It has been a while that I have not updated
any the Internship report in my blog. At the moment, we are facing the challenge
that we do not have enough people to work in our pop up shop. If there is no
one could work in the shop, our shop will need to close eventually. This would impact
on our business and the contract with the council. (We should open the shop at
least 4 days per week). As a result, I am working on the volunteers form aiming
at targeting art students or local art lovers to participate in our ARI.
The other issue is the process of building the
studio is not completed yet. Initially, the process was supposed to finish in
the end of June this year, but it had delayed to the end of August. Obviously, we
hired a wrong builder and that is the main reason that we cannot finish the
process on time. Thus, we fired this builder and hire another reliable one to
keep going on completing the final installation.
Working at this pop up shop as an intern
has been nearly three months; I found that selling the artworks is not as easy
as I thought. In the past, I believed in art is hard to sell because it is not
a functional product. However, looking at items and amount of the popular products
in our shop, you will understand that art is not about to have functional value,
but also has to be unique and not too expensive.
The main reason for customers pop in our
shop is that they are looking for some unique ceramic artwork as a gift to
their friends or families. At the beginning, they are just looking and checking
if something attracts them. If they find some which might fit with their
requirement, they might approach to the work and look it carefully even touch
it. Before they decided to purchase artworks, there might be two considerations:
The first question is: Is this artwork interesting? Very unique? If the answer
is yes, and then the next question is: how much budget I could afford for this piece
of artworks? If the price is too high for customers, they will still not buy
the artworks from us.
The price of the artwork is still matter; even the work of
art is extremely beautiful. Due to the bad economy in Australia, customers cut
their budget on investing art. I have talked to one of my classmates about the sale
in other commercial gallery that she worked as an intern with. She said that
economy is very bad at the moment and it is hard to sell painting in Australia.
She said only a few buyers who are friends with her boss.
I also talked to other pop art shop in the
building about their sale in these few months. They both said are quite bad. We
do a lot of sale before the Christmas last year, but we cannot even make at
least $10 sale every day. I believe that we need to change the type of
promotion and work hard on trying the variation of marketing strategy.
By the way, my friend-Vivian just visited our shop yesterday and she bought the sheep from our shop.
(Thank you, Vivian :) ), so the sheep in this photo is not available anymore.
Pop in our shop ASAP if you really like hand made ceramic stuffs.
We are local handmade ceramic pop up shop
Hey Sandy
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on what you said about Uniqueness + Affordability. I was helping out at the Affordable Arts Fair, Singapore (Recent Melb Art Fair was part of this series of international fair held by the AAF). And, I realised that most young art buyers these days are looking for pieces or works that are unique, yet affordable. Most of them are probably mid-high end executives with average/above average income. And, I thought the fair did a great job by 'making art affordable' and by 'bringing affordable art to the general public'. i.e.Affordable (i recalled that each work exhibited cannot be priced higher than SGD10,000) and of good quality. I had also helped out with the collection of surveys at the fair and from the way I see it, the overall response had been very positive!
I think the AAF is very focused in their marketing and they are very clear of where they pitch themselves. They come up with variety of events and ideas each year, which they seek to out-do the next. Crowd figures have been rising so far since their first show. So, yes.. marketing IS crucial.
Yea, it is definitely a challenge esp in this current economy. But well.. let's hope for the best :)And, i hope things will be better for the gallery/shop. keep us posted!
Caren
Hi Caren,
ReplyDeleteThank for sharing this fantastic experience with me. I felt so exciting with the coming marketing that we will participate in!! We have booked a tent in the dreamers market in September!!
Hope it will work things out.
In reality, it's easier to sell the artworks in a art fair than sell them in a pop up shop. I think we might need to showcase our artworks in an art/handmade market, such as finder keepers.
I am helping the ARI to design their brochures and flyer for their studio and the coming market.
The are a lot of difference between shop marketing and event marketing. We are not only working on building the reputation of our shop, but also try to target the online customers in the our website. We are building the shopping cart for customer if they are interested in collecting our artworks
Cood to heard some exciting new from you!!I think we will figure it out the way to sell artworks. eg. target rich customers or better marketing way :)
cheers for our hard work!!
Sandy
You are right, it is in fact different marketing for events v.s. pop up store. Events covers a broader marketing spectrum while there may be limited resources for shop marketing.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great consideration! To have it showcased in the art markets such as The Finder Keeper. Look forward to hearing more of it!
Just finished a blog post too, will be officially starting my internship at the museum tomorrow! Good luck to us! :)