I'm Tom Ray and this is American Bandito.
there's something I wondered about as I was talking with everyone I met how did
they find people to work with or stuff to display do they make it all
themselves do they find people and say I want to present your stuff I learned
about how they open their places but how can others get involved and possibly
show their work there so the question I asked this week is how do you find the
creators in the work you display when I was asking this question it also made me
think about things like how should I price things that I make I can never
figure that one out my current method is guessing I could
search online and see if there's a creative generator or something which
now that I think of it I should really look at that that would be funny so here
are the answers that the people that I spoke with had for me and now let's
start with the Yellow Rose gallery by becoming a member of the Yellow Rose
gallery an artist would get to host events and showcase their work we have a
membership model for the nonprofit so the artists pay a monthly fee to host
art in the gallery and then they make money by making sales how do the artists
find out about it I think it's almost entirely been by word-of-mouth though we
do have a website and the Facebook page and an email address and I think some
people have reached out to us but I think most people we referred in anyway
well we'd encourage any interested artists okay room to showcase that works
here there's no decision as to like well and then this is a percentage again this
is me not knowing nonprofits so I'm just trying to figure out how this works this
is just put up your stuff and whatever your price is that's that's cool yeah
I don't have pieces up in here 500 $700 even more in some some pieces like 15 to
20 dollars it ranges between those numbers nothing too extremely high but
again is what people can't come in here and if they think can afford it you know
and at any range Tammy from bohemian bauble does the pop-ups with people she
knows so how does she set up what will happen with everyone who's involved I
would say it really depends on the situation what I have done with groups
if the establishment does not charge anything but we want to get Flyers
printed we'll all share equally in the expense of the paper Flyers
so it's not coming out of one person's pocket and if the establishment does
charge a fee then you're looking more at one person being the organizer and maybe
having to take a space fee from everybody so that they can pay the
establishment so it's kind of a short-run business like alright you be
the treasurer you be kind of yeah everybody wears a lot of hats to kind of
fund and some of them who actually sell might sell hats and might wear a lot of
hats right sorry a lot of that how do you determine your own labor it's
probably one of the harder things that that people who make handmade things
have to figure out and it's really trial and error it is very tricky because it
depends on how successful do you want to be do you want to be able to keep doing
what you're doing but you also have to price your things at a fee that people
can afford it and we'll keep coming back and jewelry is an odd thing because
jewelry is known to be very expensive depending it's also meant to be very
accessible depending it's kind of like the same thing with the music industry I
tunes determined songs are worth ninety-nine sets but albums whatever the
hell you want to charge yeah everybody does what they want because they
that is true you can charge what you want it's your work it's your decision
in the end if I remember correctly whoo tang clan
I think released an album once for like a million dollars or something but it
was because it was like one printed copy of it
well that and they're also booting clans so I'm not sure if this really makes my
point but still Mia from stone fence was the next person I talked to
she sells artwork on commission or sometimes she'll buy the items outright
but the amount of space she has is also a factor when she's thinking about
taking on new artists some of it I will buy outright like the jewelry it depends
on the on whether they're willing to do that also but I take a percentage they
get the majority of it because I don't have to subside on commission only I
have items with full markup so I other ways to pay the rent other than that I
probably take a little smaller percentage than other places to which I
feel good about because I feel like the artist should have a chance to really
sell their art and recoup most of it do you decide how many to take at a time I
mean how do you factor in like over the face but it depends on how much wall
space I have I have a bad habit of not letting go of artists then I I keep
peace from each artist and so all of a sudden I look around and go I don't have
any wall space left
it's not someone else's artwork obviously they decide the price I will
let them know if I think it's too high I'm won't sell at that price but it's
just my opinion they don't need to follow it other things there's a
standard markup I don't use a high markup I just kind of do what I need to
recoup and make a little bit for myself because like I hate going into a store
and looking at something overpriced and that's right that's not what I want to
be here I don't want people to come in and have sticker shock if you recall
1/1000 also has a membership process but for Sara it's also about connecting with
the members and helping them with what they do she also tries to match people
together with relevant workshops that they host themselves the membership is a
really important part of our business model because to me it shows that people
are willing to invest in this idea and when they do that then I'm also willing
to invest in them and I've learned that a lot of membership happens because of
one-on-one connection like I really want to know people I think as we grow I
won't be essential to the business model but right now it really means a lot to
me to be able to have coffee with somebody in here their story and
understand their product and understand where they're coming from because then
it helps me understand what types of experiences that I can help introduce
them to to help them build their brand or I understand how to tell their story
or talk about them also like people they want to be seen and they want to be
heard and I think a lot of artists feel really isolated bringing people in that
way I think is really we try to make people feel welcomed and nurtured and so
membership is where we all start and then once we know people once I know
people then we develop matches and opportunities so like creative workshops
are meant for people who do want to teach
we usually split revenue 5050 when we create an event together and so we
develop a price together that feels fair on both sides and I always like you'll
find that our workshops are priced higher than different places in town
there aren't really as many places offering the same types of things that
we're doing so it's a little different of a comparison but the main reason is
because I think it's important that if we want to value these types of creative
people in our community that we pay them living wages and that we pay them fairly
for their expertise so that for me is a huge part of our decision-making and how
we price things and then we also do a lot of other pop up events like good day
market is one of our biggest events of the year it's coming up in December and
we feature about 40 to 50 right now it's 40 to 50 but hopefully we'll keep
growing it ISAT booth fees based on how we can make cover our cost but also make
a little bit of revenue to support the business model and we don't take any
fees from that but we choose to we choose to cover expenses through booth
fees for that we're always striving to be the in-betweener
we are not a place where you're coming for like creative entertainment and
we're not at the tech school so we're in between where for the homesteaders the
people who want to live a handcrafted lifestyle they maybe eat really good
food they cook they want to dabble and like they love the process of making
things so we're not like high-end price but we're not drop by and we're not the
entertainment side which all has a place it's just where are the people who want
to like spend three or four hours doing something or they have skills because
they went to college and learned something or they're self-taught and
they want to make meaningful income from that so in terms of figuring out pricing
take into account people's expertise that they bring it just
depends on the revenues mean the products that you offer online how do
you come up with the price of those and this is a question that comes up that we
wrestle with all the time within the group because everybody's products are
different and it's the constant question and especially like when you're on Etsy
or online and you start to see people selling things for a lot less
undervaluing your work really is a detriment to the entire community when
you do that oftentimes when we talk about pricing and when I think about
pricing if we're just talking about a product it's obviously your cost of raw
raw materials and goods and then taking into account some of your overhead
overhead could be if you have to rent a studio space if you have to pay taxes if
you have utilities like all the overhead that you might pay in an entire year
should be considered some sort of expense when you're thinking about
pricing cost of labor whether that's your labor or somebody else's labor and
then you should also think about profit which a lot of people think labor is
your profit and it's not if labor is your profit then you're an hourly worker
for yourself and is that why you are craziness and then also just thinking
about whether or not you're going to wholesale will decide what your retail
price should be so if you want somebody else to carry your goods for a cut of
the cost then you should be setting your price like doubling your price so that
you can accommodate wholesale orders in general I can consumer behavior
especially if you're in the art or handmade category they're gonna be
suspicious of the lowest price stuff having things that are moderately or
higher priced are actually better for you in a lot of ways because you're
implying value exists and you're doing good things for the entire community in
genre by placing appropriate value so that people understand what it takes to
make things and it's like do you want to sell 100 things for 10 dollars or would
you you know like you want to work less and maybe sell less but you make more
the same amount of money by price and higher like that's just smart Martha
she's been working for 30 years she does custom dining tables she just did an
entire bedroom set for somebody but you might purchase the bedroom set once in
your life time that's a very expensive you're not
gonna decide to spend $6,000 or something like at a market but you might
be willing to spend $5,200 on a cutting board yeah or like a really cool trivet
or a really cool rolling pin so those are really great items that she carries
that builds an audience for her and and builds the reason you know different
types of income coming in from different sources and then maybe she lands like
they're really great furniture gig from that later but arranger prices I think
is is nice for any sort of artist or maker and I love the fact that you were
just able to reference a cutting board and a rolling pin in an example
anthology still does some consignment work but Laura said that her and her
sister started producing a majority of the items themselves and running your
place also seems like it's an advantage to being able to test out your own
creations the way I took it was you try out new stuff see what resonates with
people and what you should focus on you know we still do have some consignment
and it's it's pretty much a 50/50 split there's always like a little bit of
wiggle room mostly in favor of the store to be honest but I was coming from a
retail background and in retail it's the store is usually getting closer to 60%
than 50% so I was coming from that we do people submit work they send us emails
and you know do that we we knew some I think we were like a little hooked up
into the craft circuit so you know we knew some artists and some people who
were some of our like original stockists we just take in whatever they have and
actually my sister and I are we're all so consigning so we were at that same
level of curiosity how do you how do you price consignment items in general like
what's concept so the artist has to have I mean
they have to say what they need to cover the cost there's a little bit of back
and forth so obviously if someone comes in and they say this note card is going
to cost twenty dollars then I would say well most of our note cards costs five
dollars sometimes someone brings something in and you're just like I'm
sorry it's not a good fit so we have you know I can tell from the history of what
I've sold that I can't sell a note card for $20 with the stuff that you make on
your own what you do mostly here yes same question applies there how do you
decide what it's gonna cost you know you always have some like you put something
out and it's not selling it all then sometimes you're like yep that's just
not gonna happen I mean I feel like from from the artists perspective you just
have to be really vigilant about what your costs are and you don't do that I'm
just doing this for fun I just want to be able to afford a cup of coffee you
really have to look at what does it cost you to run your electricity for the day
that you're doing all of this work all of those costs the space that you're
using the materials and of course your time because a lot of people just do
their materials and just don't think about their time in a lot you have to
balance all of that out and we have like I feel like as an artist I have a range
of things that I can incapable of making I have things that I like to make and
within that range there are things that I can sell 10 of and then there's things
that I can only sell one of and so some of it is just like making that choice
balancing out what you can sell there's always things that are you just whip
them up quickly and they don't cost a lot but the person who's just casually
walking is more likely to buy them where do you
go here stuff that um we work here and my sister works at home she has on their
dining room they're like I have a long dining room table and she gets like the
bottom half of it for her card designs so she's been doing a lot of designing
Leah from booth 121 also tries to apply the value in the price of her own items
she makes and sells but she also talks about how it's still difficult to
separate that from what you think people might say she and her business partner
Rebecca also talked about how consignment is a large portion of what
they do in the beginning I sourced him from the craft shows that I did and I
had a network of ladies that I knew and they referred on to the people that they
knew and then as the word got around we know it's just people approaching us oh
and I did search on Etsy local people that sold on Etsy and I would tap into
them right now it's just word of mouth we can kind of put a stop on letting any
new vendors and just because because it is just the two of us we and got a
little overwhelmed and we just mean take a step back and we put a hold on it but
we still encourage people to submit their items and we can keep a file of
them where do those minima either Facebook or email you said when you
first opened the place that was mainly consignment and they were people you
knew yeah yeah 16 vendors maybe okay now we're over 100 hundred and oh wow I was
expecting maybe we're gonna add 10 more to that
the hardest thing I have to do is to come up with a price because there's
always that humble side of me as are they gonna look at it what the hell I'm
not gonna pay that for this item but that I do want to show the value in it
it's just a gut feeling and it's really the hardest thing so Rebecca and I will
I'll say what do you think what do you think I should charge for this and then
she'll say you always think this hard okay good that's what I was thinking and
she sometimes undervalues herself yeah especially unlike the more intricate
pieces that she's not sure if someone's gonna like as much and it could be
because I know that how much time she's spent on it then like that no way that's
way too low that's a good thing to have I know
exactly what you mean it's hard to step away from it but you also want it to be
successful but at the same time you're like that just seems arrogant if I do
that yes coming to Madison from out of town Tammy from her chart house search
for artists when she moved here when I first opened up I sought out artists and
that was a lot of fun you know I didn't have another job for six months before I
open up hatch cuz I had moved here and then six months later the I open up the
shop but so I spent that time searching and going to like Art Fair off the
square which is solely Wisconsin artists and just doing a lot of searching which
was a blast so now it's all submissions and the artists submit their work send
me an email along with their bio and photos and prices and all the pertinent
information that I would need to know and then I look at their work and
research it and just see if I think it would be fit for our shop and everything
is is on like I said on consignment and it's 50/50 split right down the middle
I am always willing to help an artist if they're not sure
about how to price their work you kind of start out it like will say $10 an
hour or something like that and then of course then you have to factor in the
materials cost it's it's a kind of guesswork to UM you also have to figure
out what the market is and how you don't want to price it too high that's a huge
mistake because if nobody ever buys your work because of the price you're never
going to get anywhere but the artist definitely need to get paid properly
it's always hard for artists to feel like they're not being recognized as
somebody that should get paid for their work you may understand what I'm talking
about yeah it can be frustrating that's something that's been coming up that
never occurred to me a couple people have mentioned the artist should
consider it like they're being paid hourly and what they've noticed is most
of them think of it by piece but not thinking about the time you put into it
when people started saying that I was like that makes a lot of sense it is
your job even if it's not your full-time job you're still working really hard at
creating something so you should just always make sure that you feel like
you're getting what you deserve and that energy also goes into your work I feel
you know if you're feeling you're getting the shaft that's is it going to
just change everything that you you start painting or creating but I think
that we've we've got a really good system here where the artists just they
have their their set price and if we will start at that price and then we'll
just see how they do selling the work and then if they start
doing really well you know we can increase it a little bit and they'll get
paid more and it works out for them when you decide to take somebody on how do
you figure out where and how much of it goes in the shop it just depends on what
their medium is so this jeweler I just brought in a new jeweler because of the
work that she was doing with sterling silver and gold and things like that I
wanted to have her work in a case so I asked her to bring in enough work to put
in there that worked out great but if it's a 2d
artist somebody a painter that well you can ask them to bring in five pieces but
you have to look at the size of the work right and so typically all lessons bring
in a variety of sizes so if you looked on the walls right now you'd see our
featured artist who has some larger like 3x3 pieces and then some really small
pieces and then some of that fall right in between so and that works so great
because then the customer that is looking at their work has if they want
something larger they have that choice and if but if they want something more
affordable and smaller and they they can do that as well do you just kind of
coordinate it by look throughout the store to make sure that it kind of flows
that's where curating comes in and it's like a puzzle yeah you just just move
things around a lot I do it section by section and every month we have a
featured artist so there's always a lot of switching things around monthly for
the most part Anastacia from confection eek
has been working with five other women for years they meet and have dinner and
work on what goes into the market and they even travel to Paris together and
she tells me about this really cool thing about how people are welcome to
set up outside of her place during events so I come in and I redo the shop
all the bones of it kind of I put back together and bring in furniture and
bring it out and hang stuff from the ceiling do whatever other things come to
mind and then in the meantime they are working on things related to that theme
so Thursday night we'll have a potluck and we'll laugh and giggle and drink a
little wine and eat and then we'll finish decorating so they bring a lot of
sparkle and pretties to the shop there yes we have a contract that you know
that we have take a certain percentage and
take the most of the percentage and our split is we get 40 and they get 60 and
it's been like that for years and then on the Thursday night when we open all
the girls come in and we all work that market together it's very busy there's a
often people in the waiting room I mean yeah in the lounge area to get in
and I can only fit comfortably 25 people at a time in here so you have to have
like a doorman and everything she's wonderful so we have we have punch and
sometimes we'll have another vendor out there we have music and we just people
are very patient about it they really are yes yes yes they that again goes
into the event driven driven because any other time it would be like why am i
standing out here yes you're just so thoughtful and I'll often go out and
thank them very much for waiting I'll tell them I promise it'll be worth
it because you can move around in the shop and see everything just like
everyone else I'll post an album a week before we open the Thursday night and
people know what they want and they know it's the one of a kind they come and
they'll wait until they can get into the shop and buy what you know what they
love it's very much a party atmosphere on Thursdays and I feel that these girls
are such an integral part to confection eeeek success that i want them to share
in it with me as much as possible and that's this whole idea that we decorate
together you know with the finishing touches that we potluck together and
that we're together again on that Thurs
people do reach out to me and they ask me hey you know I just started learning
I I just started designing cards mm-hmm and do you think this would be something
that your shop it'd be interested in so then I might purchase outright things
that that definitely go with the shop and then occasionally vendors will be
out in the lobby they'll contact me and they'll say can I be a vendor and so for
the busiest markets yeah I'll let people set up a table I'm set up blank outside
or something and I'll set them up the information about what what we need in
return I don't charge them a thing to be out there really no because a lot of
these folks are just starting out and I know what that's like and asking a
person to pay me 50 or 100 bucks to be in the lobby just doesn't it's not gonna
make or break confection eek and it really will give them a chance to see
what it's like to set up a table they have to do their own payment system and
package their goods and and then I think the other thing I say is spend time with
the customers in the waiting room because some of them are waiting to get
in and then can you just spread the word about what we do and that's really all I
ask in return it's a very democratic of you looks great you know I mean someone
gave me an opportunity at the UW there's a social worker a fresh grad someone
gave me an opportunity to have a booth in some market years ago someone gave me
an opportunity to to have a lot of things I love that John and his partner
Stephanie from mother Fool's coffee house don't just have art on the walls
mother Fool's also has live music and a mural on the side of the building that
changes frequently so how do they find the people that do this and what are
they looking for ok so there's three different types of art that happen
primarily so art in the wall is all booked by Stephanie so people contact
her via our website and she typically wants to look at something online some
people don't have that so they communicate with her and she'll have
them arrange to bring by prints or slides or something as far as
negotiating there's not much that goes on we have a really straightforward deal
we pay ninety percent to the artists and keep a ten percent commission
music booking is really similar people contact me through the website I listen
usually online to what they're doing my first level filter is do I like it
second level how is it gonna do here I'm other fools sometimes I do book things
that I'm not that into if I know that it's gonna bring a great crowd in yeah I
feel like our role as a cultural space should be larger than my personal
aesthetic although I want to involve that aesthetic especially on the more
unusual things I like I want to try to find an audience for things so on the
other end of the extreme time I search things I love but I don't book because I
don't want to bring someone into a space where I can't get them an audience will
often follow up with let me know if you are playing around town because I would
like to check it out myself sometimes if I see something live I can easier
understand how it could work or if you play Madison a few more times
and develop a fan base get back in touch with me I'm not not opposed to what
you're doing I just wanted to work
so the murals outside I mean that's the and I've been seeing for years first of
all when did that start and how 2001 in the summer of 2001 the
alder for this neighborhood at that time Judy Olson called me up and wanted to
put together a meeting with me in an artist yeah and I wasn't exactly sure
what the concept was but it turned out that both myself Stephanie the other
owner and this artist Don wedeck had all separately talked to Judy Olson the
alder about wanting a permission wall from our perspective we said mother
fools wouldn't do this we can get it through to the city and all this so she
called this meeting because this artist had contacted her separate from us and
wanted to find a place to do this so she thought this was a good match it was we
had planned to do the first one in the second week of September and this is in
2001 but then 9/11 he I was just so this is something this is interesting to me
because part of our concept for this is that we would never jury it we just
wanted it to be the artists expression because of 9/11 though we called up the
artists and asked him to switch his design because the original thing he had
was really dark here is like scary is Auggie's with oil wells and that's the
only time we ever intervened artistically as we said he's just
because of this but he ended up doing on Statue of Liberty that's kind of like a
troll who's iconic I know like it was really important culturally in this
neighborhood that that was there at that time and we did that
this will give all the committee members a chance to see what we're talking about
I think it just created that groundswell of support that made it impossible for
anyone who really objected to it how do people contact you for it nowadays
people walk in or they call or they email and really you know we just give
them the coordinators numbers there's um two artists now that coordinated on was
the first coordinator and then now moved out of town so there's two artists that
do it they've involved in something and
they're just they're the littlest artists and they love to paint that wall
they've both painted it a bunch of times and wow they just take responsibility
for that and do you guys have to strip it down every time I was it literally
years of paint on that wall in every now and then it comes off in sheets and the
first time it happens it was about an inch and a half thick and it was coming
out from these big things I used to always make a joke oh yeah this is our
program to get neighborhood kids to just put insulation on our building then all
of a sudden it was thick enough that it was actually probably insulating yeah
but you take those big sheets and come off and a piece like this vases table
you couldn't lift up it's so heavy and then you look at it from the side and
you see all that layer of color yeah
got a spreadsheet that we input the cost of all the ingredients one that you made
or one that you I made it yeah I made it okay all right you put in a gallon of
milk you put in your five pound bag of espresso beans yeah and then it has a
recipe formula for every drink we make that tells us what the actual cost is
and we figure out what percentage we have to put it at with our sales to get
the staffing at the right level see now I liked John's idea of a recipe
spreadsheet it's kind of like what I was saying at the beginning of the show like
if I wanted to make something I could put in the materials in the spreadsheet
I think I would need and it would spit out the cost for me I like that that
piece is unimaginative sitting out on the side of the road some I find some
finding me so right now we're at about 22 furniture creators all local all
Wisconsin I will find them maybe in a market I will find them on the side of a
road that was a whole bunch of junk laying around I'm like I must know about
this person or not he was nervous so I was stumble on word-of-mouth is big our
vetting process now has become more refined in that I really can't really
chat with you we can go ahead and you send pictures in an email I will look at
those at night when it's nice and quiet and I'll get back to you yeah then we
talked about pricing we had one rare one that is very successful is having a
couple times but he just came in at just the right time and he had stuff and he
wanted to sell it he was a nice guy and I didn't think it was gonna work so if
we're not sure on artists we'll started with consignment and then we give them
like four to six weeks and then if they were successful then we just buy
outright let me try to take the consignment off the table that's not
that's not we are and so that's a lot different
than most it is yeah so we can't we pretty work committed and part of my job
is to help artists get their stuff out there for real out there and so I gotta
be the guy who's the bearer of bad news and I gotta say hey if you want it out
there you got to start low and get some cleats is what I call it like you gotta
get some traction and then you can start messing with your pricing but for first
get this stuff out there let's see people start talking about it help me
let them drag about the good deal that they got on the item because in two
years you're going to get better prices and so that's our philosophy and that's
the way we work one of our trademarks is when someone compliments the piece in
your home that you're not like Frick so much money for that I want I wanted to
be able to brag about what they paid forward to so you have to train some
artists about that yes we walk them through a process so going back to that
guy who comes in off the street means has got his stuff right in his car he
puts it in and it's selling within an hour and then his big pieces sold over
the weekend and so we immediately they started buying for me yet us never know
whose stuff is going to action it
I'm trying to think about what my time is worth listening back to all this I
mean I make this show I get to meet a lot of people but I never consider my
time I'm not saying things should be worth
more or less if people don't enjoy them they should I go to an art gallery or a
fair and it's okay to look and not buy anything you want people to look at it
and enjoy it I mean I wouldn't put it behind a curtain and tell people it'll
be this much if you want to see what I do I mean I guess it's just being smart
about it and find people that do want to pay for something but I also think that
it's okay for people just to pass by and say I like that if you haven't already
you can subscribe to the show at American Bandito comm slash subscribe
the music in the show is by rom-com and you can hear more at american bandido
comm slash music i'll be back next week with another episode until then so long
For more infomation >> 7 Signs He'll NEVER, EVER Commit to You No Matter How Badly You Want It - Duration: 7:14. 
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