Late in November

I t was early in November, as I remember when I was invited to have work in the galleries Christmas show. Don't ya know? I was pleased and excited to be included. I was making my mark on the world I concluded. All be it a small mark, I call it my hallmark, but people would come to review it. If I hurried my works were prejuried. with no preinspection, there's no fear of rejection. So with a smile, I said that I'd do it. You can imagine my composure as I read the disclosure, of the rules. Five works, in my case in copper, in their possession tomorrow, no problem thinks me. The gallery charges a forty percent fee! I regain my composure and consider the exposure. I must pick up the unsold  next year, for sure. Oh happy day, and oh by the way, I'll get my check on Valentines Day! I almost said screw it, but I said that I'd do it.and I am a man of my word .So in my frustration, I bookmarked the occasion, They were in  heaven, when I sent them seven. Oh the things that we do. It's been years ago, but again I'll forgo my membership in this years Christmas show. Oh what the heck I might cash the check. It's from a Gallery. ya know!.

new work

 Forms start to come together

A couple of fold formed trays

 Seven Fold

Seven Fold  

The materials we use.

I just did the math on the purchase of a rather interesting material. I do not work in this material. I have many friends that do. Here's a quote I found this morning from a friend on Face Book.

One mystery solved: PMC Pro, which will apparently be available next week, is 10% copper. At WLW, the launch price for a 25-g pack is $56. Looking forward to hearing what folks have to say about this metal clay.

Ok That means that the actual silver in this material is sold to the customer at a rate of $ 71.00 per troy ounce fine silver. The actual trading price of fine silver today is $23.50.   In other words the cost this material is almost 3 times the value of the metal.

I work in the metal using direct metal techniques.

Drill bit marketing

     If  you go out into the world and attempt to sell drill bits using the traditional approach, you will starve. The traditional, acceptable, method of marketing drill bits is to display them where people can see them and wait until people someone comes along, makes their selection and final purchase. In other words the marketing approach of drill bits is no marketing at all. Even worse are the places that keep their drill bits out of sight and only available to customers with insider information. In other words the educated customer has to ask for a specific item to purchase it. Selling lots of drill bits is about a different kind of thinking than the traditional supply company uses.
    Selling lots of drill bits is more about teaching, counseling and providing solutions to everyday problems. This gets to be kind of fun because almost no one wants to be a salesman. Most people believe they can't sell anything. They are probably right. However these same people can really get into teaching, counseling people and providing solutions to real problems. Go figure. I think the confusion arises from the difference between clerks and sales people.
      The ability to sell a significant quantity of drill bits requires a shift in thinking. Selling drill bits is about holes, all kinds of holes in a variety of different materials. Provide the world with the ability to make clean holes of differing sizes, in a variety of materials, in a clean and efficient manner and you have some thing the world will be very interested in. Holes are necessary. Holes were and are one of the keys to civilization. A wheel isn't a wheel until you can put it on an axle. That action requires a hole! Civilization advances once stones get holes in them and man no longer has to attempt to tie a rock to a handle to make a hammer. The hammer making materials change over the years. The necessity of being able to make holes increases in demand and complexity. This isn't rocket science or brain surgery, though neither rocket scientist or brain surgeon could get very far without holes. Holes are very special things. Necessary, useful and in high demand.
      Do you know there is demand for square holes? There are machines and drill bits that produce them? These square holes are 1/2 of the concept of mortise and tendon joints in wood working. There is also demand for holes in unusual materials, beyond but not excluding wood, plastics and metal. Concrete, stone and glass present their own challenges. Scale also influences hole making  Very large holes require different tools than very small holes. Ice augers can't drill pearls. There is another element to hole making to consider.
Let's consider standardization. Holes can be of variable sizes that's significant. But suppose I desire to have  quantity of holes that are consistent in size. Interchangeable, standardized,  uniform holes are very useful.
     Holes can also be self filling. Imagine a tool that becomes a fastener as well as making it's own hole, The self tapping sheet metal screw is an example.  Holes can be a deep subject, well? Holes can go all the way through things but some would be useless if they did, oil wells. Sorry for the puns.
    Selling a lot of drill bits is about providing people with the ability to make holes where they want them. Empowering the people is a noble thing to be doing.
     Ok So just how is this relating to my selling my stuff?.  First of all don't let your product be represented by clerks. They don't sell many drill bits. They don't know the world needs holes.
Selling drill bits-selling your art work equals figure out what real need your product answers. That's the whole of it

But I hate typing

     I hated typing class in junior high school. Primarily the problem was and still is I like to watch what my hands are doing. We were expected to have our eyes on the thing we were copying and not look at our hands. Our progress was measured by speed and accuracy. Here's what happened.  Words were defined as any five characters correctly placed on the paper. When time was applied  to the the equation and you could arrive at words per minute rate. If you "misspelled" a word it was counted against your wpm. It became possible to type at negative words per minute rate. I usually typed at a negative thirty words per minute. I was getting faster, as time progressed, some times I could get the rate up to negative 35. wpm. One day the instructor in her wisdom decided we would be graded on our improvement. The ones showing the most improvement would get the best grade. Light bulbs came on. I typed one word accurately in that minute test. To go from negative 35 wpm to one word per minute is a large percentage improvement! Boy was the teacher POed about that one.  The principal agreed with me.
     Bob on the other hand, a class mate of mine and still a close friend, only showed a dismal improvement of five words from his rate of 35 wpm to 40.  Bob would go on to greater things. His typing would prove to be an important skill. Bob owned a printing company and had ghost written a couple of books before he took the job as a Navy reserve recruiter. He was assigned to a base in the middle of Iowa. I always found that to be somewhat humorous. I'd frequently ask him where his ship was. He never found that amusing. I think because not having a ship was part of the problem. Bob started recruiting sailors by doing about the only thing he could do to increase awareness.  He started writing. He wrote articles of all kinds. about being in the Navy. Then he started submitting the articles to newspapers and magazines. The articles got printed and taken seriously by professionals of all kinds. Dentists and doctors found his message useful as they considered their careers.
     Bob explained it to me this way. People in the news industry have a serious problem. They continually face a deadline. They have a limited amount of time to produce a quality product. When he presented a well written article to them he was making their daily job a bunch easier. They love it. Bob's career blossomed.
    Bob had the almost unlimited ad budget of the Navy Reserve behind him yet the articles he was writing were proving to be effective.  Toward the end of his career he had many people under his command all of them could type better than him.  I will continue to salute his uncommon thinking.  

The care and handeling of the media

My father was a carpenter in the Air Force during WW 2. He was stationed in Peterborough, England. It's there that he met my mother. Dad built barracks mostly during the time period. Dad never got over building things. Even though his career was built on selling tools and supplies to farmers. Dad built things ie, houses, barns, garages bedrooms and kitchens. There were no do it yourself centers, there were lumber yards. There was no do-it-yourself movement. Being the kid of a man with the ability to do it meant he would do it himself. That really meant the kid would help.   I learned to do those things, mostly out of self defense. It should come as no surprise that by the age of three his grandchild would have  a hammer collection. That kid now has an MFA in metalsmithing, no surprise.
     Most Do It Yourself centers have really become a strong argument for the concept of hiring a professional. I have a contractors hat that I wear in the DIY center, mostly to get the people that have no clue, to get out of my way.  
     "I design and make custom gold and silver wedding bands"  was the classified ad I ran weekly in the newspaper my last three years of college.(I wrote it myself) That single ad was my total advertising and media exposure during the time period. There was an amazing thing that happened at the end of the time period. The newspaper people began to know me, they became customers. They gave me a graduation gift. They gave me a double truck story about my little business. The article was the bridal edition of the paper that year. It's funny how it all came about.
     Placing my ad became a weekly thing to do. In part because I had things to deliver you my customers there and because there might be new thing to make. It was no surprise when the editor of the paper called me into his office. on one of those trips. I built pieces for his wife. This time he had something to present to me. His paper was going to do a story about me. I had to do some things in preparation. I had to write the story and plan the photo shoot. They weren't going to use the story I would write. Their writers would do that and their staff photographer would actually do the shoot. I had to be prepared for the interview. Here's an interesting side bar. The pieces I built for the people at the newspaper more than paid for the ad I placed with them! Because I was prepaying months ahead I got a great rate for my ad.
   My professor had the two full page article on the door to his office the day it came out, The head of the art department had it on his window. All my professor had to say to me that morning was, "Brad you can't buy advertising like that."   More coming on this topic.
 
   

It's a trebuchet kind of thing

Let me explain a gorilla marketing approach to getting some exposure. The example begins with the building or making of a trebuchet. Trebuchets were siege weapons used to tear down the walls of castles. They are similar to catapults except they add a sling to increase the throwing ability. I've built several of them over the years. The last one was built using 2x6s for the frame and man hole covers for the weights. This was a rather large project. We built it it's own trailer. The treb could throw stuff. bowling balls, pumpkins, type writers or bags of flour. The local news paper thought it news worthy that I would build a trebuchet in my back yard. Renaissance
Faires and pumpkin patch events paid us to bring the Treb to their events. Local news papers found . pumpkin chucking to be news worthy.  People loved seeing it fire. People would pay to see it chuck their stuff. Small computer monitors, etc. People purchased small trebuchets from us as well as plans for larger ones.
    Do you see a difference between setting up your stuff at the local craft show with a hundred other people to gain exposure and getting paid to show people your wonderful interactive kinetic sculpture. One of those two approaches is going to get your picture in the paper = real exposure.
    Sounds pretty simple doesn't it. Just make something real cool and let people see it. Here's the trick. It's not a big secret. But it's the part that most makers don't do.  Write your own press release. Take pictures
   Tomorrow I'm going to write about the care and handling of the media.