A couple of days ago I was surfing The Crafts Report forum and ran across an artist comment about how they didn’t have a website because they were afraid of having their designs stolen and mass produced overseas. I’ve heard this particular concern throughout the years and while it doesn’t seem to be as prevalent among artists lately, I know it still remains a fairly common fear.

And with some justification. Design theft does occur and when it does it can have some pretty devastating effects for the artist and their business especially if it occurs on a large scale. It can be difficult to prevent and even more difficult to fight if you find that your design have been lifted and is now selling at the local Target or Wal-Mart. At the Buyer’s Market in Philadelphia, Rosen Group president, Wendy Rosen told about an artist who found that their design had been stolen and how they went after thieves. They ended up winning their case, but was almost destroyed by the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and expenses…not to mention all that lost time and energy with fighting the case. So artists who are leery about putting their artwork on such a worldwide channel such as the Internet do have some basis with their concerns.

But the problem is this. Any time you have your art out in a public arena, you run the risk of someone stealing your design. It’s not just the Internet…if you exhibit at shows, in galleries, in gift shops, sell in catalogs, or even if you’re featured in the media, there’s always a chance your work will come to the attention of a potential thief. If you try to eliminate every possible channel where your work could be exposed to potential theft, you may as well pack your work up in a box and leave it in your basement.

And think about this…any time you cut out one avenue for your work, you’re also cutting out potential benefits. By avoiding the Internet (or any other channel for that matter), what potential gains are you missing out on?

• New customers?
• New sales?
• Increased sales?
• New markets?
• A chance to expand or evolve your work and business?
• Media attention?

Bottom line…yes design theft is out there. But the benefits can be much greater than the risk. Don’t let your fear paralyze you.

I 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…

• Get a domain name
• Go to Blogger (or Wordpress.com) and start a blog
• Open a Flickr account and upload your best images of your art
• Go to Etsy and create an account to sell your work
• Hire a web designer to create your first website
• Go to the Squidoo lens, “How Artists Can Market Themselves on the Internet” to learn how to start marketing yourself online
• If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to The Crafted Webmaster newsletter for articles on how to create a web presence

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

• Put a signup form for people to join your mailing list on your website…start building that list!
• Open a profile at Myspace, Facebook, or Indiepublic and start social networking
• If you don’t have a blog, go to Blogger or Wordpress.com to start one
• Check out the Squidoo lens, “How Artists Can Market Themselves on the Internet” for some ideas on how to market your work online
• If you aren’t subscribed to The Crafted Webmaster newsletter, go ahead and subscribe now for articles on how to improve your web presence

It’s great to be back home from San Diego…although I wish I could bottle up the weather and bring it back here…90+ degrees with 75% humidity here today in Virginia…yikes! On my last day in San Diego, I got to walk around in the Gaslamp district with all of the great sidewalk restaurants and neat little stores.

As luck would have it, one of the shops I walked into was owned by leather artist, John Allen Woodward. He makes some of the most beautiful leather belts, wallets, watchbands, and other leather accessories. In addition to the shop, he also has a small studio in the back of the store and he spent some time showing me some of the different types of leather he worked with; lizard, calf, and the more exotic sharkskin and stingray leathers. If you’ve never seen stingray leather before, you should check out his website. Stingray leather has one of the most fascinating textures I’ve ever seen.

While we were talking we got on the subject of building websites. John had previously had a design company make his first website, but ran into a problem when it came to maintaining his website. He would have a picture of new work that he wanted to post on the website, or maybe he needed to change some copy or some prices and he would have to go through the design company to have those changes made….and they were very, very slow. They were often busy with other clients and didn’t have time to get to the changes done quickly or other priorities kept getting in the way. So that changes that should only take a couple minutes could take days to get done.

John is now currently in the process of building a new website and he told me that the most important lesson that he learned from his first site is to always keep control of it. One mistake that a lot of artists make, he told me, was thinking that they can hire someone to build the website and then they can sit back while the sales roll in. They don’t make any updates to their websites or their web designers are too busy to make the changes they request. They don’t promote their websites. Then after two, three, or four months, they’re wondering why their sites aren’t making any sales.

You took the words right out of my mouth, John!

Remember that a website is always a work in progress, and like your artwork you’re always improving it, keeping it up to date with new pictures, new products, more information about yourself and your work. Most importantly, if you hire a web designer to build your site, have them build it so it’s easy for you to make updates yourself. Like John discovered, once your site is built, your designer may not always have the time or the inclination to make updates to it when you need it. You should always have the ability to make changes to existing pages, the ability to add new pages to your website, and the ability to upload these changes to your website. These three skills will give you the power to have total control over your site. Don’t let your website be hostage to someone else’s priorities and schedule.

Thanks to John Allen Woodward for letting me talk his ear off in his shop. If you’re ever in the San Diego area, check out his shop at 431 J Street in the Gaslamp Quarter. And even if you don’t make it to CA, you can check out his website at: http://www.johnallenwoodward.com/. You can buy some of his fantastic leather pieces online.