The alure and profit of "FARMVILLE" for ceramicists

Our next issue of CERAKANVAS is themed "Down on the Farm".

If you go to gamezebo.com and check out FARMVILLE you may be surprised at what you see. Then again, you may say "Really, I thought it would be more than that." Can you believe that as of Oct, 2009 there were over 56 million people playing FARMVILLE on facebook worldwide! And FARMVILLE is only one of almost a dozen apps. that are based from a farm theme. Some of the other more popular ones include titles like; MY FARM, FARM BUDDIES, FARM TOWN and FARM LIFE. While these are created as "free" games for social networking sites, there is an aspect that lures people into spending money. But this BLOG is about the extreme popularity of living "down on the farm" in a virtual and often surreal world.

The rural country life has been an attraction for a very long time in America. From farm scene toille fabric prints to roosters in the kitchen. Even TV shows like Green Acres where city life crosses into country life, have become cultural icons. We took the concept of this popularity, and gave some advice to people who asked us how they might improve sales this holiday season. We gave them ideas on how to set up a FARMVILLE booth, offering ceramic pieces that directly would be loved my FARMVILLE addicts, I mean players. Here's what we heard back:

" I dug out my old Duncan animal dolls in the small sizes. I haven't cast these in years. I found some cute farm dresses and overhauls at the local craft store to dress them in. The outfits only cost me $2.99 each. Altogether I had less than six dollars in each one. I made a hundred total. I called them "farmies" and said they were to help you prosper on your farms, and have great harvests. My whole booth took on a farm theme with bales of hay and I wore overhauls and pigtails. It was a 2 day craft bazaar. I sold out before the end of the first day. I was smart and kept 1 of every style., I ran the second day on prepaid orders. I sold another 118! At $19.95 each I made $4,300+ of which almost $3,000 was profit for me. When I went back to the craft store to order a gross (144) of the costumes they offered me a nice discount too. I will admit I would have never thought of this on my own, Thanks CAG!" Lynae H.

" A couple of years ago I acquired the mold inventory of another ceramic shop that had gone out of business. There was almost a complete set of Byron Village molds. When you suggested turning some of the farm buildings like the barn and silo, the grist mill, and the farm home into banks it paid off for me. I made little signs to go above the coin slot on each bank that said "Save Here to Expand Your Farm", "COINS & CASH Welcome!" I made the booth real inviting. Lot's of yellow gingham and a kids John Deere green tractor ride-on toy for a prop. Just about everybody who stopped by complimented me on my fun looking booth. But more importantly I still can't believe how many of these banks I sold. They were the most popular thing I think at the whole fair, except of course the cedar door swags. I made more profit from my booth than I ever have in the last 12 years of doing this country fair." Chalice & Roy

The good news, FARMVILLE won't be going away anytime soon. So you might want to start planning for upcoming fairs and shows in 2010. Be creative, be attention calling, be exciting and you will sell stuff you thought was no longer marketable. Think outside the box!

The "Down on the Farm" issue of CERAKANVAS premiers February 1, 2010 at a farm, or computer terminal, near you! Won't you join us?

The SHAPE of 2010 for ceramics . . .

I wish I could hear all my reader's thoughts. I am sure when they first see many of the graphics I post in this BLOG they say, "what is he up to now?" But I am actually glad I can't . . .I mean that would be just wrong. LOL

So how does a dress form have anything to do with slipcast ceramics? Well it's the thought process, not the product. Do you see all the white circles in the dress form? Well each of these circles allow you to dial up or dial down the various measurements of the form. What we do with various aspects of the ceramic art/craft will determine it's SHAPE in the ensuing year. This form will take you from a petite to a full figured form. However it is not done in ONE ADJUSTMENT. It will take many adjustments from the dozen or so dials.

Your business or relationship to the ceramic industry is handled the same way. There are many dials to adjust to get a balanced sustainable feeling to your craft. And one size does not fit all. Each person has their own "things" they would like to see happen. So instead of adjusting the hips, waist and chest dimensions as you would on this form, try thinking of the adjustments as; promotion, creativity, competition, visibility, sharing and so forth.

How will we bring this concept home to you in 2010? Well this thought has been in our plans since the beginning. If you look at our main logo shown to the right; It's not just designed to look pretty. The center "flower looking" design actually represents eight over eight over one business principles that will help you shape the "form" of your ceramic art/craft. We will begin sharing these concepts in the January issue of "BLUEPRINT".

So until then start thinking about how you would like the SHAPE of your ceramic art/craft to be.

"Please raise your hand if you enjoy ceramics"

OK, so the ceramic hands is a little campy, but I like it.

I was just thinking this morning. We have probably 50,000 people connecting with ceramics through the CAG. This is rough math based on 40,000+ homes reading CERAKANVAS and figuring there are probably more than 1 person in many of the households reading the mag. This being the case, what if all of those people who enjoy ceramics, raised their hands so to speak.

What if Michael's Crafts Stores received 25,000 requests for bisque, small casting molds, slip in a box, cleaning tools, etc. I think they would see the waving hands and respond. Supply and demand, it's the oldest concept in marketing. If we showed stockists that there was demand for product, they would supply it. Please understand I would rather see new ceramic shops opening. But as a marketer I have to be a realist. It would be easier to convince a store like Michael's or JoAnn's to stock something, than to get people to open a business. But if the sales were being generated at these stores it might inspire people to open shops in cities that are not being served anymore. Then this will allow a rebuilding of the distributor/dealer network that once existed.

If we don't speak up! Then all we do is complain. If we aren't being creative on ways to get supplies back into accessibility, we are not really trying to grow the industry.

So raise your hand, and let the shops know in your area that you want ceramics, you want greenware, you want glazes, you want kilns, you want molds, you want bisque, you want brushes and supplies. But then if they oblige you, SPEND YOUR CERAMIC DOLLARS IN YOUR COMMUNITY!

Christmas "wish-book" page 46

A long standing tradition in my family has always been awaiting the arrival of the JC Penney Christmas catalog. It was our "wish-book" for the entire family. From this we would make our Santa list. For me it was what was the newest and coolest GI Joe accessories. Penney's was always good at having an exclusive item that only they carried. Now mind you GI Joe's were 12" figures, not the little 3" figures of today. So when I got a submarine, it was HUGE! Now how do I bring all this around to ceramics, easy.

By the 70's I was rapidly expanding my interests in ceramics. I could walk into a ceramic shop (The "Patio Shop" in Salem,OR owned by Charlie and Wilda Green was my favorite) and spend literally hours looking at greenware. I could really care less about the finished samples. For me, I saw the greenware finished in my mind, how I would do it. My first ceramic "wish-book" was the Arnel's catalog. It's pages were heavy weight paper with crisp black and white photography of all the items they had. It was not huge by any means. But again, as I looked through each page I could see the pieces finished. My creative imagination was vast, and sometimes I would even see a variety of ways to finish one piece.

I was working on some research for my history of ceramics book and was looking through some old catalogs and issues of ceramic magazines of the early 70's. And there before me was a pristine copy of the Arnel's catalog. As I flipped through, I stopped at this spot(the page pictured above), page 46. I love every piece on this page. Today I would finish them differently then I would have in the 70's . . .I think. That train is awesome, and the tumbling snowmen and Santa's, would make great game pieces for a table top tic-tac-toe!

It's true, today I am the publisher of a ceramics magazine that offers painting techniques and prides itself as being full of color and ideas! But somehow "I" still long for a mold catalog of images done the way Arnel's did with their early editions. They were "the top dog" of all the catalogs. The page was matte black with high resolution shiny grey scale images of the pieces. Now back to reality. Don't worry, CERAKANVAS will always explode with bright vibrant color on every page! Now if only I can find the bisque for some of these pieces, I would get lost in the moment!

Go create something!

Bridges . . .

Bridges can be an incredible feat of engineering genius, or a simple board stretched across a rift. But no matter what the design, the purpose is always the same; to help connect two points for the betterment of both. In the business world people often burn the very bridge that helped them gain prosperity in the first place. Then when things change you suddenly realize you need that bridge again, but the other side still can't understand why you destroyed the last one that you both labored so hard on in the first place. Some of you about now are probably saying, "How does all this have anything to do with ceramics?" In more ways than you might imagine it has everything to do with the industry as a whole.

A bridge allows us to share our uniqueness with other people. Ceramics is, and always has been, a cottage industry. During the last "explosion of the ceramic biz" people got zealous. Money and immediate profitability consumed the scene. In the cottage industry it is sustainability that must remain at the forefront. A classic example would be mold companies that had existed for decades selling their line, while enjoying subtle increases in sales. Then BOOM, the demand explodes, as ceramic shops opened on nearly every street corner. Founders of the companies saw it as a golden time to retire and pass it on to family or sell the business. But the new owners only knew that heightened level of demand, not the consistent flow of the stable times. The industry began to change (as happens over and over in all the craft industry) The intricate and important manufacturer - distributor - dealer connections became blurred. Sales began to return to a normal status quoe.

Today the industry is without question stabilizing nicely. It is returning to the cottage industry it was intended to be. This is a good thing. Those of you who are looking for the opportunity to build new bridges , they exist. A fair amount of "nastiness" existed the last 10-15 years in the ceramic industry. Because of it many treasured parts of the industry became lost. But all of that is history, and we can not change history. Let us each be a part in connecting this wonderful industry and open up the land with many new bridges.

What bridge are you working on to help connect the ceramic industry?

Meet Red-Clay Akers, our guest host for V2 Issue 1

The creative TEAM at CAG would like to introduce you to Red-Clay Akers (aka Red) as the official guest host of the "Down on the Farm" edition of CERAKANVAS for February 2010.

When Red saw how awesome our magazine was (yes he is looking at a rare print copy - they do exist and not just in Kansas anymore Toto) he agreed to be our host.

We are not for sure just how much he knows about ceramics yet, but he says he knows about dirt. And well clay is dirt . . . and you get the idea, it works for the TEAM.

We will be spending the next month and a half or so visiting Akers acres as he calls his farm. He reminded us that while he is an excellent singer, please do not confuse him with the guy from American Idol Clay Aiken. He laughed and said "My farm would be called Aiken Acres, That's pretty funny!"

We are looking for lots of fun farm stuff for this issue. More square miles of the world are covered by farms than cities. Today one of the fastest growing ways of connecting in social media sites is through farm related apps in facebook. It was things like "MY FARM" , "FARM TOWN" , "FARMVILLE" , and "FARM BUDDIES" that inspired this FUN and FANTASTIC issue.

Only the way we make it happen has changed . . .

Anyone who visits my office will recognize the old Underwood typewriter to the left. Mine is a little more worn than this one but it sits on a bookcase as a reminder of a time gone by. The actual one in my office was my wife's grandfathers that he used to type up labels for prescriptions at the drug store where he was a pharmacist. I've used it a time or two, it still works (but the ribbon is dried up). Today I live off a laptop. I remember typing articles for Scott Publications on a Brother electric typewriter. I also remember when the editor finally said one day they needed it on a floppy, in ASCI format. That was a new era for me.

The latest issue of CERAKANVAS proved to be very consuming in time. It was not the editing of articles, it was not choosing the graphic designs. It was getting updated software to handle our requests. But in the end a beautiful 64 page magazine was created. We had always been locked into a 5o page max platform before. Now we can go to 500 max page platform. Wow! Now trust me I have no plans on CERAKANVAS becoming a 500 page issue (well not right now anyway, LOL).

What the future does hold for CERAKANVAS is a even more interactive platform. In other words we will now have visual clips explaining difficult technique steps and other cool techno stuff. I wonder how we would have ever done that on the old Underwood?

In 2010 we will have an issue out every other month, Feb, Apr, Jun. Aug, Oct and Dec, plus 2 additional special issues. Then in Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov we will have a online issue of BLUEPRINT our newsletter. Over the next 8 days I will BLOG about 1 of the upcoming issues to give you some ideas on what's coming. In fact I hope you will submit your projects you would like to see, so we can put them into consideration for the issues. We do receive many great projects, but we have to pick and choose the ones we use for a variety of reasons.

In an odd sort of way slipcast ceramics has moved along a similar progression from the Underwood typewriter to the laptop computer. The results, are the same. Just as in ceramics, a technique from 50 years ago, is just as beautiful today, we may just go about creating it in a different fashion.

Have a wondrous holiday season! And create something delightful this Christmas season.