Fred Imhoff designs and sculpts original flameworked glass from his studio in Portland, Oregon. Fred began flameworking in 1998, and has since earned a glass sculpture degree from C.S.U. Chico and studied with numerous master glass artists. His work is currently being represented in more than thirty five galleries across the country.
After more than a decade of working in two dimensions, both as an artist and designer, Charlene Randolph returned to school in 1995 and fell in love with clay. Since then, she has pursued a successful career as a ceramic artist and teacher, balancing most of her time between creating and marketing her own work and teaching students of all ages.
Louise Fischer Cozzi has been working in polymer since 1991. Her award winning pieces and articles have appeared in Belle Armoire, Bead and Button, and Lapidary Journal as well as numerous books.
In her current work, she forms simple elegant shapes of translucent clay and infuses them with layers of texture and color that suggest infinite depth.
For a few days each February and August, children are my enemies. Actually, their parents are the enemies. At every show, there are a handful of parents (both exhibitors and buyers) who didn't read their materials carefully enough to realize that we do not allow children under 12 years old on the show floor.
In many cases, artists have chosen their careers as a result of wanting (or needing) to be home with their children. Traveling to a show can seem overwhelmingly complicated when you throw in the logistics of managing childcare on top of pricing, booth display, marketing, shipping, and filling orders.
It doesn't have to be impossible to do a show as a parent, even of small children. What is necessary, however, is that you determine in advance what the show's policies are regarding kids. Some shows (retail shows in particular) have no guidelines at all -- children are welcome, strollers and all. Other shows permit children of certain ages, or ban strollers, or offer childcare. Do not assume that what is allowed at one show will be okay at the next -- always ask for specific information.
At the Buyers Market, for example, absolutely NO children (including infants) under the age of 16 are allowed on the floor during move-in or move-out. With the large amount of heavy equipment driving around the floor, it is simply too dangerous.
Once the show opens, we allow children 12 and over on the floor, and infants under six months old as long as they are constantly in a front carrier. Anyone between 6 months and 12 years is welcome to take advantage of the childcare service that we offer at a reasonable fee to exhibitors and buyers. Our show, like all wholesale tradeshows, is dedicated to conducting business between sellers and buyers. Not only do children distract from the business at hand, it isn't a particularly safe environment for them - sharp metal and breakable glass lurk around every corner.
But we do understand that leaving kids at home with a spouse isn't possible when your spouse is your business partner. Which is why we do provide the option of childcare, which is open from the beginning of exhibitor move-in to the end of move-out. For many of our artists, the service is what has allowed them to do the show while raising a family... and doing the show has allowed them to raise their family while doing a job they love.
At the Buyers Market of American Craft this summer, NICHE magazine will announce the winners of the 2008 Top Retailer Awards at a ceremony on August 3. Hundreds of shops and galleries were nominated by artists, and after each nominee completes an application, 24 Top Retailer winners are selected, along with the Retailer of the Year.
This year's nominee list is available online; if any of the nominees are galleries who carry your work (or who you'd like to carry your work), now is the perfect time to send them a short congratulatory note.
Erin Lambers will be bringing her line of functional ceramics to this summer's Buyers Market, and sharing a booth with her mother, who makes handcrafted soaps. Erin has been working as a full-time potter since 2005, and currently teaches both adults and children. "It is my goal as an artist to create beautifully affordable pottery for people of all walks of life to enjoy," Erin explains. "The ability I am blessed with is a love that I share with all ages."
Even with a BFA in Metalwork and Jewelry Design, DeAnna Cochran spent 15 years as a quality consultant in the corporate world before returning to her first love, metalsmithing. DeAnna will take part in her first Buyers Market this August, and we're thrilled to have her join us.
NEWS FROM THE BUYERS MARKET:
Dear Exhibitors, Buyers and Council Members:
We've just learned about the one-week gap between our Philadelphia Buyers Market of American Craft and the ACC Baltimore Craft Show.
As many of you are aware, convention center calendars in both Baltimore and Philadelphia are booked many years in advance and it is not possible at this late date for us to change our dates for the 2009 season.
The Buyers Market will be held February 13-16, 2009 (and the jewelry preview will be held February 12), over the Presidents Day weekend, which is our usual schedule.
While the 2009 configuration of the show dates might be inconvenient for some, others may find the down time between the shows a great opportunity to regroup, rest and be fresh for the second show.
We look forward to working with the American Craft Council and Andrew Glasgow. We support him in his new role as the ACC’s executive director, and we look forward to continued good relations and open communication as we look to future dates, and consider ways to coordinate future schedules to benefit our mutual customers.
Wendy Rosen, President
The Rosen Group/Buyers Market of American Craft
Most of the power in our office is currently out, a not-so-rare occurence in our renovated mill building. It presents a regular challenge for us... how do we keep a staff working and occupied while they can't use computers or phones?
Right now, we have folks stuffing envelopes, reading trade magazines, cleaning their desks, filing, and holding meetings. The outage affords us an opportunity to focus on those things that often get overlooked in our day-to-day work.
Consider taking a voluntary "power outage" half-day once a week to take care of those neglected tasks.
Online buyer registration for the Buyers Market of American Craft officially opened last week... send all your stores & galleries to www.buyersmarketonline.biz to register today!
In other exciting registration news, more than 800 companies pre-registered at the February show for this summer's show, putting our current registration numbers at more than four times what it was last year at this point.
We're still crunching the numbers to see how the summer show went, but here's a review from Brenda Griffith.
Brenda also posted this great picture of her booth:
Also, it looks like Brenda's book is very close to becoming a reality!
Congrats Brenda!
With the show freight out of the office, we've yet again arrived at...
Another six months has flown by, and now it's almost time for that semi-annual trip to Philly for the Buyers Market! In light of the upcoming show, we thought it'd be a good idea to revisit one of our very first posts on this blog:
Top 10 Tips to Improve Sales at a Wholesale Show
Enjoy!
Following up on Tuesday's post, our good friend and frequent Buyers Market speaker Rick Segel just blogged about this. Rick's take is that no retailer should ever deal with any vendor who also sells online.
In the wholesale craft community, this seems a little extreme as long as both parties agree to terms that suit them (see Tuesday's post).
The latest Market Insider is up. In response to Brenda Griffith's response to the What are you doing to prepare for BMAC post, we thought it might be a good idea to discuss booth displays and how they can help your sales.
Brenda, for example, has expanded her booth from 10 x 10 ft. to 10 x 20 ft. for the first time. That's a big difference, and I can't wait to see how it affects her sales.
Bruce Baker is a Buyers Market staple. He's done the show, he's shopped the show, and for many, many years, he's been presenting business workshops for artists at the show.
Bruce was recently interviewed on Alison Lee's Craftcast.
Bruce will be giving his "Dynamic Craft Selling" seminar to exhibitors the day before the show opens. Other interested artists can catch him through the Visiting Artist program. More info at www.ArtsBusinessInstitute.org (which is producing the upcoming VA program).
The Buyers Market is only a
little more than 1 month away. I know things are really hopping here in
the office. Phones ringing, emails flying in and out, press releases
getting sent, plus planning for the 2008 shows is well underway.
What kind of things are you doing in your studio or business (or both) to prepare for the summer show?
By the way, I'm cross-posting this question at the AmericanCraft Forum. Feel free to respond in either location!
We just got back from the Craft Organization Development Association (CODA) conference. For those of you not familiar with this organization, CODA was created to help craft-related non-profits share ideas and knowledge with each other.
The Rosen Group regularly works with non-profits, such as the Kentucky Craft Marketing program, and it was nice to finally get to meet some people who I've only known through email.
This year's conference was in Calgary, Canada, and the Canadians really had a number of great presentations. They have a lot of governmental support, and they're all working diligently to promote Canadian craft artists. Overall, it was a great exchange of information!
At least, in this month's issue of The Crafts Report.
That's one of Mark Rosenbaum's pieces on the cover. There feature article also offers up a picture of Tsunami Glassworks at the Buyers Market, as well as the Buyers Market welcome wall. Buyers Market show director Christine Kloostra is quoted in that article. I'm also quoted in Loretta's Last Line, which is sadly not available online.
New exhibitor Geoff Lee of Island Glassworks is also mentioned over at the Honolulu Advertiser for winning the 2007 Merit Award in Glass.
We just found out this week that the Buyers Market has been named one of the nation's Top 200 Tradeshows by Tradeshow Week magazine!
Here's a link to our press release.
We've been included on this list numerous times, but all the same, it's nice to get some recognition from outside the craft industry.
There's a nice little mention about the Buyers Market over at Accessory Merchandising. Here's an excerpt:
Yet, even more telling than which markets buyers are attending is which ones they’re not. A full 72 percent of InsideHomeFashion panelists don’t budget the time or funds to attend specialty markets like New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) or the Buyers Market of American Craft in Philadelphia, even though the reports from the minority of respondents who do—panelists searching for “well-priced artisan pieces to augment imports and more ‘mass-produced’ items” and “unique, edgy products not shown at traditional markets”—are overwhelmingly positive.
It's ironic that this particular panel said it didn't budget time for the markets where they'll find the merchandise they need most--that is, items that are handmade and not mass produced.
A notice for our exhibitors:
The loading dock will remain open until 8 p.m. today. Exhibitors may remain in the hall until midnight. You will NOT be able to re-enter the hall after 7 p.m.
The hall will re-open at 7 a.m. on Thursday. Any extension to loading dock hours for Thursday will be announced later.
Loading dock officials have been told to disregard move-in times. You will be able to access the dock whenever you arrive.
The whole office is now breathing a collective sigh of relief. Our show freight was just picked up.
Of course, that also means we've reached the
See you at the show!
We're officially three weeks away from the February 2007 Buyers Market of American Craft! I can't believe it's practically here already.
As you might know, this will be the Buyers Market's 25th anniversary. We're having several special events to celebrate including a half-day seminar by Rick Segel and a Celebrate Silver! anniversary party. You can see the full show schedule here.
And I'm also excited to announce that the legendary Dennis Stevens, who gave the keynote at the last CODA conference, will be joining us AND hosting the 2007 NICHE Awards!
Whew! What a week.
Exhibitor kits are in the mail. Security has been scheduled for the show and the contract signed. Audio-visual is being ordered. The catering order is looming. Applications are STILL being reviewed, and in some cases, accepted. Exhibits managers are transferring their individual floorplans onto our massive full-show floorplan and discovering a few roadbumps in the process (three cheers to jewelry exhibitor Philippa Roberts for being a good sport about being relocated). Hotels are selling out. Attendees are calling to ask how soft the mattress are at the Marriott. And our six-month old database chose this week to mysteriously assign every booth in the Summer 2006 show to a single exhibitor (imagine the booth fees!).
We have officially reached "crunch time" in the Operations department. Buyer Services has added staff to man the phones, and exhibit managers are juggling not just February, but this summer's show as well. I have uttered the phrase "Can we talk about it on February 22?" at least five times this week.
Despite the near-epic level of chaos we'll live through during the next six weeks, this is my favorite part of the year. (shhhh... don't tell anyone!)
Best wishes for a happy, healthy and art-filled 2007!
I just wanted to congratulate each of our brand new exhibitors on being accepted into the February Buyers Market of American Craft. It’s a competitive marketplace and they should be very proud of their hard work.
As new exhibitors, the Buyers Market offers a cooperative mailing program opportunity to new exhibitors to help kick-start a wholesale career. It is a convenient, targeted, inexpensive way to market their work before buyers even set foot on the show floor.
New exhibitors design and print their own postcard, and we tailor a mailing list from our database of craft retailers across the country. The cooperative mailing program provides choices regarding how many and what type of retail locations to contact. The Buyers Market processes the mailing for the artists, slipping postcards into the hands of retailers right before the show. This envelope, containing the innovative work of our new exhibitors, is often the first thing they open on the plane to Philly or in their hotel room to plan their buying trip.
Information about this program is included in the New Exhibitor Packet, but I wanted to make sure no one missed out on a great opportunity. If you have any questions at all about this, please shoot me an email at kristenk@rosengrp.com or give me a call at 410.889.2933 ext.264. I’d be happy to discuss it further with anyone.
I just finished printing and stuffing a mailing to craft guilds. The Buyers Market offers a complimentary 10 x 10 space to approved guilds to show the work of at least five of their members who haven't wholesaled before.
The program is ideally suited to those just getting started, and would be a great resource for a lot of the Do-It-Yourself craft groups out there, but right now all of them are loosely organized. I would love to see them take the extra step of getting non-profit status (which would make them eligible for grants, donations, not to mention fabulous programs like ours). But are the requirements for forming an official non-profit (board of directors, reports, tax filings) antithesis to the whole idea of these groups?
Last weekend, the show staff trekked down to Washington D.C. for the amazing Washington Craft Show, produced by Crafts America at the Washington Convention Center.
In addition to walking the show floor and talking with exhibitors such as Cindy Drozda, James Eaton, Betsy Youngquist and Samantha Hodge-Williams (whose scarves are very popular in my neighborhood), we hosted a small wine and cheese reception after the show for a few of the artists.
What a success! I had great conversations about craft, wholesaling, the current marketplace, pricing, and production work vs. limited edition with the artists there, some of whom currently do our show, others who've done it in the past, and a few who've never wholesaled.
It was such a pleasure to hear their thoughts about the Buyers Market, and collect suggestions for how to improve the show. Artists who've never done our show were just as full of ideas as our current exhibitors -- we're so lucky to be part of an industry that is invested in its success!
For the past several years, we've run a Visiting Artist Program during the Buyers Market. People interested in learning about wholesaling their work can tour the show floor, attend seminar programs designed especially for them, get their questions answered by show staff, and speak with exhibiting artists and retailers.
Every show, the program gets better and better. This year, we're re-introducing one-on-one portfolio reviews for a limited number of participants, and our speakers include craft sales guru Bruce Baker, Wendy Rosen, president of the Buyers Market and author of "Crafting as a Business," and others. And, the program now has its very own MySpace page, complete with 29 friends. Join the club!
With the winter show less then 100 days away, the Buyers Services Department has been busy making phone calls to pre-register buyers in hopes of scratching Buyers Market registration off their busy to-do list.
Kristen Kearby is head of the department. She keeps snacks around at all times, survives almost exclusively on coffee, and coordinates partnerships with the Philadelphia hotels and the Preferred Gallery program. I am Dana Cheplowitz, the Buyer Services Coordinator. I handle all of your hotel arrangements and anything Kristen throws at me (like this blog entry!). You might also speak with Pat or Chris, both part time employees who are in the office a few times a week to help with data entry and phone calls.
We are always brainstorming about ways to improve a buyer’s experience with us, and are always open to suggestions. We really enjoy talking with buyers about their experiences at the Buyers Market and the craft community. We’ll be taking a break from phone calls during the holidays (as we wish you a busy season!), but feel free to contact us and register or make hotel reservations.
Speaking of hotel reservations, we highly recommend the Philadelphia Marriott for the most comfortable beds ever! Sleeping on a Marriott bed is like sleeping on cloud and it makes it hard for us to leave Philly. Kristen has even gone as far as trying to recreate the Marriott bed here in Baltimore by sleeping on top of a down comforter, which apparently is not as comfy as sleeping at the Marriot.
Whether it be contact information for an artist who exhibits with us, hotel information, or just a chat about craft in general, call or e-mail anytime.
I discovered a little treasure trove of information yesterday -- booth numbers dating back to 1986.
Over here on the show side (affectionately known as the sideshow), we're trying to compile some data for NICHE magazine's article on the 25th anniversary of the Buyers Market. I knew we had show data from 1995 to the present (which, in fact, is the only show data we imported into our new database this summer), but couldn't really find anything earlier than that.
After a little nosing around in our old database, I tracked down just a couple of tiny nuggets of data from those early shows -- booth numbers and tenure points. So, if you want to know what booth you had at the Anaheim show in 1989, just ask.
More importantly, locating this data allows us to have a somewhat reliable history of exhibitor participation since the show started in 1982, as booth numbers are how we track the number of artists in each show.
Fun fact #1: the 1990 show in Atlantic City was the first time the show surpassed 1,000 exhibitors (1172).
Fun fact #2: Prior to making Philadelphia the show's permanent, and only, home in 1995, Buyers Markets were held in Boston, San Francisco, Anaheim, Springfield, Mass., Valley Forge, Pa., Atlantic City, Miami and Baltimore.
