Selling Myself

It's 10:11 pm and I just got home from a 2 hour workshop called The Art of Selling – A Workshop for Crafters. It was held by Mary Breen, the owner of Wise Daughters Craft Market located in the Junction.

Firstly walking from Dundas West station through the Junction was wonderful. I haven't been there for years and it has changed dramatically. It was a very good thing that it was 6:30 pm and the shops were all closed.

The Art of Selling workshop is geared towards how to sell crafts. Mary started us off by going

around the room of 8 participants, have us introduce ourselves and tell everybody what we would like to learn from the workshop. I was the last to speak and it was reassuring to say that everyone had already mentioned the touch points that I was interested in. The main concern of those present was online sales – I am not alone! As I have stated in previous blogs I have not made one sale through my Etsy shop. As it turns out nobody else in the room was having much luck with Etsy either.

Mary Breen has the unique perspective of both a retailer and a crafter. She began her talk by discussing professionalism. She shed some light on how shop owners perceive potential vendors. She talked about the do's and don'ts, and about doing your homework – research, research, research. She moved on to discuss price point, packaging and advertising. Packaging was a big one for me because a few days ago I received an email from Nature on Main (one of the shops that is selling my sock monkeys) and was told that I needed a label with a warning on it about the button eyes being a choking hazard. I was also told I needeed to disclose what the monkeys are stuffed with and what the socks are made out of. My monkeys will be one big label pretty soon. We discussed this and I think that the button warning is very necessary but I may skip the ingredients list.

At the end of the evening we had the opportunity to see what everyone made. We shared the stumbling blocks that we had encountering and as a group we discussed potential strategies on how to deal with these hurdles.

Before leaving I wandered through the shop to see what other Toronto crafters were doing. There were some really inspirational pieces. One of the artists who really stood out was Katie McLellan. Her wall hangings were gorgeous and subtle and tactile and the colours she uses are stunning.

I had my blog already lined up for tonight but I put it on the back burner to write about tonight. I was really happy that I attended this workshop and before starting my blog I jumped onto the Wise Daughters website to see what other workshops were coming up. I need all the help I can get.

http://wisedaughters.com

http://www.katiemclellan.com

Other crafters attending the workshop were:

http://vintagelove.ca

http://papermuse.wordpress.com

http://ringsbystephanie.com