Selling out
Jun. 25th, 2016 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrWe're in Roseburg this weekend for the Umpqua Valley Summer Arts Festival. Set-up is Friday morning, with the show opening to the public at noon. By eleven o'clock, we're up and organized, and people are starting to drift through. Volunteers, mostly, and staff, here to help with the event and incidentally get an early look at the wares on offer, before the general public arrives.
I'm chatting with one such, commenting on the new layout, the much improved weather, compared to last year (high of 75° today, as opposed to 105° last year.)
She says she hopes we have a great weekend. Thanks, I say, I hope so too. No, she says, I hope you sell out! I hope you go back home with nothing but empty boxes.
Uh, no.
First off, does she know how many boxes I have? There's over $15,000 worth of pots in this booth. No way is that ever gonna happen.
Nor should it. If I sold that many pots this weekend, I'd saturate the market. I've been coming to this show for twenty years, making steady money, reasonable sales. A sold-out weekend means I needn't come back.
And what about my other shows? Saturday Market next weekend? Salem Art Festival next month? It takes me 4-6 weeks to make, glaze and fire a kiln-load of pots. I can't possibly restock from a sold-out show by next Saturday.
I've gotten this impractical good-luck wish from people before, and I think it comes from a basic misperception. They think of this show as a thing unto itself, like a yard sale. You save up stuff all year, clean out your closets, and put it all on the front lawn, in the hope that you'll get rid of it all. And maybe by next year, you'll have collected enough stuff to do it again.
But Off Center Ceramics isn't a yard sale. (Or even a gallery exhibit, a similar dynamic.) It's a store, one that's open somewhere or other every weekend. I have to maintain an inventory; you don't expect to go into a store and find the shelves empty. If you do, you certainly don't come back.
So I'll take some sales. Reasonable sales. A few empty boxes going home, some empty spots in the mugs and bowls restock bins. And the opportunity to come back next year to do it again.
I'm chatting with one such, commenting on the new layout, the much improved weather, compared to last year (high of 75° today, as opposed to 105° last year.)
She says she hopes we have a great weekend. Thanks, I say, I hope so too. No, she says, I hope you sell out! I hope you go back home with nothing but empty boxes.
Uh, no.
First off, does she know how many boxes I have? There's over $15,000 worth of pots in this booth. No way is that ever gonna happen.Nor should it. If I sold that many pots this weekend, I'd saturate the market. I've been coming to this show for twenty years, making steady money, reasonable sales. A sold-out weekend means I needn't come back.
And what about my other shows? Saturday Market next weekend? Salem Art Festival next month? It takes me 4-6 weeks to make, glaze and fire a kiln-load of pots. I can't possibly restock from a sold-out show by next Saturday.
I've gotten this impractical good-luck wish from people before, and I think it comes from a basic misperception. They think of this show as a thing unto itself, like a yard sale. You save up stuff all year, clean out your closets, and put it all on the front lawn, in the hope that you'll get rid of it all. And maybe by next year, you'll have collected enough stuff to do it again.
But Off Center Ceramics isn't a yard sale. (Or even a gallery exhibit, a similar dynamic.) It's a store, one that's open somewhere or other every weekend. I have to maintain an inventory; you don't expect to go into a store and find the shelves empty. If you do, you certainly don't come back.
So I'll take some sales. Reasonable sales. A few empty boxes going home, some empty spots in the mugs and bowls restock bins. And the opportunity to come back next year to do it again.