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craft showI was surfing through the American Craft Forum this weekend and found an announcement by Bonnie Blandford about a new survey by the National Association of Independent Artists. In 2007, the NAIA commissioned a study about craft show exhibitors and the marketplace. Some of the findings are rather interesting if you are currently in the craft show circuit, but it also has implications throughout the entire industry. The survey identified three trends:

  1. Aging Artists/Craftsmen- 82% of the survey respondents were over the age of 46 while 14% were over the age of 62. 4% of the respondents were between the age of 26 & 35 and none of the respondents were under the age of 25.
  2. Waning Interest in American Craft- Respondents stated that 31% of their work sells to 33 to 45 year olds and 63% report that the 46 to 59 year old bracket buys their work.
  3. Artists Are Staying Closer to Home- 41% of all shows attended by the survey respondents are less than 60 miles from home base and 16% of all shows are between 60 – 280 miles from home, while only 15% of all shows are more than 280 miles away from home.

You can download the survey results here

So what does this mean to artists who do craft shows in particular and the crafts industry in general? The study concludes that the industry is in a state of flux and that these are trends that people started noticing as early as the mid 1990s. Where is this state of flux headed? The study doesn’t say, but artists are already having conversations about it in forums, in studios, and in the craft show booth. Ironically, I was having a conversation about the future of shows only a couple days ago with a fellow crafter who is a 20+ veteran of the show circuit. What were our conclusions?

  1. There’s a shakeout coming (and it may have already begun). Those big regional shows held in convention centers are going to start dying off leaving mostly the really excellent local shows and those bedrock fine craft shows like Smithsonian, Philadelphia, etc.
  2. Those artists who have been doing shows for years and years are going to start sticking close to home, partly due to age, but mostly because long distance shows will become less and less profitable (i.e. price of gas, the falling dollar, economy, etc). Show patrons will be sticking closer to home for the same reasons.
  3. From what I understand from my generation of artists (20s through 30s), the overhead for getting into the show venue isn’t very inviting…especially considering how you can’t count on even breaking even at many of these shows. So they’re not all that eager to do shows in the first place (at least not for very long). They’re concentrating on the local shows, wholesaling to boutiques and gift shops, and selling online.
  4. The Internet is going to play a huge role in art and craft sales…the notion that nobody buys art online is getting less and less true by the moment. According to the New York Times people spent $4.3 million at Etsy in November of 2007 alone.

One of the big conclusions that I came away way was that if you’re not online, the time to get online is right now. If you have a small web presence…congratulate yourself and then get to work…because now is the time to get better, stronger, and faster. I don’t believe that craft shows are dead, nor do I think craft sales are not going to go all online. But what I do believe is that the Internet is going to be a major tool in the sales arsenal. Artists that keep telling themselves that no one buys art online are fooling themselves.

If you’re not online now…here are ways to get started today…

If you’re already online…here are some ways to improve