"Make What People Want to Buy"

This is the most common advice I read online for artists. I saw it today in the Etsy forums; I see it everywhere. Not selling as well as you'd like? Change what you make to something people want more! Do market research to find out what to make!

Well - pardon my Klingon - fuck that noise. If you aren't going to be true to your aesthetic, what's the point of being an artist at all? If you just want to sell stuff and you don't care what, why not sell insurance? I know a guy making six figures doing that.
Here's how it might play out in my case: Let's say my market research informs me that in Maine, a lot of people seem to enjoy buying smooth rocks with lobsters and lighthouses painted on them. How could that translate to pottery? Why, I could make pots with lobsters and lighthouses painted on them! I'm not interested in that imagery, but I'd probably sell 'em faster than I could make 'em. Unless I didn't...because I'm not interested in it, I might not do it well. And then I'd have a bunch of pots that even I didn't like. Or, I would sell bunches of them, and I'd spend hours of the only life I get making stuff which is meaningless to me. It's a no-win.

The way I see it, part of an artist's job is trying to find the people who want to buy what you want to make. Sure, it would be easier to change what what you make, but if that's the priority, it's much easier not to be an artist at all.

Sorry for sermon.

Pots By the Pound

One of the things I spend a lot of time thinking about is business practices for artists. To my mind these are necessarily different from other sorts of businesses; every seminar and lecture on the topic I've attended - admittedly not that many - has started with the Make What People Want to Buy approach. That ain't gonna work for me, but I still look to conventional models for other aspects of my business. Pricing, for example, and the related and very important Getting Paid part of working.

I've mentioned before in this space my friend, Mr Business Guy. With regard to pricing and salary, Mr. Business Guy recommends a backing-in approach: decide how much money you want to make, figure out how much pottery you can make, and price accordingly. While I was trying to think of a way to translate that into a practical approach, another friend mentioned wanting to work out by-the-pound pricing, to solve the pricing problem once and for all. Two great thoughts that taste great together! (Metaphor fail. WHATEVER, don't judge.)

So an equation to figure out part A - how much money do I want? might look like this:

Total of all household expenses per year: utilities, mortgage, groceries, insurance, taxes, all those. Let's call that BM, for Bare Minimum.

We are going to add 15% of BM, for unforeseen expenses (UFE). This is largely arbitrary, because unforeseen expenses are, well...unforeseen. But I had to put something in for them, and if I think back on past UFE, I think 15% is reasonable.

Now for savings(S). This is hard for me, because I have a history of lowballing this number; my current savings, for example, are in the high single digits. Most of the reading I have done says between 10 and 20%, but of course there are multiple factors influencing the number, such as how old one is, and the absolute number we are taking a percent of. I'm going on the high end, because I'll be 50 this year, and because I suspect my income will always be on the low end, even if it's plenty for me.

So now we have:

BM
+
UFE = BM x 0.15
+
S = BM x 0.20

BM, coincidentally, can also stand for Bowel Movement; and life at the bare minimum can be pretty shitty. I need, and you probably need, to add something on top of this to have a little fun, buy a new shirt, contribute to causes you care about, maybe get the name-brand ketchup once in a while. Here's the sticky part: how much disposable income do you want? In some ways that's an easy question: as much as you can get, right? But remember every upward tick of the final number makes the people who will both want and be able to buy your work harder to find, so there's a trade-off. My BM number is relatively low, by design: no kids, a relatively small mortgage, no car note, no cable package or cell phone plan. I'm going to do my initial calculation by doubling BM, to account for disposable income. I feel nervous just saying that, but what the hell, it's an exercise. Let's find out what it would take to get there.  So now we've got:

2BM + UFE + S

That's how much my salary would be. That, of course, doesn't account for how much it costs me to make the pots; fortunately I have this number readily available, as my schedule-C deductions. Let's call Business Expense "BE."

(2BM + UFE + S) + BE = the total amount of gross income I would need to bring in from all sources to make this equation work.

Now that I have a number, I need a way to connect what I actually make to that number. That's where pots by the pound comes in. I know how much clay I buy each year. Well, actually, I don't. But Karen at Portland Pottery can probably look into my account history there and tell me. If I divide the number of dollars I need to make by the number of pounds of clay, I then can take that number, and arrive at a price point for any given piece: if it takes six pounds to make a bowl, and the per-pound number is $10 (just pulling that one out of my butt - haven't done the math yet), then the bowl is $60. That's would have to be the wholesale price.

But now it's time to pack up and head for Portland to teach my class. No time for math! Will follow this up later, gator.

UPDATE: I've added some features to the equation, after talking with people who know more about these things than I do. 

The Season of Abundance

It's fall. Okay, technically it's summer for another ten days, but, ya know...it's fall. Like every September, I am about buried in a mound of tomatoes right about now. I also have cilantro, garlic, and jalapeños. Now all I need are some limes, chili powder, and cumin, and I have the makings of fresh salsa. I will make approximately a boatload, and freeze most for later. 

Basil and oregano are in abundance, too, and I am pureeing up a storm with my tomatoes to freeze for future spaghetti sauce. I'm also clipping and drying those herbs, along with thyme and rosemary. I love this admittedly illusory sense of self-sufficiency, and every year I am tempted to go further: Keep bees! Maybe chickens! Does Augusta have an ordinance about goats? 

Fall does this to me; it puts me a mode of producing, and hoarding: what is instinct, except millennia of collective memory? Mine is telling me, make and save. Make and save. Winter is coming.

In the studio, too, I am a busy bee. Making and saving, also for winter, in a different way: for the shopping season. I am incredibly bad at guessing what people will want to buy, so I just make what I want to make. Here's what I want to make:

• Mugs! So many mugs. 
• I got a little burned out on butterdishes in the spring, but I am ready once again to embrace one of my favorite forms. (Speaking of: I've been asked a few times about the video of my Process Room demo at NCECA. The answer is, I don't know. There have been many videos from the conference posted to NCECA's YouTube page, but none from the Process Room yet. Believe me, when it appears I'll share it here like five minutes later.)

Altered oval vases! These are a new fave: fun shapes, lots of surface to decorate. Also, they demand handles. 

Wine Chillers: These seem like such joyful pots to me; it makes me happy to imagine them in use. Holiday dinner. Date night. First night in a new apartment. 

Serving bowls! Obvs.

This will probably be the last kiln load I'll throw in the summer studio before the whole operation moves upstairs. That's a bummer in some ways, because making stuff in the summer studio feels like camp. Everything is fun upta camp! (Throwing a little Maine dialect atcha.)But I have more room in the winter studio, more shelf and table space. I can make more stuff, more quickly! It's fall. That urge for making is upon me.

It's fall. 

Visual Appeal: Lessons from the Donut Shop

For Christmas I received, among other things, a Dunkin' Donuts gift card. (Thanks Mom!) It reminded me of something that's been tickling my brain ever since I wrote the post about the chocolate covered pretzel sticks. I mentioned in that post that my first job was at Dunkin' Donuts, and I used to amuse myself by trying to make the donuts look as appealing as possible.

What started tickling my brain then, and finally entered my conscious thought this morning as I chose a boston creme and a chocolate coconut, is this: what I was doing was visual merchandising.

Much of what worked to sell donuts could be explained as an indictor of quality. A even coat of sugar was appealing to people perhaps because it appears to have more sugar than a patchy-looking donut. Or maybe it made the donuts look fresher and less man-handled. The same could be said for smooth, shiny frosting. But other qualities were less evidently related to donut-enhancing qualities: Why are jelly donuts more appealing if all the little dots of jelly peering out of the fill-holes are pointed in the same direction? And why, if you only want two, are you more likely to buy from the tray that has 20 identical donuts on it, than the one that has five?

I don't have an answer to that but nevertheless I know that it's true. There is something about abundance that makes people want to take home part of it. Which makes me think: might we sell more mugs just by displaying more similar mugs together? When I make mugs I might make twenty or thirty more or less the same, but when I glaze and fire I try to get variety in the kiln. Maybe I would be better served to fire similar things together, so that on the retail shelves, mugs stay with their cohort.

I have seen first hand how effective visual marketing is: I could predict - nay, manipulate - what people would buy before they walked in the door. And my experience is one tiny shred of what visual marketing entails. Might be worth learning more about, if a person wanted to work smarter instead of harder.

Just a thought.

Do What You Love, Blah Blah Blah

I've been reading articles lately (here's one) on following your passion as a work/life choice, a topic which is very close to home for me. (Hey Captain Obvious! Missed you.) The full mantra is either "Do what you love. Love what you do" or "Do what you love and the money will follow." BWAAA-HAAAAA-HAAA-HA-HA!!! HAH! HA! HA!

Oh, my, let me catch my breathe a bit. That last one really hits me funny bone for some reason.

Smart assitude aside, I've been an advocate for this approach, never noticing the snobbery built into it. The aphorisms themselves suggest that if you find yourself doing a tedious or unpleasant job, it's because you were insufficiently dedicated to your passion. If only everyone would do what they love, then every job would be filled by passionate, enthusiastic people!

Except, no. Most jobs in the world are not especially lovable, but somebody still needs to do them. Somebody needs to assemble the iphones, if they are going to get assembled. Somebody needs to take away the rubbish. It's hard to imagine a person busing dishes as a calling because of their deep love of the work and dedication to being the best damn busboy ever. I'm not saying one should not do what they love; only that we should recognize the extraordinary privilege built into the freedom to make that choice.

Even me. Especially me.

I do what I love, yes. I make pottery and teach others to make pottery, and I love doing it. And the money has not followed from just loving what I do and my commitment to do it as well as it can be done, no. I've made the financial end work by hook or by crook, but it's an outright lie to imply that just dedication to a passion will cause the world to supply one with a living. The fact that we are still afloat owes much to middle class beginnings and privileges: I have a college education, and a mid-Atlantic accent that helps me interview very well when I have needed to grab a temp job to cover a shortfall. We made it through December because many of our Christmas presents were Hannaford gift cards (thank God), made possible because we have family who can afford to buy gift cards. Our car recently died, so we drove a vehicle borrowed from a friend who is traveling for a few months until we could replace it. Friends with resources are a privilege, too.

Right now I am struggling with whether I can continue to be potter in a full time way.  This is not a pity party (although the next time I have one, you'll surely get a gold-plated invitation and a ringside seat; I do love me a good pity party.) This is an observation: part of my struggle here is a sense of shame, that I might have to lower myself to do work which is merely work. And that is bullshit.

There is no failure there. I want to get past the reverence for creative pursuits above more mundane ones which makes me feel I am wasting the Gifts of the Magi or something if I decide that the necessary thing for me and my family is for me to get an office job. No more than I am wasting my talents as a receptionist (and I can joke about it, but I really was a very good receptionist) by spending my days with muddy hands.

This isn't a big announcement, and more likely than not I will find a way to keep on keeping on, because I am stubborn as hell and maybe a little selfish. Instead, this is  a shout-out to the folks whose work is purely work, an economic activity, and a reminder to myself not to devalue those whose jobs that are done of necessity rather than passion. If I join their ranks, I am still me, still a person, still making a contribution.

Looks like the Week of Reflection has begun.

Feeding the Beast: Social Media Marketing for Artists

Read an interesting comment on a SubReddit about social media marketing: nobody scrolls to learn. They scroll to feel.

I am not shy to admit, I suck at marketing! I'm a pretty good potter and a fine educator, but I think I'm too wonky and in-the-weeds to shine at marketing. Like, I love to talk about process! (WANNA HEAR SOME MORE ABOUT BURNER VALVES?? Didn't think so 😄) You know who likes to hear about process? Other potters! You know who has the least money or need for handmade pottery? You guessed it: other potters! (OH HAI OTHER POTTERS! Glad to see you here) What can I say? That's my authentic self. If people scrolled to learn, I'd be a champion at social media. And if "ifs & buts" were candy & nuts, we'd all have a very merry Christmas. 

Also, most people hate being sold-to. They want to be entertained & engaged. If they buy from you, they want it to be their idea.

So, if people scroll to feel, what might we try to make them feel? Curiosity, wonder, amusement. In this vein - not that I recommend doing it on purpose! - stories of minor studio disasters get a lot of sympathy engagement. My recent burner difficulties were too technical to be interesting to most people (except maybe you guys!) but I know of a potter who deliberately topples boards full of freshly thrown pots, because his audience responds. I would not do that, for all the reasons, not the least because it's the very definition of inauthentic. It works for him, though: he gets thousands of comments on those posts. 

I need to learn this skill better, so after the pottery tour, I plan to sign up for a Social Media Marketing course through Coursera. I'd have to choose a free one, obvs; if I were making enough money to pay tuition I wouldn't need the course in the first place. Have any of you done one of these? What did you think?

Also, I'd love to hear about your approaches to social media marketing, your successes and, if you want to share, your failures. I mostly use Instagram and Facebook, have just started on Bluesky, and of course you've heard me mention Patreon. I guess Blogger counts, too? Those all seem to require different approaches. TikTok is right out, for me: all content creation is work but videos are a shit ton of work & I just don't have the time or tbh the sparkling personality for that. I do a little bit on YouTube, but I can only do it because I give myself permission to suck at it and not care too much that I suck at it. (It's called authenticity, ok?? 😄)

Leave your ideas in the comments! XO L

Challenging Aesthetics, Or, The Last Juicy Mug from The Juicy Firing

There was a super- juicy area in this last kiln - no dry spots (YAY) but there was a region that got heavy soda, so much glaze it flowed in rivulets on some pots. As it does when it's fired in reduction, the thick soda glass turned charcoal...wait, no, silver...what's another pretty word for grey?

I just mean - in selling these pots, I never describe them as just grey. Dove grey, maybe, or pearl grey.  People think they don't like grey. Shopkeepers think people don't like grey. But these pots, with their juicy grey rivers of soda? Are flying out of here. Every time I post one it's gone in an hour. (KNOCKS WOOD, really hard. Nothing to hear, here, jealous gods, move along!) So I only have one left, of the mugs from the super-juicy spot in the super-juicy firing. It has some grey, flecked with gold.

Why are these the mugs in huge demand, in a world where bright colors are king? I have some thoughts about this, about how people make aesthetic judgments.

There may be some aspect of aesthetics that is hardwired - a preference for bright color would make it easier to find food: fruit, obviously, and edible flowers; and flowers can mark the locations of edible roots, or, later, berries. It must be a pretty mild preference, though, (if it's there are all) because historically plenty of cultures have favored neutrals and muted tones. Most of our aesthetic is formed by what we see every day. And what we see every day is formed by our aesthetic. It's a feedback loop. But there are little cul-de-sacs of  preference that form when people spend a lot of time with a less-mainstream aesthetic.

The people who bought these magical grey, wonky, fluid mugs? All people who, while not potters, have spent some time looking at and thinking about handmade ceramics. For most people, their ideas of what is beautiful are shaped almost entirely by machine-made objects. Things that are asymmetrical in form or surface, things which have uncontrolled aspects, these look weird or flawed to most people. The same for colors: what is thought of an normal is informed by what we see every day.  In Western culture, we favor neutrals for background aspects - walls, floor, window treatments, even furniture - and but we are drawn to brights for more intimate objects - towels, throw pillows, and yes, pottery. We also favor the kind of symmetry that comes from machine work.  (I have a world of thoughts about this: how people think they want handmade but the handmade most people like best looks a lot like mass produced ware. )Yes, this is a very broad generalization, and yes, many people fall outside of it. Don't @ me , I know! That's the point: the exceptions. Where do they come from?

They come from exposure to things outside the mainstream aesthetic. From you, from us, with our wacky, wonky, handmade pots! Every time you show them or post them or use them with friends, you are changing the world a little bit. You are changing the cultural aesthetic just a titch. I like to think that at the same time we are making the culture a little more accepting of differences, quirks, oddballs. If you can love a pot that is a little off-center, why not a person? If you can love a mug that doesn't fit anyone's mold, maybe you can see as lovable a person who doesn't fit society's mold. It's OK - no, it's beautiful! - for us each to be unique.

ANYWAY! Sorta wandered off into the weeds, there (but they are very beautiful weeds!)  If you want the last super-juicy mug from the super-juicy firing, you can buy it here. Who knows when the kiln will grace me so again?

More Thoughts on Branding

I realized a few things about this topic after I posted about this last time, and those are these:

1. Most (not all, but most) of the potters I know who are making an actual living, as opposed to having a higher-earning spouse or family money (not that there's anything wrong with that - believe me, no snotty judgement here) or working another job, are potters who have a line, or a few lines, of production, the work from which is very, very consistent. You might say these are the most well-branded potters: customers know what they are getting, and they know they will get the same thing every time. I am thinking of outfits like Union Pottery, and The Potter's House (owned by my good friend Mary K. Spencer) here in Maine. Purchasing from these potteries is more like buying from a big retailer: you chose the style you want, as many as you want, and trust that they will be exactly the same. You can order matching pieces, and you can feel confident that, if you want to order six more mugs later, you can still get them. These potters have found a road between creativity and commerce that works for them.And:
2. Part of the reason it works is because it fits in the model shoppers are comfortable with, because most of their buying experiences are with big, consistent retailers. Buying a one-of-a-kind piece from an individual, it's different. It's outside of the comfortable predictability. And:
3. I already tried that road, and it doesn't work for me. Remember Cottage, Lodge, and Sweet Life? I designed three lines, going on four, so I could pursue all of my aesthetic inclinations, when I realized it was too limiting. After a short while I didn't want to make any of them, even if they started selling like hot dogs at Fenway. This put me in mind of all those silly books in the 80s about how to make a man fall in love with you. The strategy may have worked, but by the time it did you'd despise him.

But I digress.
I've received several comments and emails to the effect that having a very recognizable style and body of work is what passes for branding among studio as opposed to production potters. (Again, no judgement. Just examining what works or and what doesn't for me.) I think I am approaching that point, so maybe branding is not my problem at all.

Instead I think I need to spend more time thinking about marketing: the process of getting the work in front of the people who might buy it, and  selling: the process of convincing those people it's a good way to spend their money.

I remain convinced that the work itself is not the problem, in part because of some good advice I got from Bob Briscoe, a near-legend of a Mingei-soda potter. I was getting discouraged and wondering aloud if maybe the work was just not good enough. I can't remember his exact words but Bob said something to the effect of: Never do that. Nothing good can come of it. If you're in the studio every day, committed to making the best pots you can, what more can you do?

Sort of scary that that was 20 years ago, and I still have the same problems now. On the other hand, I'm still standing, still throwing, still firing.

That's something.

How to Not Hate Etsy

Remember when I broke up with Etsy? Seems like it was only yesterday, but it's been more than 18 months! So much has happened. Etsy has changed. I've changed.

It's not what it sounds like! I'm not going back to the way it was before, the endless forum-haunting, photo-tweaking, and re-listing. I just think there may be a place for Etsy in my life; my expectations are different this time. For one thing, we won't be exclusive. Etsy was never committed to helping my business. I know that now. Et$y is only after one thing. But I know what I want out of the relationship. All I really want is the Facebook tab.

Yes, that's right. I am doing it for the Facebook tab. Which isn't even a tab anymore but a tiny little link on the lefthand side.

This all came about as a result of all that math I was doing a few days ago. I left out a possible way to increase to kiln yield strictly in terms of dollars, and that is to sell more retail. Right now I have several big consignment and wholesale accounts, but only a few friends to whom I sell retail. (I used to sell to my friends at half-price, which I called the Friends & Family discount, but then it stretched to included acquaintances and co-workers and friends of friends. How do you tell someone, "I'm sorry, but while Suzy is a close enough friend to qualify for the F&F discount, you are not. It was a near thing, but I have to draw then line somewhere." Basically everyone I ever met was getting the half-price deal, which was unfair to my wholesale accounts, so I stopped doing it. Now it's immediate family only, and they are usually getting seconds anyway. But I digress.)

So. I needed a way to offer items for retail sale. I do sell through the sister blog to this one, but Etsy provides a way to showcase multiple items at once, and to have those items available on Facebook whenever anybody happens to want one. And it's only 20 cents every four months, per item.

So it's time to bury the hatchet with Etsy. With that in mind, I've compiled this list of all the things that drove a wedge between Etsy and me in past attempts. Here are my Top Ways to Not Hate Etsy:

• The very best way to use Etsy and not hate it is to be a shopper. It's a lot of fun from that vantage point.
  

• Stay out of the forums! This deserves subsections:

They are hatcheries for drama. I really don't give a shirt about resellers on Etsy, or someone copying someone's design, or what everyone thinks of the new relevancy search.

I can't resist clicking on those "Here's how I made a bajillion sales yesterday, and you can, too!" threads. Every single one of them was a list of things I was already doing ("Promote! Change your photos! Re-write your listings! Relist frequently! And if you are doing those things and the aren't working, do them more!" It's really frustrating and aggravating, so it's best if I just don't read them.

There's a creepy dynamic there between true believers, who worship at the church of Etsy, and people who apparently think Etsy is genuinely evil and yet they still keep selling there. Don't get sucked in.

• Don't fall for that re-listing scheme. The more sellers relist, the more sellers need to relist to stay high in the search, until the ideal time between relistings is infinitely brief, and everyone is relisting everything, always. Counting on shoppers finding you through searching your category is a losing battle. Sure, it can happen, but when it does, it's like found money. I found $60 on a bar floor one time, but I wouldn't write it into a business plan. In fact:
• Don't count on Etsy for anything. Money in the pot is the pot's money. A listing is 20 cents every four months, for which you get a link through which someone could buy something. It's up to you to do everything else to get the link in front of people, or nothing at all; it's only 20 cents.
  
• Don't pelt your Twitter followers with links to your listings, unless you want them all to hate you.
• This one might be specific to me, but I am choosing the "Made to order" option this time. Not custom -- perish the thought! -- but I will make pieces as people order them. That way I don't have to have a bunch of inventory here, languishing, when it could be sitting on a shelf somewhere, selling or helping something else sell.
  

I guess that's about it.

Just don't say "I told you so."

The Week of Reflection is Upon Us!

I love the week between Christmas and New Years'. All the shows are done, all the carols are sung and the Yule logs burned; all the cookies are frosted, the stockings stuffed with care and then unstuffed with abandon.

Not that I do any of that stuff. A Christmas of quiet contemplation is more my style. I am called upon to go to several gatherings, which I can usually just about manage, with some recharge time in between.

But this week! This is the week of no parties, no shopping or wrapping, no special-occasion foods to assemble; and for me, no classes to teach, no firings scheduled, no orders due. (No money*, either, as I have yet to get paid for holiday sales, but that's no problem: I am living on Hannaford & Dunkin Donuts gift cards this week!) Nor yet any Maine Pottery Tour stuff to do, which will start in January. This is the Week of Reflection, during which I consider the past year - what worked, what didn't, what I learned - and make a plan for the next.

Ah, 2019! The year of the cleaning robots and the Fitdesk, all rather extravagant purchases for a poor potter, and all well worth the cost. In the past I sometimes found myself falling down an internet hole, a tremendous waste of time. Some people would fight this tendency head on, perhaps even successfully! Me, I take more of a jujitsu approach: go with the flow. That's where the Fitdesk comes in. If my computer is always on the desk of this stationary bike, then even if I fall into an internet hole, the time is not wasted - I get my workout in. (Example: I have pedaled 9 miles this morning, having my coffee, reading the news, and writing this post!) This has done wonders for my heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. It's also much harder to fall down an internet hole, as my legs let me know when I've been at it too long. Win-win!

The robots solve a different problem, by way of going around it. I am by no means a neat freak, but I am tidy: neat but not a freak, I like to say. Doug, not so much. It would not be an exaggeration to say he's an utter slob. I don't plan to do that tiresome thing of bitching about my spouse to people who don't even know him - and anyone who does know him, knows how great he is: he's smart and fun and funny, and possessed of an intellectual curiosity as big as the sky. He laughs at my jokes! He loves to try new things! And he has never cleaned anything on his own initiative in his life. We could fight about this, and in fact, we have fought about it, with me arguing that cleaning up is just part of being a grown up, and him saying he shouldn't have to spend his time cleaning to my standards, and I knew he was a slob before we married. (The kicker here is that we are both right.) The robots - a Roomba vacuum and a Braava mop - don't address the disparity, but they do allow the house to be clean enough not to be a distraction to me, without me either doing all the work myself, or nagging him into doing it. Win-win!

What I learned: sometimes the cheapest way to pay for something, is with money.

There's lots more reflection & looking ahead to do this week. I am working on an outline of my making cycle, to help me plan better in 2020; I also need to think about new outlets I would like to approach. Stick with me, and if you are doing some reflection yourself this week, share those links in the comments.


*If you want to help with that, you could buy me a coffee or leave me a tip or maybe buy a tshirt!  But honestly I know no one reading this has much money to spare, either, so no worries if it's not in the cards right now. 😉

Pots By the Pound, Part II: Valuable Input

I've had some feedback about the Pots By the Pound equation, and it illustrates the value of listening to people who  know what they are talking about! (Listening is a skill I had to cultivate. I used to get defensive about my ideas and push back on perceived criticism; it's hard to learn anything, that way.) Some input I will put in place, because it is a genuine omission which would ultimately have caused the approach to fail. Others were just things that I needed to think about: if they needed to be in there, and if not, why not?

To review, the pricing equation looks like this:

2 x BM(Bare minimum of household expense) + UFE (15% of BM, for unforeseen expenses) + S (20% of BM for savings) + BE (Business Expenses) divided by PC (pounds of clay I purchase annually) = wholesale price per pound for pots. 

Firstly, someone pointed out that I have not accounted for failed pots. My numbers assume that 100% of the clay that I buy will result in a finished, salable piece. That is so not true! I lose at least 10% of my ware, though most of those become seconds rather than shards, due to normal parts of the clay process, like cracking and warping, accidental chipping of greenware or bisqueware, and glaze flaws; and a few more which are specific to vapor glazing: big crusty blobs of soda in the middle of a plate, for example, or a pot that received so little soda glass that the surface is dry and unappealing. There are also some pots that fail because I try something new and it doesn't go well.  I don't know if 10% is high or low, but I know all potters have some percentage of kiln-god sacrifice. So the PC part of the equation will now be amended to PC = pounds of clay purchased annually minus 10%. This pays for the inevitable expense of making pots that then fail.

Another important point mentioned was that I should build into the equation expenses that are not unforeseen but not annual, either. Someday I will have to replace my kiln. Someday I will have to rebuild the kiln, whole or in part. That will have to be part of BE; I am thinking ten percent every year of the initial cost of those items, and any other big purchases I can think of that come around rarely but predictably.

A point that required more reflection: a friend pointed out, correctly, that this model contains no profit for Fine Mess Pottery itself. There's compensation for me, and (now) money that will be saved for future predictable expenses, but Fine Mess (in theory if not in practice) will have zero dollars on the books at the end of each year. It will generate enough to keep me happy and afloat, but no extra to expand. No future larger facilities, no apprentices, no second kiln. Apparently businesses are supposed to do this, plan money to grow.

Seems obvious, so why did I leave it out? I realized: I don't want to grow. I'll need to expand my market to reach the numbers this equation generates (will eventually generate, when I stop talking about it and put some actual numbers instead of letters into it) and presumably my expenses will go up a little each year, and I may discover some needs I didn't know I had, but I don't want or need my business to grow beyond how many pots I can comfortably make, with enough time to make them well. In a sense, if you think of my compensation as a salary, an expense which Fine Mess Pottery incurs (if we can for a moment separate the potter from the Pottery), Fine Mess is sort of...non-profit. Not in the legal sense, of course, but I have no interest in building an empire, however small.I have no shareholders to satisfy.  I just want to make good pots and have a life free of oil-bill and car repair panic attacks. 

Problems with Square Up - Anyone Else? (ETA: got it fixed, this time)

WHAT THE HELL? I don't know, 
and nobody at Square knows either. smh

UGH so frustrating. I spent all day Sunday photographing pots, then Sunday evening I started to list them in my online retail shop, hosted by Square Up. Technically I guess it's hosted by Weebly? I don't know what the exact relationship is there - I just know that some of the things I need to do to sell online happen at Square Up, and then for something I get transferred to Weebly. Not this particular problem - this one is new - but I have had a lot more problems with Square Up since they partnered with Weebly. It got super complicated just to list stuff & now items are not even available for sale when I do list them! 

After trying everything I know how to do, I reached out to their support team - no answer yet - and on social media - the folks there suggested a few things but ultimately were unable to fix the problem. I have been using Square for years but I am thisclose to just deleting the whole page & going back to building my own listings on my website, with Paypal Buy Now buttons. Each one is a little more work but at least I know they will work. 

There are other options, too - Wix, Squarespace (which is a different company from Square), Amazon Handmade , even Etsy 😬- but honestly I don't know if I want to make a big change just to be in a position again where someone else controls whether I can sell items or not. 

(What I would really like is a Square Basic option: just list items with photo, description, price, and how many you have. It's available until someone buys it, then it's not. Easy-peasy. All that other shit just makes it complicated & creates more things to go wrong.)

Anyway, has anyone else had this problem? More to the point, does anyone out there know how to fix this problem? 

ETA: I finally got on the phone with Square Support. Via email they suck & had not gotten back to me within their 48 hour promised window, but on the phone the hold time was short, and though I did have to talk to 2 separate people to get it solved, it did get solved. (Whoever responds for Square via social media tried hard to help also but they couldn't figure it out.) The problem was a new setting under fulfillments that Square (or Weebly? who knows) now requires the user to set. I don't know how I was supposed to know about this setting that I have never had to deal with on any listing before, especially since the first 2 people I talked to at Square did not know about it either. So, on the plus side, at least it's fixed. On the down side, Square, that is some really crappy service. 
Also, Square? quit adding shit & changing shit. Just when I get it figured out you change some random thing & I'm back where I started. 

That One Image Transfer Technique

 

Every once in a while I read something about a technique to print a slip or underglaze design from a laser print. You know the one, where the toner behaves like a resist? Sorta looks impossible. Every once in a while I try to figure it out. This time I think I succeeded! Even though the tutorial is available from lots of people who are better at this than I am, I wanted to post it to mention the tricky spots, and what to do about them.

Here's what you need:

1. A laser print. Not a photocopy, not an inkjet print. Make it stark black & white - no gray tones
2. Slightly thin underglaze or slip. The thinner it is, the better it will roll away from the toner as, but also the fainter the design will be. This will take some monkeying around with, to get it right.
3. A soft brush. Very soft. A stiffer brush seems to press the slip to the paper too hard.
4. An early-leatherhard piece. 
5. A rubber rib, the really bendy kind
6. A throwing sponge
7. A spritz bottle of water. Very important! Release will be blotchy without it.
   

Here's what you do:

1. Brush your slip or underglaze onto the printed side of teh paper. One coat only; once the paper is wet, the resist doesn't work as well. Watch the slip roll away from the black areas. If a few spots are recalcitrant, you can blow on them really hard to encourage the slip to move. If the resist doesn't happen, your slip may be too thick.
2. Let the slip get bone-dry.
3. Cut into the shape of the print you want to make.
4. Spritz the surface of the piece so there's a thin sheen of water. Place the paper facedown on the wet surface
5. Spritz the back of the paper. Press repeatedly with a wet sponge. You'll begin to see the image showing through the paper. If there are areas where the image doesn't show, press the we sponge in those spots until it does.
6. Using the rubber rib, smooth the paper to the clay to encourage the transfer. 
7. Peel up the paper. Voilet! or whatever. Image transferred. Mine is still a little blotchy - I'll clean it up with a sgraffito tool later. I think with some practice I can get a cleaner image. 

Photos below, for the visual learners (like me) among you.

I just realized my hand reads "Bmix!" When I absolutely must remember something, I'll often write it on the back of my hand. I like to think it's not that I have a terrible memory, only that I have so much to remember. Tonight is Portland Pottery's Date Night raku firing, so lots to remember for that (starting with going there in the first place.) I'm out of bmix, so wanted to be sure and get some while I am in Portland anyway. LOL.

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