My Troubled Relationship with Discount Sales

It is so hard to not get sucked in. I can have my resolve in place, but then people keep asking "When is this going to go in sale?" My answer is that it isn't. This is really hard as a person who sells things to not have sales. The pressure comes from all sides. It comes from customers, from fellow craftspeople, from society. With things out there like Groupon and Living Social. From all of the Peer pressure to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. It reenforces the idea that it is not okay to make your living selling things. That may sound hyperbolic, but that is what it boils down to. We are pushed on all sides to think that price is the only factor, and you cannot sell anything if you aren't constantly lowering your prices in order to get people to buy your goods. This is unsustainable. At some point, the price will be too low to make a profit. The price will be too low for your work to have any value. And if you make all of your product by hand by yourself, you cannot follow the model of mass produced goods. And in order for an item to be put on sale, it is either overpriced to mark down or the person making it is not making enough money on it.

Mass produced goods have several things you don't have if you make things yourself. They have access to cheap supplies and cheap labour. They have more room to make lower margins because they the advantage of a high sales volume.

The next argument is that if you price your goods properly, you can afford to have a sale now and then. I would like to argue that you might be able to afford it in dollars, but not in perception. I have my good priced properly; all of my materials are accounted for (usually materials are less than 10% of my product, it is all labour), my labour on the piece itself, the design process are all in the wholesale price while paying myself a living wage. You double the wholesale price to get the retail price. The retail price covers my time to photograph, market, sell etc. my products to the general public. If you are a store, you get that retail mark up to cover the costs of running your retail business.

But can you afford the perception that your product is not worth it's retail price? That is what sales say. If you are constantly having sales, then why would anyone ever pay full retail? This is another perception that I would like to figure out how to change peoples' mentality around. And is this the customer that you want to attract? I don;t know about you, but I am trying to establish long term relationships with people who will continue to follow me and support me over time; not just a quick one-off sale at a loss.

How do you establish the perception of the worth of your product? Take cost out of the equation for a moment, and focus on the product. Can you tell me why it is special? How long did it take you to develop the skills to make this? What do your particular sensibilities bring to your product line? What emotions does this evoke? How can we stop trying to compete with the mass production model? I don't have all of the answers here, but I think it is important to consider these questions. If we do not value our work, then we cannot expect anyone else to either.

I am not saying that you shouldn't have the occasional sale. Discounting goods on occasion can be a good tool in your business toolbox. This is one you should use with care. I tend towards giving discounts to my most loyal customers as a reward for continued business than trying to start out my relationship with a customer by setting a precedent of expectations that aren't sustainable.

buy handmade for the holidays

here's where i can get preachy, and you probably realize my bias, but i have to say it: BUY HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

we can all try and debate whether art has value in society, so let's just assume that it does. myself, and most of the people i know make their livings by our hearts and hands. we are kind of old fashioned that way. if you have been following my career, you know that i try to make as much as i can on my own, and what i can't make, i try to get from another local artisan or small business. times have been difficult for many of us, and small gestures do make a big difference. big boxes have the finances behind them to weather out months of bad economy, whereas us little guys can have our lives turn south after only a couple of bad months. we are a large part of your local economy. i am not endorsing rampant consumerism, but a careful consideration of what you spend your money on and the impact of that purchase after money exchanges hands. so a few things i am asking you to consider when making a purchase:

where did it come from? who made it? how long will you use it? does it enhance your life or surroundings? can it be repaired if it breaks? recycled? can it be passed along to someone else when you are done with it?

and most of all: do you love it?

i live in a small space, so every object that i bring in to my house has to pass the "do you love it test". i have based my life and career around beautifying people and their surroundings. a necessity? some might not think so, but living in beautiful surroundings enhances my well being. so during the holiday season (and all year round too) go to one of the zillion craft fairs in your neighborhood (many of them are supporting local charities as well), your local farmer's market, small businesses, and etsy.

take the pledge:

the process of a custom wedding from start to finish

at the dawn of my eleventh wedding season i have been puzzling over the internal conflict i have been having about doing weddings. my dilemma i had best spelled out to my painter friend after someone asked me how i made my wedding work sustainable. in fact weddings feel like the least sustainable thing i do. i asked him, "what if you were commissioned to make a large several thousand dollar painting that took you six months or more to complete, and the couple put it behind them at their wedding ceremony, hung it over their table at their reception, took all of their wedding party photos in front of it, and then crated it and stored it in the attic. not hung this work in their home, but crated it and stored it in the attic?"

the bride usually comes to me at the beginning. she has an engagement ring on her finger, a date, and maybe a venue booked out. this might be a year before the wedding date itself. she will have in hand a stack of magazines, and her best friend or mother in tow. they will look in wonder at my messy studio. i will have some fabric sample books and paper to take notes. i will ask the date, the time of day the wedding will occur, and what she is looking for. i will ask me how she found me (to determine whether she was familiar with my work). i will ask as many questions as i can to determine what sort of dress she will wear, and whether i am the one to make it for her. i will do my best to focus on her if her friend tries to do all of the talking. i will make sketches, and make suggestions of types of fabrics to use for that particular style. i will ask her what parts of her body she likes and wants to accentuate, and what she doesn't like, and wants the eye drawn away from. i will ask her what she wants to wear under her dress. i remind her that i can do any sort of line she wants that will look flattering to her figure, because i am cutting the dress from scratch. i will pull out my calculator and come up with an estimated cost with different options for different fabrics, and amounts of embellishment. this takes about two hours, more or less. i tell her to mull it over, and give me a call. sometimes i will never hear from her again.

in a day or a week, there will be a phone call or an email. another appointment is made. this time she usually comes alone. there are final decisions made about design, fabric and embellishments. we agree on a price and a payment plan. a contract is signed, and money changes hands. fabric is ordered, or a shopping trip is planned. i take her measurements. we come up with a loose timeline for when particular things will be done; muslin, first fitting, embellishment, hemming and closing, accessories, hand off. maybe i am given a list of bridesmaids who will be contacting me. i hand her swatches and encourage her to start looking for her shoes. we part, i will call her when the fabric arrives or when i am ready to fit her muslin.

i will write myself several reminders in my calendar to begin the muslin. a muslin is a plain cotton mock up of the dress that can be modified until it fits that the dress is then cut from. this involves me drafting a pattern from scratch, or lately modifying something that i already had designed to fit. i will sit in the kitchen at my studio and eat lunch with a piece of paper, a pencil, her measurements and a calculator. i will check and double check. i will draw and cut out the muslin after lunch. i will put the muslin together, and wonder why i thought it would take so long; it usually goes pretty quickly, but i have to fret over it for a few days first.

another appointment is made to fit the muslin. i remind her to bring her underpinnings to the fitting. this is important for the neckline to make sure that her bra or corset doesn't show. if the muslin fits, we discuss the neckline. if it doesn't i mark with a pen and pin the parts that need to be modified. if it is minor, she will sit and wait while i make the alterations, if it is complicated, we reschedule for a few days later.

once the muslin is fit to satisfaction, i will carefully pick the good half of it apart to cut out the dress itself. hopefully, i have all the fabric, lining, thread, zipper and everything i will need by now. i will cut out the dress, and put it together. if i am running behind, i will schedule the fitting before i do this to make sure i finish it to make sure i meet our timeline. if i am on schedule, i will call after i finish this part.

this first fitting usually takes about an hour. i ask how things are going. usually, the caterer has been chosen, the invitations have been sent out, the flowers have been decided on, but she is still looking for shoes and wedding party gifts. we discuss the embellishments. we can both have a better idea now that the dress is on and in front of us. the lines are clear. where the hem falls with the shoes on. if it is floor length, the hem is exactly 1/4" off the floor in shoes so there is no tripping over the hem, and no need to lift up the skirt to walk. the bustle is marked to see how the embellishments will look with the train down and bustled. or if the hem is shorter, pinned so that it will hit in the most flattering spot on the leg. how her necklace looks with the neckline. a double check to make sure that no straps are showing underneath, no weird lines. if there are bridesmaids, we discuss the progress. when will the out of towners be arriving? i remind her to wear her shoes around the house so they are broken in.

then i am left to make the embellishments to pin on the dress. maybe it is a simple obvious placement, or it might be more complicated, and need rearranging. the bride may come in and stand several feet away to judge what they look like from a distance. i pin and unpin until everything is balanced. the dress is carefully tried on. maybe i have to make a little adjustment. i try not to stab her with pins. she will tell me about the inevitable conflict with mother/bridesmaid/aunt who insists that she should do x a certain way. i keep a bottle of whiskey in my desk drawer for these occasions. i continue to work on the last bits and she waits. we talk about hair accessories (i usually make these with the dress embellishment), and who will be bustling her dress after the ceremony. i am very close to being done. just a few more days.

i spend the next while carefully sewing down the embellishments, blind-stitching the lining closed, and sewing on the last finishings: hooks and eyes, snaps etc. i review everything to make sure that each piece is finished: dress, bridesmaids dresses, flower brooches, hairpins, head piece, pocket squares, garters. everything neatly pressed, all threads clipped. usually the night before our last meeting before i go home from the studio.

the final fitting is usually (hopefully) two weeks or so before the wedding. the whole thing is tried on complete with lingerie and shoes. and with promises of later photos, the whole thing is taken away.

i am not sure how many of these i have done; all or a part. more than i can remember, which is difficult to admit sometimes, as i spend so much time with some of these brides. some are friends now, some i haven't seen since the day i handed them their dresses at that final fitting. i have been to many of their weddings. when i started doing this, i never thought i would be making wedding dresses, but there is not much demand for couture gowns in ordinary life outside of weddings. it kind of bums me out to know that i spend this much time on a piece only to be worn once. in victorian times, a bride would wear her wedding dress to every social engagement (to parties and to church on sunday) for a year after her wedding. in my perfect world, one would like to invest that much time and money in something that would be worn and loved over a long time, not just worn once, dry cleaned, shrink wrapped and packed in a box to be stored in the attic. every year i go back and forth about weddings; i don't think that i will ever stop doing them entirely, but i do sometimes fret about spending so much time on something that will be used only once.

(photo by chi essary of my friends dulcinea and jared's wedding june 2001)

fixing an old friend

many years ago i discovered quilting. i think that if i could make my living this way, i would be a quilter. it is a secret madness, quilting. the constant eye out and collecting of calico (the printed cotton fabric used for traditional quilting) with every trip to the fabric store, and the hoarding of scraps of fabric in plastic bins. i have several unfinished quilts that i work on every now and then resting in a neatly folded pile at the foot of my bed.

about 10 years ago i made the quilt that covers my bed. it is made out of 1930's reproduction prints in bubblegum colours. a very simple design of plain 5" squares. this quilt has seen a lot. it has moved with me through several different houses, it has come camping with me, housesitting with me, it has a little of piper's blood on it from when she had her dreadful tail accident. in short it has been the security blanket of my adult life. it even came with me on my foray into the desert this past summer. it has been a symbol of comfort and home to me over the years.

about two years ago, it started to get holes. just little tiny wear holes in the top, and the binding was worn through at the edges. i decided that it was worth fixing. it all started with 7 red hearts that i sewed over the worn holes, and a binding repair. now it has graduated to 200+ hearts and counting. i sew on new hearts as needed. pretty soon it will be all hearts.