Nicolette’s Design Diary

***Warning: I’m about to step on to my artist soapbox, so if that’s not your thing…step away from this post now***

Now, in case you don’t know the term, buy/sell products are exactly that, they are products that people buy wholesale so they can sell them for a profit at retail. I had mentioned in a post last year that most artists hate buy/sell products with a passion. Why is it such a big deal? In a lot of cases, it’s a matter of competition. If an artist is exhibiting at an expo or a small “craft” show, it’s kind of hard to for an artist who hand makes all of their inventory to compete price and volume-wise with someone who purchased their products at wholesale. An artist can make some beautiful coffee mugs and sell them at $20 because they have to take in account not only how much the materials cost in making that coffee mug, but they also have to figure in labor costs and business overhead. Plus, an artist’s time is limited, they can only make so many mugs in any given day. So the size of their inventory is limited from the start. If they happen to sell out at a show, they have to go back into the studio for a couple weeks and build their inventory back up again before they can sell more. Meanwhile, someone two booths down can sell their coffee mugs for $7 a piece because they bought hundreds of them for a couple of dollars each. If they run out of inventory, no problem…they call up their supplier and can be back in business within a day or so.

Go to your average unjuried craft show at the local PTA, high school, or YMCA and you’ll find handmade crafts lined up side by side with Avon products and jewelry ordered from a wholesale catalog. There are very few artists who can successfully compete against buy/sell merchandise and still make a living, which is why most professional craft artists prefer to sell at juried craft shows. When a craft show is juried, that means that there are certain quality standards that an artist must meet before they are allowed exhibit at the show. Artists must submit images of their work to be judged by a single juror or a panel of jurors. One purpose of the jurying system is to filter out buy/sell exhibitors. That way, all of the artists are competing with each other on even territory and it also ensures that visitors to a show will have the opportunity to seen and buy work that is handmade and of a certain quality. But despite the existence of the jurying system, there are always some exhibitors who are less than honest about the products that they’re selling, which is another reason why artists tend to dislike buy/sell so much.

Once buy/sell products start creeping into juried craft shows, not only do you get the uneven playing field for artists, but it also defrauds and confuses the buying public as well. If you are not familiar about what goes into making something by hand, you’ll be confused as to why this artist’s handmade vase is $100 when you can get another “handmade” vase from another “artist” for $20. And if you have little experience with buying handmade ceramics, you won’t be able to figure out that this “handmade” vase was really made in a factory…or that it’s handmade all right…in a sweat shop somewhere.

Another thing that makes buy/sell so difficult to deal with is that even for experienced craft jurors, it can be hard to tell the difference. Last year at one of my shows, my husband and I ran across an exhibitor who we were certain was passing off buy/sell as handmade. How did we know? Because my husband had seen the exact same items in a store in the Phillipines during his annual trip there. He had, in fact, bought a couple and we had the exact same items at home. You could buy these items for less than a dollar over there and this exhibitor was selling them at the craft show for 10 or even 20 times that cost and they were literally flying out of this person’s booth. James was outraged and complained to the show manager who acknowledged that they had received complaints from both exhibitors and show visitors about this “artist”, but they needed to have further proof other than an accusation before they could do anything. Well, since we were in New Jersey at the time and our evidence was back home in Chesapeake, there wasn’t much that could be done at that point. While many show promoters do step in and kick out exhibitors who are proven to be selling buy/sell items, some promoters aren’t so proactive, even when they receive complaints. Some artists argue that show promoters sometimes turns a blind eye to obvious buy/sell because they want to fill booth space.

There is also the gray area of products that can be assembled from pre-made parts or from kits. I order the wire for my jewelry from a mail-order jewelry supply company and there are plenty of pre-made parts available in which you can make earrings, pins, pendents by simplying buying the part and pressing a stone or a bead into place. Could you honestly call buying a stone and a ring blank and popping the stone into place a “handmade” ring? Most people would say that it doesn’t take much workmanship to assemble a piece of work from a kit. But it’s easy for jewelry of this type to get accepted into many juried shows. I know because I’ve seen many, many jewelers with these items in their booths.

You might be thinking, “So what? Not everyone can afford a $500 vase and if they can find something that looks just as good and cheaper, well good for them.” I would have to agree with you. The best handmade and fine craft is not something that everyone can afford. I always joke that it’s a good thing that I made jewelry since I couldn’t afford to buy some of my own more expensive pieces. There are plenty of pieces I’ve fallen in love with while visiting fellow artists at a craft show…one of the hazards of the trade. But I’ve often had to content myself with a small piece…or find something close elsewhere. If you want inexpensive mass produced design go to Target…go to Pier 1…heck there’s a mountain of mail order catalogs you can order from. But these items don’t belong in a juried craft show. If you want to sell mass produced items, fine…just don’t lie about it so you can have an unfair advantage over those who designs and makes their own products by hand. And if you’re a show promoter who promotes craft shows where the items are truly handmade, do your best not to turn a blind eye to those who break the rules, it’s unfair to the other exhibitors and unfair to those who pay money to go to the show.

There…I’ll step off my soapbox now…

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