You also have to jump through hoops to sell it and account for it.

When was the last time you bought something from the person who made it? A piece of pottery, a wooden jewelry box, a framed painting, a hand-bound notebook, a leather wallet, a pair of earrings?

Do you have any idea what went into that item, from the moment it was imagined by the artist to the moment you took possession of it?

Let’s look at the skills required, which is probably the least considered piece of this puzzle. Babies don’t emerge from the womb knowing how to make things. Their ability to creatively design and then construct a piece of art is something learned over years. Sure, some of it might be natural — lots of people (but not me) seem to have an eye for drawing or making music. But most folks, no matter what their natural skills seem to be, need training and practice to hone those skills. A kid has to come a long way from drawing with crayons in kindergarten to painting fine art images with acrylics on turkey feathers.

The next time you browse an art show, take a moment to consider the kinds of skills the artist needed to hone to make what you see in her booth. Think about how she got them. Maybe it’s self-taught with years and years of practice. Or maybe she took often expensive hands-on classes. (I did a bit of both.)

Now consider the often specialized tools and equipment. I bet you can’t even imagine half the tools a potter or a woodworker or a jewelry artist uses to make their artwork. Next time you’re at an art show, if an artist you admire isn’t too busy, take a moment to learn more about the tools and equipment they use in their studio.

Here’s a photo of a pendant I finished yesterday, and here’s a run-down of the tools and equipment I used to make it:

• Jeweler’s bench (homemade)
• Adjustable jeweler’s stool
• Cutting mat
• Metal shear (tabletop)
• Metal sheer (handtool)
• Steel hammer
• Weighted nylon-head mallet
• STERLING stamp
• Custom Makers mark stamp
• Flush cutters
• Flex shaft (basically a foot-controlled Dremel)
• Sanding wheel
• Bail template
• Bail-making plyers
• Chain nose pliers
• Smith Little Torch setup
• Propane Tank
• Oxygen Tank
• Quenching bowl
• Pickle pot
• Neutralizing solution
• Silver patina
• Tumbler with ceramic media
• Tumbler with steel shot
• Strainers (two meshes)
• Bezel setter

All together, this is about $2,000 worth of equipment. And it doesn’t include the the thousands of dollars of other equipment I use in other work. Not only did I have to acquire all of these tools, but I had to learn how to use them properly. (I’m still working on the Smith Little Torch.)

And then there are the materials. I had sticker shock this morning when I checked the price of sterling silver; it’s up more than 100% in two years. Thank heaven I stocked up earlier this year and have enough to take me through the winter. I’ll need to have a few good shows before I stock up again. I’m fortunate that I now have enough cabochons in my collection to last the rest of my life. (Buying stones is a bit of an addiction for me.)

Now I’m getting into monetary costs and I really didn’t mean to go there. So let’s take a turn back to what prompted me to write this post: updating my jewelry business online shop.

The point is, it’s not enough to be creative and have the skills and tools and materials to turn ideas into a piece of art. Today’s artists need to be able to sell that art to keep making it. And that means they’re usually in charge of marketing and sales — after all, how many artists can afford to hire someone to handle that for them?

Marketing, to me, means mentioning my work on social media, trying (and mostly failing) to keep a website up-to-date, photographing all my new work. I’m lucky (or stupid) because I’m only on one social media platform — Mastodon — so I’m not dealing with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tik Tok. (I occasionally put videos on YouTube, but since losing my login information for my jewelry account, that’s been a bit difficult.) I simply can’t see spending hours of every day promoting my work on social media when I should be making the work I have to promote.

Sales means applying to and then attending often costly art shows with setup and teardown that suck the physical life out of me. Even just sitting in my booth all day, eating snacks out of a little cooler and having to rely on other artists to keep an eye on things when I run to the restroom to take a leak can be exhausting. Heck, when I do the Leavenworth WA show some weekends, my day is 11 to 14 hours (long door to door), depending on whether it’s a setup day. The show I’m attending in Seattle soon is costing me more than $800 for a 10 x 6 foot space; do you know how much jewelry I have to sell to cover that? (At least it’s indoors.)

Sales also means updating an online shop. I know a lot of folks use Etsy and depend on it for sales. I don’t. I’m tired of them taking such a large chunk of my revenue and displaying my work among so much cheap crap. I’m tired of having to maintain two inventory systems that I have to manually sync up when I make or sell something. I’m tired of giving money to an organization that misleads buyers and sellers. And when you shop there, have you ever stopped to consider how much sellers have to jack up their prices to make a profit after Etsy takes its fees?

So I have my own Square-based shop. It’s free to set up and use; the only fee is the standard credit card fee I pay when a sale is made. But it still takes time to update the site with photos and descriptions when I make new items or sell items outside the square system.

Did I mention that I have to be a photographer, too? Yep. I have to take decent photos of all of my work. I do the best I can, but I’m not pretending it’s good. It’s passable. (Yesterday I considered hiring someone to do it. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the budget to pay someone else to do it.)

And did I mention that I also have to account for all my sales? And file sales tax returns for every state I sell in? So yes, I have to be an accountant, too. (Good thing I got that accounting degree back in the 1980s.)

So I guess that what I’m trying to say is that unless an artist is independently wealthy and can make art for fun, there’s a lot more to making art than just making art.

Think about that the next time you see original artwork available for sale.

I take an objective, dollars and cents look at the various ways I can sell my jewelry to see how they stack up financially.

Last weekend, I made the nearly 5-hour drive to Sequim, WA to attend a 3-day Lavender Festival that featured, among other things, artists and vendors selling their wares. I was one of those artists.

I’ve done plenty of art shows before. I’ve done a handful here in Washington State and a handful down in Arizona. I’ve had mixed results, mostly depending on the stage I was in in my silversmithing journey and the kind of show I was attending. Some shows are good for low-end items, other shows are good for fine art items. My work straddles those two worlds, for a variety of reasons.

But rather than talk about the evolution of my work, I want to talk about something I know well: the finance end of things. After all, I do have a BBA in Accounting with Highest Honors from Hofstra University. (LOL.) And even though I don’t use that degree in my daily work, I haven’t forgotten a lot of what I learned along the way, including marketing and finance. It is, after all, what makes it possible for me to handle the financial records and do the marketing for all of the businesses I operate, even if I can never really count how many there are.

And here’s what I learned about the various ways I sell my work.

Item Costs

When you’re making something for sale, you need to get a good handle on what each item costs to make. Costs include a few things, some of which are more obvious than others:

• 
  Remarkably, these wire-framed pendants still sell. I make them when I’m sitting idle in my booth at a show. They are the least expensive pendants I make, but with the price of silver rising 50% in the past two years, I’ve had to raise my prices on them, too.

  Materials cost. I’m using sterling silver and gemstone cabochons for most of my work. There was a definite identifiable cost to acquire these materials. I try to record the cost of materials where I store those materials. There’s a cost code on a sticker on the bottom of every cabochon in my collection. I also write the cost per square inch on flat pack silver packages and the cost per inch on the spools or coils of silver wire. Although I’m not quite anal enough to track the exact materials cost for every item I make, I do have a fair idea. I can tell you this: bezel-set stones on backplates cost a heck of a lot more for materials than wire framed pendants.

• Supplies cost. I use a variety of supplies when making jewelry. Solder, flux, torch fuel, sanding and polishing wheels, etc. In most cases the amount of supplies I use are minimal, but they were purchased at a cost and I need to keep that cost in mind when calculating what an item costs to make.
• Want a good idea of what kinds of tools I use? Watch this YouTube video tour of my shop.

  Tools cost. Tools are the things I use to manipulate the metal and can include hand tools like pliers, wire cutters, hammers, and saws; desktop tools like my flex shaft, rolling mill, metal shear, and torches (Big Shot with butane refills and Smith Little Torch with propane and oxygen tanks); and other tools like mandrels, templates, soldering boards, annealing tray, third hand, anvil, etc. There are literally too many to list. Tools can be used over and over — often for years and many projects — but they still cost money to obtain. I have literally thousands of dollars invested in shop equipment and all of that is eventually paid for with the sales of my jewelry.

• Time cost. Time really is money and my time ain’t cheap. If it takes me 4 hours of active work time to make a pendant, don’t you think I should be compensated for it? I build the cost of my time into my price.

I’m fortunate. My jewelry studio is in my home. I don’t need to rent a space and deal with associated costs. Other folks do. That has to be taken into consideration as well.

These are the costs of actually making items. Selling them is another story.

Cost of Sales is More than Item Costs

Artists can sell their work one or two ways: directly or through a middleman. Each way has its own costs.

Direct Sale: Selling in Person

This is the sweetest way to sell your work: sell it directly to someone who wants it who is meeting with you face to face. This could be a friend or a friend of a friend or perhaps at another place where you happen to be with your merchandise.

The best example I have of this is selling at an Artists Table at a boating event I attend every year. There’s one table for each artist (unless you get there early and hog multiple tables) and there’s no fee. For three hours, other event attendees check out what’s for sale and buy. I bring just a table cover and about a dozen pendant displays. I bring all of my pendants and about 1/4 of my other inventory. And I sell at retail price. My only cost is packaging and credit card fees. My return is roughly 95% at these events. I love them because they’re short and sweet and I’m there anyway. I can set up and tear down in about 15 minutes. Of course, I don’t make very much money at these events, but it’s nice to get compensated for my work.

Direct Sales: Selling online

I have an online shop that I use to sell my work directly to customers. This is actually the least expensive way for me to sell because I use an extremely cost-effective platform to sell on: Square. Square is my credit card provider and when I sell online, it just charges me the credit card fee, which is generally around 3%. I still have to buy packaging (my cost) and ship items out (usually my cost because large sales ship free). But looking at an example, suppose someone buys a $50 pendant, which ships free. I spend about $1.50 for credit card fees, $1.00 for packaging, and $4 to $10 on shipping. If I keep it as cheap as possible, I net $43.50 on that $50 item or 87%.

I should note here that not all online sales solutions are this cost effective. Etsy, for example, will charge a percentage of the sales price after it already charged you to list it and can charge an additional marketing fee if it claims people found your item through one of its Google ads. You can learn my thoughts about Etsy and why I won’t use it here.

I like direct sales through my website. It’s easiest and most cost effective for me to do.

Direct Sales: Selling at Art Show and Other Venues

I do most of my selling at art shows. Art shows have a variety of costs associated with them.

• Jury or application fees, which range from $10 to $50, are non-refundable and you’ll pay them even if your work isn’t judged good enough to be part of the show.
• Booth fees can range from $35 to $1,200 or more, depending on the show. You’ll pay those to get your booth.

But that’s not where the costs end. You still have to get to and from the show, pay for overnight accommodations if the show is more than one day, and cover the cost of fees for credit card sales.

And some shows require you to pay a percentage of sales. One I do quite regularly charges only $35 for my booth for the weekend — which can be up to 5 days, depending on how summer holidays fall — but also keeps 21% of all sales. They also handle sales centrally, so at least I don’t have to pay credit card fees. The good thing about this arrangement is that if I have a crappy weekend, I can’t lose money. But, on the other hand, if I have a kickass weekend, I still gross only 77-78%.

And don’t forget your booth. You’ll need a white fire retardant canopy with zip-up sides, four 30-40 pound weights to hold it in place, and tables, walls, or other display equipment. Just outfitting your booth could cost $1000 or more; mine has a tent, three tables, table covers, dozens of custom pendant display “necks,” bracelet displays, and special boxes to display earrings. You’ll also need a vehicle to schlep all that stuff around. Fortunately, these are mostly one-time expenses, but you need to maintain and replace these items periodically. Before my last show, I re-finished every single one of my pendant displays. And two months ago, I replaced my aging canopy.

Finally, your sales depend quite a bit on a few factors:

• Is your work with your price points a good match for the people attending the show? If you’re overpriced or your work is too highbrow for the people attending, you won’t get sales. If you’re underpriced, your work could be seen as junk.
• What’s your competition like? I sell jewelry, which is often a very popular category at art shows. A smart promoter will use the jury system to select jewelry artists whose work is different. Then they’ll lay out the show so all of the jewelry artists aren’t together. If my work is very similar to another artists, we’ll have to split the sales for work like ours between us.
• Is the show well attended? If people don’t show up because the show was poorly advertised, promoters charge a hefty entrance fee, or the weather was crappy for an outdoor event, sales will suffer.
• Are people actually spending money? One of the things I hate about doing shows in tourist towns is that show browsers might just be walking around to kill time. The state of the economy comes into play here.
• Do you accept credit cards? If you don’t, you’re in the wrong business. Cash might be king, but few customers use it these days.

Either way, you have to remember the other costs of direct sales, which includes packaging. My packaging is simple: drawstring bags for pendants and plastic zip bags for earrings on cards. For multiple item purchases, I have larger drawstring bags. But other vendors might have bubble wrap, boxes, shopping bags with tissue paper, or more. All of these things cost money and need to be considered as part of the cost of sales.

So let’s look at some numbers. I’ll compare a recent weekend at Leavenworth Village Art in the Park with the Lavender Festival in Sequim.

—
* I excluded travel costs because I figure that driving to and from Leavenworth 4 times is about equal to driving to and from Sequim once, despite the much longer distance to Sequim.

My takeaway from this? My percentage return was only 5 percentage points higher in Sequim for the Lavender Festival than it was in Leavenworth (a tourist town) on a holiday weekend.

But the interesting thing to remember here is that my percentage return in Leavenworth will always be the same because of their commission fee structure: 77-78%. If I’d grossed $5,000, for example, in Sequim, my return percentage would have been closer to 85% (even considering more credit card fees). But if I’d grossed just $3,000 in Sequim, my percentage return would have been about 76%. Clearly, the more expensive a show is to attend, the more you have to sell.

I’ll tell you why the percentage return is important in a moment, although I expect most of you to be able to figure it out.

Middleman Sales: Consignment

I want to start out by saying that I hate consignment sales.

In consignment sales, you drop off some of your merchandise with the owner/manager of a shop or gallery and they sell it for you. Sounds good, right? Well here are some of the problems:

• Consignment fees. The shop or gallery keeps between 20% (which is crazy low and pretty much unheard of these days) to 50% (which is crazy high). The average I’ve paid is 35%-40%. (I will not sell on consignment if they want 50%.) Take 100% and deduct that percentage and you get your percentage return: 60% to 65%. To be fair, it’s easy, takes hardly any time at all, and has no other costs like credit card fees or packaging.
• They have your inventory so you can’t sell it. You can’t sell something you don’t have. And if they don’t sell it, it doesn’t get sold.
• There’s no provision for loss due to shoplifting. If someone steals your work from where it’s displayed in the shop or gallery, it’s your loss. After all, the shop or gallery hasn’t paid you for it.
• If they go out of business you might lose your work. I’ve heard these horror stories. A shop goes out of business and the owner/manager disappears with all the inventory, never to be seen again. This has not happened to me, but that’s because I’m very careful about who I leave items with on consignment.
• You have to rely on their honesty. If they’re dishonest, you work will disappear and you’ll never see a penny for it. Again, I don’t think this happens very often.
• Items can be shop worn or broken. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a gallery I work with to give them new items and get items back that are either severely tarnished — we are talking about silver after all — or broken. That means I need to work on them before I can put them back into my inventory and sell them.

The main reason I don’t like consignment sales is because I have to keep track of what’s out there. Letting inventory sit elsewhere, unsold or perhaps not even on display, is also problematic. I currently sell on consignment in only two places and I’m not bringing anything new to one of them.

Middleman Sales: Wholesale

Wholesale is a lot like consignment sales but once you sell it, it’s gone. You don’t have to track it or worry about getting it back in bad shape or worry about it getting stolen. You sell it and it’s gone.

The drawback, of course, is that the buyer wants a deep discount — perhaps as much as 50%. I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve done all of my wholesale sales at 35% with payment by check right on the spot. Although that means my percentage return is only 65%, at least the item is sold with zero additional cost or effort on my part.

Needless to say, if I’m going to use a middleman, I want it two be a wholesale client.

Why the Percentage Return Matters

Let’s put it all together now.

When you make an item, you have direct and indirect costs as discussed at the beginning of this article. When you sell at item you have additional costs. You need to price your item with a profit margin that makes it profitable to sell no matter how you sell it.

Suppose I make a pendant that takes me 4 hours and uses about $15 worth of silver and stones. I price my time at $25/hour (which is a steal). So my direct costs are $115. Add another $5 for the cost of supplies and a portion of the equipment costs. Now we’re up to $120. If I price this item at $199, I’ve got a 65.8% profit margin. (Calculate as (199-120)÷120.) So if I sell it at consignment and they get 35%, I’m barely breaking even.

I have three options:

• Price it higher
• Accept less for my time (or work faster)
• Don’t sell anywhere I’ll make less than 65.8% percentage return

If I sold this at Leavenworth or at the Lavender Festival, I’d still only have a profit margin of 12% or 17%. That means that for every $1 of costs, I’d earn a profit of 12¢ or 17¢. Ouch.

This is the problem faced by all artists and makers. People don’t understand our costs to make or sell. They just see the end product. And then they value it based on what it might cost in Walmart or on Amazon or from an “artist” who has her work mass produced overseas with inferior quality materials — maybe silver plate and plastic “stones”? — and passes it off as handmade.

Advancing My Art

Right now, I’m in an in between world. I’m still making low end items like certain earring styles and wire-framed pendants. These are priced to sell at tourist art shows and festivals. But I’m also making better quality, more artistic items that some folks refer to as “statement pieces.” These take a lot of time and effort to make with high quality materials and specialized tools. I’m charging more money for these things because I have to.

Unfortunately, the only way to sell these items is to attend better art shows. The better art shows have higher booth fees. So it’s a gamble. Is my work good enough to get into the show? Once I’m in, will I get the sales I need to not only break even on the show itself, but to get the percentage returns I need to actually profit?

I think the shows I attend this winter in Arizona will answer that question once and for all.

I come up with a new goal and a business plan to go with it — and realize that this simply isn’t a good time to take risks.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you should know a little about me, but if you don’t, let me fill you in on what’s important to know for this post.

I’m currently 60-something. I retired from my most recent career as a helicopter pilot in 2023, after selling the helicopter, the charter company, and the cherry drying company in 2022 and 2023. I took the proceeds from those sales and used them to buy a 32-foot “pocket yacht,” which I shipped to Chicago in October 2022. I then spent most of the next two years cruising on that boat, alone and with friends, along the Great Loop. (I blog about that in my Great Loop blog, so if you’re interested, please check it out.)

I finished my Great Loop trip in August 2024 and trailered the boat back to the Seattle area, where I launched it in Puget sound. I then spent most of the next month cruising around there and the Inside Passage before bringing it home and cramming it into my very large garage for the winter.

In those final days on the Loop — keeping in mind that I covered more than 8,000 miles — I realized that the part of the Loop I liked the best was the northern part, say from New York City all the way up to Canada and then west into the Great Lakes. There’s nothing quite like cruising in the lakes, rivers, and canals of New York and Ontario; I felt that I could do it forever.

Here’s Do It Now anchored off Valcour Island in Lake Champlain in June 2024. I could spend a lifetime exploring the waterways of New York and Ontario.

Wouldn’t it be great to do it every summer until my age caught up with me and I was done boating?

Goals

I’m a person of personal goals and finishing the Great Loop left me kind of floundering without one. I also felt weird about being retired — not having anything to do to bring in a few bucks to cover my living expenses. I was living off my retirement savings, waiting a few more years to start collecting social security, and it didn’t look as if running out of money was going to be a problem. (I’m remarkably thrifty about some things.) Although my side gig as a silversmith did bring in some money, it was small change without the potential to get much bigger — unless I was willing to spend five days a week in my studio producing jewelry and a bunch of time finding new markets for my work. I wasn’t.

But when I finished the Loop I felt the inklings of a new goal coming on, a new business endeavor where I could spend eight months of the year cruising northern inland waters and the remaining four months soaking up the sun in Arizona. I’d use my captain’s license to offer one- and two-week cruises to a specific potential market of people, cruising in the waters I wanted to explore while teaching them what I knew about cruising. The money I brought in would cover my cruising expenses, reducing my cost of living and helping me preserve some of those retirement savings.

I’m Going to Need a Bigger Boat

But there was a catch: I needed a bigger boat.

I needed a boat with two full sleeping cabins. My guests would get the good one and I’d take the lesser one, but the lesser one had to be a lot bigger than the lesser one on my current boat. I needed to upsize and I had a few models in mind.

Of course, all of these bigger boat options, although pre-owned, would cost a significant amount of money. I figured I’d get that money by selling my home, which is fully paid for, and my current boat, which has a small loan. (I could go into a long lecture about having a paid-for home, but I won’t do it here.) I figured I’d put all of the boat proceeds and half the home proceeds into a bigger boat and use the rest of my home proceeds to buy a modest place in Tucson. After all, although I love my current home, I don’t like it nearly as much during the four months I’d be taking my annual break from the boat. Surely I wouldn’t miss it.

When I was in Arizona, I looked at homes and land and actually found two different lots that were perfect for me. One would be easier than the other to build on, but I’d still have to build on it. I built my current home, acting as General Contractor while the experts did the stuff requiring experts and I did the rest. Did I have another build in me? I thought maybe I did.

So all this is what was going through my mind when I cut this winter’s trip to Arizona short so I could attend the Seattle Boat Show. I had multiple goals for the show, but the main one was to look at used boats in the marina portion of the show. And I did. I actually found two models that would work perfectly for my new business.

The unfortunate thing was that they cost about 50% more than I was hoping to pay. Oops.

Okay, well maybe I could get a small business loan. I had good credit and could work up a business plan that would pass muster. My number-smart brain — did I mention I have an accounting degree? — went to work considering possibilities to make this happen.

How the Current Political Climate Stopped Me Cold

Meanwhile, the demented old narcissist that half the country thought should be the most powerful man in the world got sworn into office. (Did you notice how he didn’t touch the bible? I think he was afraid he’d burn his hand with the lightning God would send through it.)

And things got pretty weird pretty quick.

I won’t go into a litany of the weird shit the Orange Clown and his South African crony, the Space Karen, have subjected America and the world to. First of all, I couldn’t list it all. I stopped following the news. All I know are the things that have crept through my social media filters, things I’ve heard while I had my head in the sand and my fingers in my ears singing la, la, la, la, la at the top of my lungs.

And even that is enough.

More than enough.

More than enough to tell me that I’d be insane to invest time and money in a new business in this crazy political climate. Tariffs will result in inflation far beyond what we saw over the past few years. Job losses from the shutdown of government offices and the cancelling of grants will put people in dire straits. Another recession, which is definitely possible when the guy making laws by signing executive orders keeps making asinine decisions, will make it highly unlikely that anyone will want to pay me to take them on a cruise. (Unless there’s a chance I can smuggle them into Canada, I guess. If Canada even lets us in.)

More than enough to tell me that I’d be a complete and utter fool to walk away from a paid-for house to build a new one in the kind of economic uncertainty we face, where the price of lumber and building materials could jump 50% — if such materials were available at all. And in a red state? A place where the majority of people think calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is a good thing that proves their cult leader has their best interests at heart? (How are those egg prices doing, my deplorable friends?) And how long before they cut our social security and medicare benefits — the exact thing most Americans in my age group are relying on to take care of them in their old age?

Am I nuts?

No.

So there won’t be a new business in my future. (Well, at least not one beyond the tiny business I started late last year and will talk about elsewhere.) There won’t be cruising in the freshwater lakes, rivers, and canals of New York and Ontario and beyond, at least not in a new-to-me, bigger boat. There won’t be a new house on five acres of desert land in the foothills of the Rincon Mountains near Tucson.

There will just be the financial security and comfort of the home I’m in now, a home I love eight months out of the year. I’ll keep myself busy enough.

And learn to be satisfied without chasing down another goal.

I still have that camper for a winter escape.