027 – Sharing Pottery Information

Who is your market and how did you find them?

Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/potterymakinginfo/photos/a.10151503193013457/10154915774163457

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZdZ4HIlnPy/

Transcript

Welcome to episode 26 of the mudtalk podcast. In this episode we’re talking about your market, or, the people who buy your work.

Who buys your pots? How did you find them? Why do they buy your pots? How do you find more of the people that will buy your pots? These are the questions that any potter should start asking when they get serious about selling their work. Thanks to @stonecropstudio for suggesting this question a very long time ago.

This episode will be interesting because there were only a handful of responses. Literally 5 responses. Now it’s hard to judge what that means for certain. Maybe the social media algorithms didn’t put this question in front of very many people. Maybe a lot of us clay people have never thought specifically about our markets. Maybe we don’t know who our market or ideal customers are. Maybe, as Little Blackberry Creek Pots says later, we just want to create, instead of thinking about things like this. Maybe we can get by if we just put our work out there without precisely defining our market.

I’ll be completely honest with you. I have no idea who my market is. I just put my pots on instagram and facebook, list some of them on Etsy, set up my booth at events (remember those?), and hope for the best. Okay, maybe I’m not quite that lost. I have some ideas. For example, the map mugs would probably be perfect for someone who likes to travel. Or who enjoys history or geography. But I know I could target certain people more specifically. So at the end of the episode I’ll talk about a few ways that I may be able to find my market..

First, let’s hear what other potters have said about who is your market and how did you find them?

Ibtispottery @potterymakinginfo Markets is where I sell my pottery and people who have seen me at markets would contact me to buy more.

This is an interesting point from Ibtispottery. The word market has a few different meanings. Market could mean the group of people that are looking for products like you are making. Market can also be a physical location or event. Usually these markets are already set up for you. I’m thinking of a farmer’s market or art fair. But the question is, are these predefined markets actually YOUR market? Technically, these are the people in front of your pots but are they the people that will be most interested in and most likely to buy your pots? Probably not all of them. We will explore this idea later.

Spectorstudiosporcelain A very smart friend told me that a market for your work is something you create. Working on that.

This friend seems very wise. You could probably argue about the words “create” vs. “find” when talking about your market but I think the idea is the same. It takes work and usually some kind of plan to figure out who your market is. And speaking of creating and finding a market, it was interesting to be part of the Michiana Pottery Tour this year. The previous 8 years it was an in-person event in the region around the Michigan / Indiana border. It was a self directed tour with 6-8 stops where potters would open their studios and often invite other guest artists to display their work. This year, being the pandemic year, we offered all our work for sale online and promoted to a nationwide audience. We could change the idea of our market because we were shipping pots instead of expecting people to drive and see us in person. There was still a large concentration of website visitors that were from our region but we also had visitors from just about every state in the US. In fact, we had over 400 visitors from the combination of California and NY together. So we definitely expanded our market to a wider geographic audience. On the other hand, are there people that are willing to drive and see us but don’t like to buy things online? Under our current circumstances, these tradeoffs were acceptable.

Littleblackberrycreekpots Everyone is a potential Little Blackberry Creek Pottery lover. I do 4-7 shows a year, two studio tours, and follow my business plan of 1/3 wholesale, 1/3 consign and 1/3 direct. When I see a dip in one area, that's where I target. At the end of every promotion day, I realize that I would have much rather have been ...