E86 Transcript
Okay. So I did the show.
And I want to tell you everything. Not the version where I put on a brave face and focus only on the positives. Or the reverse, where I grind away on all the bad things that happened. I’m giving you the real version. Because I think that’s something you can actually use.
Here's what I know going into this conversation. Some of you are thinking about doing a show for the first time. Some of you have done a few and are trying to figure out if they're worth it. Some of you have had a show go sideways and you're wondering if you should just throw in the towel. And some of you aren’t even considering the idea because you have heard all the horror stories and are scared to death of them.
This episode is for all of you.
I'm going to give you the number - the actual financial outcome. I'm going to tell you what went wrong that had nothing to do with me or the work. I'm going to tell you what went right regardless of any sales data. And I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm doing differently going forward.
It’s not a success story necessarily. It's something even more useful than that.
So, let’s get into the details, shall we?
This last show I did was among the less expensive ones to be in. The entry fee was a hundred dollars. Two tables at ten dollars each. Every artist was asked to donate a piece for the silent auction - I donated one worth a hundred and seventy-five dollars. Not bad as shows go. Really!
And I sold, drum roll please…four small unframed mini sample pieces at ten dollars each.
Do the math and I came out roughly two hundred and fifty-five dollars in the hole before I factor in anything else.
Okay- take a breather – that’s not good. But it does get worse.
Now add the framing - because I made the decision to frame everything this time and that wasn't free. I added a look book- basically a photo album of all available work that wasn’t hanging on display. The additional table easels. The extra grid walls to handle the larger framed pieces. Add all of that in and the number is probably around five hundred dollars or more.
That number deserves a second look before I move on. Because five hundred dollars sounds like a lot. And it is a lot. But here's the thing - that five hundred dollars bought me something useful. The framing decision is now made. The layout is figured out and I have everything I need now. The look book exists and can be updated as needed. The booth setup is dialed in. The contact system works. Every single one of those things goes forward to every show after this one. I would have had to spend money to figure all of that out eventually. This show just made it happen faster and all at once.
So. Five hundred dollars. And a lot of clarity I didn't have before I walked in. Any serious maker building a show practice is going to spend that money eventually figuring this stuff out. I just got it done in a week or two.
Now let me tell you about the venue and the timing. Because the show being what it was had very little to do with the work. And I want to be specific about why.
The museum is a beautiful space. Great location. The neighborhood around it is the kind of place where people spend money freely - it's right across the street from the most exclusive shopping center in Dallas. And the first time I was in a show they ran, it was genuinely successful. So the venue itself isn't the problem.
July in Dallas is a problem. Too hot, people are wrapping up vacations, back to school is starting - and frankly it's not a big discretionary spending month. The museum learned that lesson right along with the rest of us.
But here's the part that I found really surprising. Apparently, the museum did not email their membership about the show. They didn't advertise it as a public event. They left the marketing entirely to the artists. Each of us was expected to reach our own audience through our own email lists and social media. And we did, but…
Here's why that doesn't work. My email list is worldwide. The percentage of people on it who live within driving distance of a museum in Dallas is tiny. And social media - I posted three times a week for three weeks leading up to the show, plus two live posts from the event. When I looked at the analytics afterward, Facebook and Instagram showed those posts to somewhere between fifteen and twenty people per post. Mostly out of state followers. And those posts are still popping up a week after the event has ended.
Fifteen to twenty people. Per post. For a local event. Social Media to a worldwide audience is NOT a local marketing strategy.
There was no printed collateral either. No postcards, no flyers, nothing for artists to hand out or post around the area. My suggestion to them after the fact was to give each artist fifty postcards when they came in to drop off their donated piece. So we could hand them out in the surrounding area and actually get local people through the door. That would have cost the museum almost nothing and it would have made a real difference.
The foot traffic was just not there. And when I say not there I mean there were genuinely not enough people in the room to draw any conclusions about buyer mood or behavior. The few who did come were there for entertainment, not purchasing. They were out on a Sunday afternoon and the show happened to be in their path.
Going forward I'll be asking a lot more specific questions before I commit to any show. Who is marketing this event and to whom exactly? What was the foot traffic at previous iterations? Is the venue emailing their membership? Is there paid advertising? Is there printed collateral?
These are the questions I didn't ask going in because I had a phenomenal show here in December last year. Packed. Great energy. Strong sales. So I went in with a reasonable amount of confidence based on that experience. It was only afterward - when I started digging into why this show felt so different - that I found out the museum hadn't emailed their membership or advertised the event publicly at all. Whether they did those things in December I honestly don't know. But the crowd in December suggested someone was doing something right. This time around something was clearly missing.
The marketing plan - or the absence of one - turns out to be the single most important thing to investigate before you sign on. A beautiful space with no marketing behind it is just a beautiful space. And this venue is too good and the location too right to walk away from based on one poorly marketed July show. I'll be going back when they move to a fall date - but with a lot more information in hand before I say yes.
Now here's the part I actually want to spend the most time on. Because this is the part most people skip after a bad show and it's the part that matters most.
What worked. Yes, there are always some positive elements even to a show that was not, by definition, successful.
We are wired - all of us - to focus on what went wrong. It's actually a documented psychological phenomenon called negativity bias. Bad experiences register more strongly and stick around longer than good ones. It's why a slow show can feel like a complete disaster even when a significant amount actually went right. And it's why most makers pack up and spend the drive home replaying every bad moment rather than cataloguing what they'd keep and what they'd change. I've done it. You've probably done it.
But here's what I know after thirty years of doing this. The makers who build sustainable practices are the ones who can look at a difficult experience and pull out what's worth keeping alongside what needs to change. Both things. Not just the hard parts. Because if you only focus on what went wrong you walk away from good decisions along with the bad ones.
So. What worked?
Everything I tried differently this time - I'm keeping it. All of it. Not because the sales confirmed it. Because I have enough experience to evaluate these decisions on their own merits and the sales at this particular show are not the right measuring stick for any of them.
The framing. I had been going back and forth on the to-frame-or-not-to-frame question for a while. It adds cost. It adds weight. It adds complexity to the setup and breakdown. What if they like the art but not the frame? For a long time, I wasn't sure the return justified all of that. Now I'm sure. I love the way everything looks framed. I was deliberate about my choices - not every frame works for every piece and I took my time getting that right. And the feedback confirmed it. Stunning was a word I heard more than once from other artists and from the people who came through. That's people with actual eyes for this kind of work telling me something important. The practical case is just as strong as the visual one - a buyer can take it home and hang it immediately. Even if they want to reframe it later, it’s ready to hang now. Many of the pieces have UV protective glass which is noted on the back. That's a selling point and a price justification in the same move. Done. This is how I'm showing all frameable work going forward.
The layout. Linear and wide this time instead of the L-shape I've used before. Visible from across the room, striking from every angle, not blocking anything or crowding anything. I'm keeping that where possible.
The grid wall setup. Separate panels rather than connected. So much easier to put up and take down. The difference in load-in and load-out time alone makes this worth keeping permanently.
The positioning. This one is tricky to explain but it made more difference than it might sound like it would. I had about 18 to twenty-four inches between my tables and the grid walls so I could move behind if I needed to. But I sat out front and off to the side - not behind the table with three or four feet of barrier between me and the person looking at the work. That might sound like a small thing. It isn't. The moment you put a table between yourself and a visitor you've created a transaction dynamic whether you intended to or not. It feels like a store. They're the customer, you're the clerk, and the whole energy of the interaction shifts. Sitting beside the work rather than behind it changes that completely. It felt like I was just near my work - available if someone wanted to talk but not waiting to pounce. The conversations I did have were noticeably more natural because of it. Keeping that permanently.
The look book. This one I'm genuinely pleased with. Professional photographs of every piece - including the ones hanging at the gallery and the ones that couldn't fit on the display - loaded into a leather binder on the table with a description of each piece, the frame, and the price. The actual pieces were standing in a bin behind the display in case someone wanted to see or buy. It solved the limited display space problem completely without losing any inventory from the conversation. Someone could walk up, flip through the book, fall in love with something that wasn't even hanging, and I could pull it out right there. That's a system worth keeping.
Natural bamboo table easels. Added them this time to get more work up close without crowding or blocking the grid walls. Simple, effective and lightweight. Keeping those.
And I want to come back to the feedback from other artists one more tim. When people who actually know how to look at this kind of work - who understand what goes into it and what makes it good - stop and say stunning, that is a different category of information than sales figures. Sales figures at this particular show were compromised by everything I already described. The feedback from qualified observers was not. The work is ready for the right room. This just wasn't quite the right room on this particular day. And there is a real difference between those two things.
So here's what I'm doing going forward. And I want to connect each of these back to the research from last week because I think it makes the reasoning clearer.
Telling the story of the work - everywhere, not just in person. In conversation at the show. In posts. In signage. On the website. The research was clear that the considered buyer - the one who takes several touchpoints before they commit - needs the story before they can justify the purchase. Of the conversations I had at this show, the ones where I actually talked about the work were by far the best interactions. That's what I'm building more of across every platform.
Making the process visible. Recording work in progress video, talking through what I'm doing and why. For future shows I'm looking at running a video loop on an iPad or laptop at the display. Because the research on what draws the cautious buyer consistently points at evidence of the human hand at work - and a buyer who has watched the process, even briefly, has already started building the connection that makes the purchase feel right.
Contact collection. Already doing this - I have a QR code sign at the shows that connects specifically to the art content, not the education side. I'm going to look at making it more prominent or more compelling as a reason to scan it.
The research on uncommitted buyer behavior was clear that the considered purchase happens over multiple touchpoints. And I have lived proof of that from my own experience. At the December museum show I had several people stop at my booth specifically because they had seen my work at other shows and had been thinking about it. They came back. Not because I followed up with them directly - I didn't even have their contact information. They came back because they had seen the work enough times that it stayed with them until they were ready to commit. That's the long game working exactly the way it's supposed to.
And then there's this one. After the December show a mother reached out online and purchased a piece for her daughter as a Hanukkah gift. The daughter had seen the piece at the show and mentioned it. The mother found me online, found the piece, and bought it as a gift. That sale had nothing to do with anything I said at the show. It happened because the work was visible, the online presence was findable, and there was a clear path to purchase when someone went looking.
Neither of those is contact collection in the traditional sense. But both of them are exactly what multiple touchpoints look like in real life. The show plants the seed. The online presence closes the loop. And if I'm not findable and shoppable when someone goes looking - whether that's three days later or three months later - that sale disappears permanently. That's why the QR code matters. That's why the online presence for the art specifically needs more attention. And that's why I'm treating every show as a visibility event first and a sales event second.
Which brings me to what I'm actually doing about the online side. And I want to be clear here. The education part of my online presence is solid - the courses, the podcast, the newsletter, that content is consistent and deliberate and it works. The physical artwork hasn't had that same level of attention and that's the gap I'm closing.
Pinterest and Instagram for the visual work - those are the platforms where the buyer who is looking for handmade fiber art is actually spending time. LinkedIn stays on the education side where that professional audience lives. And I'm working toward a more deliberate strategy for how the art gets presented, described, and sold online rather than just posted and hoped for.
I don't have it fully figured out yet and I'm not going to pretend I do. But I know the direction and I'm moving in it. That's enough to start.
Now let’s talk pricing. I raised my prices with the framing and I felt completely right about it. No anxiety. The bifurcation research made that decision easy. Considered purchases are still happening. I'm pricing to the work, not to my fear, and the story, the process and the human connection need to do the work of justifying it.
Show selection. I'll go deeper on this in a future episode because it deserves its own conversation. But the short version is - I have no interest in being a circuit artist – meaning I’m not going to purchase an RV, and jury into the circuit of high dollar shows around the country. I love going to those shows. The artists are phenomenal and inspiring. I don’t want to be in them. I prefer local, smaller, event-centered shows where I can concentrate on building the online business alongside. I’m more of a homebody right now. Cosmo and I aren’t road warriors yet. I'm looking specifically for artisan-focused shows rather than general craft fairs. At the next Guild show I'm separating the product categories entirely - my art in its own tent, the sewn goods at a separate shared table in the larger communal tent. Different price points, different buyers, different conversation. I don't need to be present at the sewn goods table the same way I need to be present at the art. The relationship building is what requires my presence and that happens with the art.
And the museum - I'm going back when they move to a fall show. Which I think they will. The venue is too good and the location is too right to abandon based on a July show that had a marketing problem. I'll go in with better questions and better suggestions about the plan before I commit. But I'm going back.
The upshot of the whole thing?
It was not a financial success. That's true.
It was one of the most clarifying experiences I've had in building this part of what I do. The display is figured out. The framing decision is made. The pricing feels right. The layout works. Systems are in place. And I know that showing up consistently - even when a particular show doesn't pay off financially - is what builds the visibility that eventually produces buyers who were thinking about the work before they ever walked into the room.
That last part I know from experience. I’ve had people stop at my booth specifically because they had seen my work somewhere else. I’ll be here when they’re ready to buy. That doesn't happen if you stop showing up.
So. Five hundred bucks for a fully dialed in system. A clear plan for what comes next. Confirmation I’m on the right track.
That seems like a reasonable trade to me.
And I’ll be going back.
Bad shows happen. Even after thirty years. Even when the work is good and the booth is right and you did everything you could.
If you take one thing out of this conversation let it be this.
A bad outcome and a bad decision are not the same thing. You can make every right call and still have a show that doesn't perform - because the venue wasn't ready, or the timing was off, or the marketing wasn't there, or July in Dallas is just July in Dallas.
What you can control is whether you learn something from it. Whether you genuinely look at what worked alongside what didn't. Whether you show up again with better information than you had before.
That's not simple optimism. That's how a practice gets better over time.
I'll see you back here next week.
