn’t afford to pay a retail shop or gallery up to 50% of my sales. I needed to think outside the box and break away from the pack.

Leverage Your Relations with Other Crafters

One positive thing I did take away from my years of craft fairs was a lot of new crafting friends who are also struggling with craft marketing. We help each other out as opportunities arise.

One very well established ceramicist participates in a huge annual expo that draws importers from throughout North and South America. He wanted something bright and colorful to dress up his booth and draw people’s attention, so he asked if I would like to display some of my oilcloth bags. We both did well and it was pretty exciting to think of my bags traveling to another continent to be sold.

My crafting buddies and I send each other business. They order business cards and signs from me. I recommend them and sometimes display their work in my little shop (no commission, no charge). When they have their own shops, I know they’ll do the same for me!

Brainstorm Tie-Ins to Local Organizations

Brainstorm how your products can or could tie-in to some organization. If you do any craft that lends itself to personalization, such as embroidery or fabric painting or silk-screening, think about approaching local clubs or businesses and offering items with their logo. With their permission, of course. Logos are copyrighted material.

A tote bag that folds up into a pouch had been a big seller for me at craft fairs. The unusual thing about my design is that the pouch is custom designed. I’ve applied pouch designs using two techniques: screen printing; and printing on fabric using Bubble Jet Set and my computer printer.

When I learned that our local garden club would be hosting visitors from a garden club in Canada, I spoke to a friend who was a member.

I found out the local ladies really wanted to make the visit special for their guests. They would want agendas, name tags, place cards and also were struggling to come up with an idea for gifts the ladies could take back home.

To make a long story short, the garden club commissioned me to do the graphics for the entire event, including 36 tote bags customized with the club’s logo as takeaway gifts.

The local members loved the bags so much, I got orders for another 50. Even today, more than a year later, I occasionally get a call from a club member to order bags for family and friends.

Next I tried to think of local small businesses that might like gifts for their customers or for company conferences.

I approached the CEO of a long distance moving company with the idea and got an order for 100 bags. Before I had delivered all of the bags, the CEO called me up and asked me to start thinking of a gift they could give to men they were relocating. Most of their customers were mixed couples. But they occasionally moved single men or male couples.

I suggested a rain poncho that folds up into a pouch, so that the men’s and women’s gifts would use the same materials and have the same look. The CEO ordered 25 sight-unseen.

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

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