Another Show Done Gone
Nov. 28th, 2005 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fivecats
Another Christmas show down the drain. All in all, I suppose it wasn't all too bad. We made some money (probably less than last year), had some neat, funny neighbors and found a youngish kid who makes neat fleece hats today, thus taking care of a few Christmas presents.
We were able to break down and get back on the road in about 2 hours, which was better than we did a few weeks ago. The rains even held off for us, for the most part.
I'll apologize up front for the image above. I know I should have done something with the inexcusable hot spot in the upper right corner, but I was just too tired last night to mess with it. The color correction I did to it didn't come out the way I wanted, either. But, hey, some shots are like that.
For another, from above to give a better idea of the size of this tree and some general Craft Show ranting
For those of you keeping score, this shot was taken by simply pivoting to the right from the second shot from yesterday.
This will likely be the last of the shows we do with this promoter. We've told all of our repeat customers that we'll be showing elsewhere in the coming year and all seemed willing to find us wherever we end up. (That's pretty impressive and very cool as far as we're concerned)
There's a problem with a lot of these Craft Shows and it all has to do with integrity and honesty. The public goes to these shows expecting the items sold are all made by the person who is selling them. Sadly, this is not always the case. People "sneak" in, claiming to be the artist when, in fact, they have simply bought the items wholesale and lie to the public and the show promoter. We've done some shows where the promoter takes their responsibility for policing their shows seriously. Other promoters willingly turn a blind eye to these buy-sell types, being interested only in their bottom line and filling booth spaces.
This show promoter was recently quoted as saying he doesn't police his shows at all. His position is that very few artists make their art from material 100% made themselves. The cabinetmaker doesn't chop down the trees, the jeweler doesn't mine and cut their own stones, the potter doesn't dig their own clay. Since these artists don't make everything from scratch, who is he to say that someone who buys a sweatshirt and then paints something on it isn't a proper artist?
By not setting any standards he's making it next to impossible for someone who is making their art as much by scratch as they can to competewith anyone who isn't. Take, for example, oh, I don't know... let's say me. Sure, I don't mine and refine the silver or gold ore. I don't then alloy the silver to make sterling, nor the gold to make 14k gold-filled. I also don't take a glob of the raw metal and then form it into wire. However, I do take that wire and personally hand-make each and every bangle that we sell.
And, for every bangle I sell, I then have to re-make a new one if I want to sell another. I don't just pick up the phone or email in an order to some company in China who is mass-producing these things. (Believe me, it would be a heck of a lot easier. However, it would also, in my book, be dishonest) Someone who can simply order them will also likely be able to sell them for considerably less than I can, since there are no labor costs involved. They're simply paying for the factory-made items and for shipping.
A jeweler friend of ours took a jewelry catalog -- a catalog -- to the show promoter and showed him the exact items that another jeweler doing the show was selling, claiming them as their own. The promoter did nothing.
If not setting any standards isn't bad enough, he's also gone public with this in a trade publication. My guess is that where the overall quality of the artists in his shows has been declining, now, after this statement, the quality will go downhill much faster. That usually means that true artists bail out quickly and, as the show's reputation suffers, the crouds go away as well.
We're looking at moving in a more wholesale direction in the coming year. Shows like this are just confirmation that this is the next proper step for us to take.
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