For the two weeks proceeding the meeting I organized the agenda from the last meeting. I shortened it from 14 pages to 2 pages and emailed it to everyone. They were told to give me any added items they wanted discussed. I had also taken over the scheduling of gift shop work days. I still have that job today, and I’m happy to do it for them. We had a few “unauthorized” email blasts to the group by some know-it-alls. This was nipped in the bud by me with some “red neck” photos gathered from my forum topic, “LumberJocks is going to the Dogs”. These plus the phrase, “lighten up, my eyes hurt from all the emails”, really worked. All the emails just stopped dead about three days before the meeting.

This is my redneck mansion

This is my redneck lawn mower. (Mr. Trim says they’re redneck hookers)

When all the work is done, my friends and I goes swimmin’ in my swimmin’ pool.

The meeting started at 10:00 on June 3rd. I got there attention, and laid the ground rules for the meeting. I would read a topic, tell them what I thought, and then we would discuss it. We would then vote on it. There would be nothing put off until the next meeting. I found out “artists” love firm but fair. I must point out, at this point, that quite a few of you were right. We got lots of two cents worth, but no one was willing to follow it through. Everything was settled and voted on by the end of the meeting.

During this meeting, I announced that someone had mentioned to me a group blog would be great. I told them that I looked into it and I would be glad to set one up with Google. I told them my effort has its price. I wanted 100% participation. A few of them, to say the least, are not computer literate. Just about all have tried to get to it and log on. About 2/3s have made it and are contributing as I write this. The rest are contacting me, one by one, by telephone. Then at this point I walk them through the process of logging into our super secret blog. It’s a long story that might be number 19 in this series.

Ah,but I have lots of good news to report. After the meeting we went downstairs to the gift shop and rotated and rehung everyones art. This gives everyone a different location every three months and usually takes three days to finish. We got it accomplished in under two hours. There was laughter, joking, and a lot of mischief. The director and president of North Tahoe Arts commented that it was so nice to hear laughter again. We are now 27 artists strong and at about our capacity. A few days ago the minutes were emailed ( my last duty as chairman) and there seems to be piece in the North Tahoe artistic community.

This was really not a “pat myself on the back piece”. This was meant to show the reader what common sense in the artistic world can accomplish. The moral of this story is, when an artist is in trouble call a LumberJock …............

Don't click this Internet Explorer friendly blue thing

Hell done broke loose at North Tahoe Arts. Remember, I told you about that place earlier. It is a non-profit artists association, I’m afraid, run by artists. If you put 20 of them in one room together, they will do nothing but disagree until they are all unconscious from bitch slapping each other. I’m a Tim Taylor Tool Man kind of guy. These people are unreal. Remember my phrase “common sense isn’t so common”? Well it really applies in this case.

Also, remember when I said they all look to the one that has his head on straight. It’s true and that one was me. What a guy, what a guy, what a guy …. There was an election to elect a chairman in which I ran (why I don’t know) for the position. Sue, my wife, was really pissed. The place really needed direction and leadership. They asked for people that wanted to run for (voted upon) chairman. I was in a weird mood and put my name in. I was the only one for two weeks. So, that meant ….. no you’re wrong and so was I.
For some reason when “odie” is the only one willing to do the job, panic is the name of the game. Common sense … “we can’t deal with that”.

When the true artist ran, she won. There is much, much more to that little story, but I try to be a gentleman. That was just fine with me after I gained my senses. So, we all lived happily ever after, right? This artist and her partner in crime ran everything with an Iron fist. No decisions were made as a group. She made them all for us. Many enemies were made, including the main board of directors. After turning that place into her dream and pounding on too many desks, she was asked (told) to leave.

Now, in steps the fool. There was a quarterly gift shop meeting coming up, the work schedule was a mess, and we were down to 20 artists instead of the 26 we should have. Our reputation in the community was, to say the least, not too good. I told everyone I would chair the next meeting, emailed an agenda, and took over our schedule on Google calendar. I told everyone they will need a new chairman after the minutes were mailed out about a week after the meeting. That added up to about three weeks of hell. It was something that needed to be done, and everyone really appreciated me stepping forward and taking the reins.

The conclusion to this little “artists dilemma” next time …......

Web site with held due to popular demand

I now have a program that lets me go in and change and add to my “meta names”. The problem, I found out, is that .mac doesn’t allow for this. There is no way to add and transfer these meta names in iweb and in .mac. I will be emailing the .mac people to see if there is a way around this or they can add this ability later.

There is one way “in the mac world” to do this. Save iweb to a file. Then publish it to another web host like Yahoo! While it is in your file change the meta names to suit you. Then publish it to the host.

I could get around this by having my home page with Yahoo! (with the meta names). Then when you click on the menu of pages it would transfer you to my .mac site. I am looking into that also. I now have an account with Yahoo! (domain name and AT&T/Yahoo! DSL), so it would be easy to add my home page to the account. I’m just afraid it’s more money out of the good old pockets of DUST'N LINT

For you MAC users, the program I’m referring to is “Wrangler”. It is a free program and down loadable from apple Once you get to their site go to “downloads”.

For a really GREAT time CLICK here

PS. I forgot to tell you all … I did get a call yesterday from a former customer. He was a customer before we had a web site. He was interested in a jewelry box for his son’s girlfriend. He wanted me to describe what I had. I asked if he was near a computer and he said it was on and in front of him. I gave him the site address and we were both able to look at it together while on the phone. He then gave me an order that I’m sending this morning.

We use a Mac and a program called “iweb”, designed to enable one to design and publish their own web site. So that’s exactly what we have done. Apple publishes it to the web for $100.00 a year. It has a strange address = http://web.mac.com/johnorsue . And along the way I got the domain name, http://www.dustnlint.com , from YAHOO! for only $10.00 a year. When “you” go to the domain address it just transfers you to that crazy mac address. When you go to dustnlint you will see the other address on your browser. Every word I typed, every picture I took, and every page I designed then published it on the web. The greatest thing about it, I can change it every few minutes if I want to. I don’t have to wait for some computer geek to do these things for me.

Now, your question I believe, how is it to sell on the inter net? Damned if I know. Do my customers find me on the World Wide Web ? We have only had our web site for about 9 months, and answer to that question is: “not yet”. If you were to pay Google or YAHOO! a fee to advertise your site, that answer could be different. We are contacted by previous customers and people who have picked up our business cards at arts and crafts shows with our web address on them. People usually call us with questions about our products and I have them look at our web site. They will see what they like and place an order over the phone. It’s also great to talk to them over the phone while we both look at the web site. Sorry, as far as someone finding the web site then placing an order, it hasn’t happened yet.

All this being said, this has been great for people seeing us at a show and showing their friends, via our site, what our booth and products looked like. I believe we have gotten a few orders this way. There is also a guy 3000 miles away in Washington D. C. that purchased a jewelry box from the North Tahoe Arts gallery. He keeps placing orders from our web site. There is also a couple in Los Angeles that keeps placing orders for Sue’s quilts they see on the site.

For the most part, our art needs to be seen, felt, and smelled in person to really appreciate it. The web site has been more of a tool for us then a selling blitz. That could change in the future … only time will tell. Thank you for your question, sorry I couldn’t be more help.

Shameless Promotion - click here

Ah, the customer, he is always right you know. At least that’s what we have to keep telling ourselves, over, and over, and over (to a point). The point being when we have lost the sale and nothing we say will ever change that. Then we can let them have it, just kidding. They or their friends just might want to come back. Someone near by might hear you admonish them and change their minds about visiting your booth. But, feel free to give it to the parents of the little bastards that are racing their toy cars across your jewelry boxes. That really happened, you know.

My favorite customer is the wheeler dealer that’s not happy with your very fair prices. It doesn’t matter where they go, they assume they’re at a garage sale. Our first couple of years at this, we would give in just to make a sale. Now, I ask these customers if they would work for $5.00 an hour. Then when they say they would not, that’s when I tell them they are asking me to work for less. Sue gives into this with her quilts at times, and it drives me crazy. She sells them for too little now. If someone wants several items for cash, I might eat the sales tax. But, for the most part I hold firm. I don’t think I have lost much business because of this. I think I’ve gained respect. As for you, you’ll work it out for yourselves.

This has been fun and challenging. I hope I may have shortened the road of hard knocks for some of you. If you have questions, we can revisit this again. TA TA for now.

And for a Really GOOD Time ... Click Here.

The first component of any price structure is the cost. What raw goods do you have in this work of art? You have wood plus 10% to 20% waste. Don’t forget your waste. 20% is a good figure. I give my customers a little break and charge 10% because I turn pens and make very small boxes with a lot of the waste. And don’t forget ALL of your materials that went into that, let’s say, “box”. Things like hinges, felt, felt dots on the bottom, finish, and glue are included. You will have other costs such as sandpaper you used.

With wood I have a little bit of a quandary. I use about 20 different wood species in my boxes. Some boxes, I make about one hundred a year. Each specie has a different price. I charge the same price for the same box with different woods (except for a few $$$). So, what do I do? I average the costs of the woods with a little twist. I use maple about 20% of the time, so the price of the maple counts for 20% of the average. And I do this with all of the species, and I came up with $7.52 per board foot. So, figure out your board feet used ( +20% ) x $7.52 and that’s your wood cost. And the disclaimer … your cost of wood may differ.

For my big jewelry boxes I use Beall round hinges. They’re $27.00 at Woodcraft. I buy mine directly from Beall at $16.00 each plus $8.00 for shipping 10 of them. If you are keeping score, that’s $16.80 spent for hinges for each jewelry box. I just saved my customer $10.20 on his purchase. I also save like gangbusters on sandpaper. At the hardware store sandpaper is about $1.00 per sheet any more. That’s F—-ing ridiculous to charge that much for sandpaper. I buy mine from Econ Abrasives at about $.17 per sheet if I buy 50 or 100 sheets. Look around, you can save big bucks if you try. And open a wholesale account with your wood supplier and don’t pay sales tax. Your customer pays the sales tax not you. On my large jewelry boxes I use 6 coats of spayed on lacquer. I pay about $27.00 for a gallon of lacquer and about $13.00 for a gallon of thinner. I can put six coats (mixed 50/50) on eight boxes with that at $5.00 per box. And so on, and on, and on.

Hot damn here we go … what is your time worth? This is the toughest question of all. When I worked for the telephone company five years ago I was worth over $25.00 plus benefits per hour. Now I live in the business owner world. Things sure have changed. This hourly figure will be different for everyone. I add $9.00 per hour to everything I make. That is the minimum that I work with. Somethings I make $20.00 an hour. Remember my little trick of not making only one of anything in my inventory? It takes me 60 hours to make my bigger jewelry boxes. If I make four of them it takes me sixteen hours each … see how I can save time? I hope this helps you.

for a good time ... click here

We have always figured that a good show for us is a $500.00 a day average. A three day show would be a $1500.00 in gross sales. That is a figure we would be happy with. It doesn’t happen that way often enough, but it does happen. If the yearly average worked out to this $500.00 per day average we would be very happy. We have come very close, but never hit it as yet. This a lot more information than I wanted to give out, but what the hell. That 30% is $150.00 per day of our goal if we hit it.

This 30% is not the cost of wood, or display, or tent, or gas, but everyone else’s god given right to have part of you. I wouldn’t make such a big deal out of this if they didn’t raise their fees without notice, but your customer screams bloody murder if you hold firm on your prices. This 30% is the combination of promoters and credit card company fees. If you sell wholesale, you can get rid of this 30% right off of the top. Do you see where this is going. One of you thought “wholesale” was a dirty word.

Credit card companies want 5% on average. Many charge less in the beginning, but add on other fees at billing time. So, if you buy a $100.00 box from me 5% of the price goes to someone who had nothing to do with the producing of it. That is of course if you use a credit card. Another dirty little secret is if you have a rewards card, guess who gets billed for your reward? Please do not use a rewards card at an arts and crafts show. These fees are necessary evils I’m afraid. Remember I mentioned “tourists” and what a large part of my sales they are. They carry credit cards for emergences. Their unexpected purchase in my booth just became an emergency to them. Is this a great country or what?

We could have gone into this much deeper, but this is not a book and I’m not making any money on it. I do have another bowl to turn.

YOU MUST weight your tent down to keep the wind from carrying it away. Worst yet it could hit someone else’s booth or hit a customer and hurt them. But yet there are still artists that try to get away with this. Most promoters have this in there rules. Some of them are now just starting to enforce these rules though. I have witnessed many a tent lifting off the ground like a kite. And these shows are in Lake Tahoe where the wind almost never stops. There used to be a tent 50 feet up, in a tree, in the park, in Truckee. It was an arts and crafts show tent. It was in this tree for 15 years. The promoter used to point it out if someone didn’t think weights were important.

These were the same people that tried to save money by not carrying insurance. So, take an unweighted tent, a strong wind, and some innocent visitors to the show. If the artist has a home, he could lose it. If I see an unweighted tent I suggest the artist take care of it. If they refuse to obey the promoter’s rules, I tell the promoter. Then the promoter knows he is responsible for damage to my setup. That gets the problem taken care of quickly. So, be nice and know your rights. Don’t let someone’s stupidity ruin your weekend.

Below is what we use to wait our tent. These buckets have 40 pounds of concrete in each of them. There is a bolt stuck into the concrete that we attach each tent foot to with a wing nut. There is also a ring in the concrete that we tie a rope coming down from the top corner to. This forms a triangle of sorts and nothing moves.

Ah, go ahead, take a look : http://www.dustnlint.com

We touched on promoters in the last entry. Most promoters are frustrated artists that know they can put on a better show than the promoter they are currently with. I work a lot with one of these. But she came to this conclusion 25 years ago. The dynamics of this economy have changed so drastically since she started this, It’s left her kind of thinking in the dust. She thinks if she puts up a sign, they will come. That’s after a bypass was put in routing traffic away from the event. This used to be one of her best shows. She is going to lose her artists. The fee for this show has been going up every year, but sales have been going down. Five years ago it was $200.00 for Memorial Day Weekend. It is now $275.00 for the same weekend with less people and sales. She used to have a waiting list for her 70 booths. Now she is lucky if she can draw 30 booths.

A couple of years ago I suggested we move the event. We would team up with the home show at the high school. There is three times the traffic and a double draw. I was told I didn’t know what I was talking about. Time is passing her by, and she doesn’t know it. Someone will probably take over her shows in a couple of years.

There is another promoter up here that is one class act. She has very strict rules and gathers the greatest talent I have ever seen in one place. Three times during the summer she puts us in a ski area parking lot on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. She charges us $150.00 for three days, but she adds a 10% commission on top of this. At first I said I would never do a show that charges a commission. Now I realize that if I don’t do well, she doesn’t do well. If I have a great weekend, so does she.

These three shows are so much fun to do. We take our motor home to the event and turn it into a mini-vacation. A lot of people think this is silly because we live a half hour away. I just tell them the motor home cost a lot of money and it seems silly to leave it in the driveway.

So, anyway, here are two very different promoters. I could write a book on all the different promoters. Like so many different groups that we will discuss, they all would like to get rich off of OUR hard work.

Here is another Arts and Crafts Show publication.
And don’t forget : http://www.dustnlint.com

Ask your self, “if I were well off, where would I live” ? That might be a good place to be in an arts and crafts show. One would think Beverly Hills would be a great place. From what I have read, it’s very average. That’s probably because we don’t have known fancy labels on our products. Lake Tahoe is too small an area, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong, you with the reading skills. The one better, best, greatest group of people is the tourist. I know this (I are one sometimes) because 75% of my sales are to them. They always ask, “Why don’t you do a show in San Francisco”? My answer is always, “ because you are already here”.

I don’t know about you, but when we are on vacation we spend money more freely. It’s just human nature I guess. I know when we do shows on the eastern side of the Sierra and near the flat lands, we bomb. Towns such as Reno and Bishop are what I am referring to. The tourists are there, but too spread out. And the locals all work for a living. We have done them both, and if you sell snow cones or s—- on a stick you will make thousands a day. If you sell art, the best way to put is, you won’t.

But there are exceptions to this. Your promoter has the ability to break these rules. If your promoter has as much pride in what they do, as you do, stick to them like glue. They will have the ability to gather the right collection of talent to pull the right clientele to you from many miles around. There are also a few publications out there with very good reviews that are written by artists. In the west, one of these is “The Crafts Fair Guide”. It is a pretty good source of what other artists are doing at other shows.

We seem to have the best of both worlds at Lake Tahoe and Truckee. We have location and we have very good promoters. That’s why we are hesitant to travel and incur all of that added cost. After all, the bottom line is one of many reasons we do this. It’s not the first though … the love of it is.

Let’s hear it for the shameless promotion : http://www.dustnlint.com