If you look at the traditional pathway to a successful pottery business – the galleries, the shops, the art fairs & shows – It all seems like an enormous amount of hard work!
Again, you might think that a pottery wheel, or a kiln are the most important parts of your business, and that to start out you need to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars on equipment.
But you can rent spaces in community pottery studios, and use their pottery wheels and kilns.
You cannot rent your audience.
Your audience of potential customers is the most important part of your business, and it’s what you should be focusing on first. From the very start.
There’s a saying that’s a favorite of ours:
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
The second-best time is now.”
And the same is true for starting to grow your own audience of potential customers.
Without an audience of potential customers, no-one will see your work, which means that you will have a very hard time selling your work.
It’s the same principle in any business.
Supply and Demand.
First you create the demand, and then you supply to them.
Which means that you should start by building your audience. When you have your audience of potential customers (a group of people that want to buy your work – and that you can sell to – without high commissions or upfront costs) then you can really start to make money – and start to purchase your own equipment, and start to slowly build up your own studio.
Think about it, you could have the best, most expensive, up to date pottery studio or even factory in the world, with all the latest and greatest tools, but if no-one sees your work, and you have no audience that you can sell to, then what’s the point?
It would be far better to rent a communal space, and have thousands of people, eager to see what you are working on, and eager to buy your work.
Now or Never
The truth is, there has never been a better time to be a potter.
It’s never been easier to start your own pottery business.
It has never been easier to create your own audience of potential customers.
So if we asked you again, what would you do first if you wanted to set up your own pottery business?
• Buy some clay?
• Buy a pottery wheel?
• Buy some glazes?
• Buy a kiln?
• Start to create your audience of potential customers?
Of course, you would want to create your own audience first!
If you’re really itching to buy something, then you should go and buy a 10$ apron and some messy clothes to wear, a sketch book to draw down your ideas, and some pottery lessons to learn how to make the things that you want to make.
Then you should look around where you live for an open studio – some studio space that you can rent and create & fire & glaze your own stuff.
That’s right, you can, and should start your own pottery business for next to nothing, and this is how you can do it all by yourself.
How can you quickly and efficiently build your audience?
Continue to Page 4…
SUBTEXT:
- It’s never too early to start building your audience
- You should start today!
- Without an audience of potential customers – you will not be able to sell the work you make.
