Flame Affinity Group Meeting Notes: Flame Business Practices Toolkit

• Learn to do the task before you delegate it to someone else.
• Always keep learning, never be afraid to ask for help, and never take no as an answer. 
• As much as you can, get paid to practice.

• Be patient with yourself, because it is very difficult to learn flameworking. It takes many years, and being patient with yourself is important.
• Hours give you powers. Stick with it. 
• If you want to be good at what you do, you have to spend the time to do it. Lots and lots of time.  
• In terms of starting a business, product making is only one of the many skills that you will need to hone. So make sure that you leave time to improve at all of the other skills you’re going to need. 
• It’s all about your community for strength and support – Approach the studio and life with a sense of generosity – who can you help, what can you give? And then that will come right back to you. 
• Try to branch out and do things alone, like talking to people at conferences, going to studio visits alone to make strong connections and get out of your comfort zone. 
• The glass community is small. If there’s someone that you want to get to know, reach out to them. When you reach out, do it professionally and show that you are serious about what you do.
• When you ask someone for advice, follow through. Be polite, and understanding. 

What’s the going rate for skilled and unskilled labor in the flameworking industry? Does it range regionally? What are the rates in the midwest? West coast? Rural vs. urban? 

• NYC and regional – Unskilled labor (meaning I will have to do a little teaching) $25, skilled (already know how to do the task) starts at $35+
• Philadelphia – same 
• Philadelphia – $20/hr cash just out of undergrad (9 yrs ago), special rate for a friend
• Rural VA – some studios in urban areas, and a few private studios, and solo artists. It’s a really small community.
• Cities are pretty expensive.

Links:

• Glass | Cash Full Report by Helen Lee: https://uwmadison.box.com/v/glasscash
• Wage calculator: https://wageforwork.com/fee-calculator#top

• For me, the decision to work with assistants depends on how quickly something can be made, difficulty, and cost of materials. 
• I hire assistants to do things that I don’t like to do, are not good at, or that I don’t have the equipment for. 
• Hiring assistants to make prep. Examples: coil potting color, make tubing, pulling points, make some basic shapes, color match a color. 
• When I am working with an assistant, I can be doing something else at the same time, and then that shortens the turnaround time for the project.

• Pay assistants per piece, or per project (1099, independent contractor) or by the hour (W2, employee)
• Independent contractor you hire to do a job and then they bring it back to you when it’s finished. Pay per job. 
• Employees are paid per hour, employer sets the hours. If working in their own studio, artists need insurance to cover employees. 
• Consider how to build your business in a way that you are able to support the ethical treatment of your employees. 
• A group studio can be a convenient place to work, because you are both coming to the studio independently, as an autonomous renters and can hire each other’s labor as independent contractors. 
• When hiring someone, it’s important to remember that you are becoming a boss, and you pay yourself last. You ALWAYS pay your people first. 
• If you take care of your people, they will take care of you.
• Wage calculator helpful to know about and use as a benchmark to shoot for if you’re not already there. 
• Ultimately, what we’re trying to do when we talk about labor is to arrive at a point where labor is appreciated and valued, and also our employees and ourselves can make a living wage that’s fair. As the economy shifts, that point shifts also.

• Good photos are everything when selling!!
• Find the right platform for you. Consider complexity/simplicity of site and interface, consider updating your website yourself if you want to change it often.(ex: Shopify, Big Cartel – $25/month for up to 500 items) 
• Find a site that is the least expensive to run and is functional for your business specifically. Learn to take photos of your work as best you can with the time you have. 
• Take your time. Start with a few items and change it as you need to. It takes a lot of energy and time to learn to use the software, and you have to tweak it to suit your brand and your goals. Is there an appropriate price range for products selling on an ecommerce platform versus some other platform like a gallery or in person like a brick and mortar type of store? Is there a threshold?
• My site started as a place to play, and little by little it became more of a business. I wanted to make pieces that were more affordable and accessible for a broader audience to have that experience of something that they loved. 
• $100 and below is an accessible price point for online. 
• Markup for wholesale products went up recently from 2x to 2.8x markup, which affects the production of lower price point products, like earrings.  
• There is a minimum threshold for products that make it sustainable to produce. 
• Choosing the right platform is important because you can make more of a profit if you can do many of the jobs yourself – marketing, photos, updating the website.
• Little steps will get you there, you have to start somewhere. If you can get paid where you are to make work, and you are supported, start. 
• Be careful not to over-edit any photo. (If your piece is flawed, then your piece is flawed.)
• Typically you will need multiple photos of the same piece, so that a buyer could get a virtual experience of the piece before they purchase it. 
• Your clients know that your work is handmade, be honest with your buyers, ex: disclose irregularities, etc). 
• I have used Etsy since 2009, and had pretty good sales. The tags and SEO are important. Fees are high, around 8%, which adds up especially on the low end items. It really made sense for repeatable items. I stopped using it because I was tired of some online platform being a middleman. 
• My favorite place to sell is at farmers’ markets, table sales, in person art events and demos. 
• With online platforms, if lots of people want custom designs, it can add up to hours and hours of emails and communication. 
• Big Cartel will collect sales tax and send it in for you.
• Third party shipping apps (Stamps.com, Pirate Ship) have deep discounts for USPS and UPS. 
• Charge for shipping. The box, cardboard, cards, and packing material is expensive!

• 50/50%. Some nice galleries take 60/40 artist/gallery. 

• I think social media is becoming professionalized. It’s a production. I think it’s likely that it will become increasingly professional, especially with video production.
• I used to have a great handle on the algorithm, now I never know
• When I do a good reel and get to ride the algorithm, I sell a ton of stuff. 
• Hiring someone who is fresh with social media as a professional may become necessary. 
• When a post gets tons of views, you can end up getting a lot of feedback that you don’t want. 
• The algorithm (response of lack of) can affect your self confidence as an artist in terms of what goes viral and what does not do well. 

• Artists and makers are feeling more pressure to make content or process content as a piece is being made for marketing purposes. Social media can be a fantastic way to reach more audiences and be a good way to share the process, but can also be labor and time intensive and makes the process of art making a lot longer. 
• The Sham-wow did not sell itself – that’s where marketing comes in. 
• QVC and infomercials use video for marketing and are also content themselves. They are also famous for the remixes and parodies of the video. 
• “You are also educating your audience with your content.”, “Yes. Edu-tainment.”
• Reminder that we are living in an age of novelty almost more than ever because it is swipe by swipe. Every swipe has to be something new.

Is anyone using Artificial Intelligence to streamline functions?

• I use it for my stories on Instagram to add narrative to my pieces by putting them into settings. 
• I use narrative to make a framework for a new world. I made an imaginative space where I could just make whatever I want. I kind of made my own playspace that turned into my business. 
• Using ChatGPT to make images for visual research. 
• Using ChatGPT as an editing tool during the writing process to run spell and grammar checks and enhance the tone of my writing to apply for art grants, and I landed a bunch. Takes the emotion out of having a friend proofread.
• “Using AI to stylize your writing style”
• “As entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats. I like the idea of having a digital assistant to help do tasks faster. Then, I can spend more time in the studio.”
• “Its a back and forth convo”
• “I think of AI as a brainstorming tool to speed up making many iterations.”

• Videos for TikTok needs to be labeled if AI is used. 
• AI-generated images or videos are not copyrightable right now in this moment because the only things you can copyright are things made by a human. 
• I’ve tried AI out in a bunch of different scenarios just to see what works for me. My general rule of thumb is: change it. Don’t use it straight out of the test box, change it so that it’s more of a collaborative action, or more like a brainstorming tool.
• AI is a conversation, not an end result. 
• Using closed AI systems, there is a limit to what they are trained on/can access, so try some different ones to get different results. 
• AI is never the end result. It can be a good place to jump off, kind of like a writing prompt
• Using AI in an imaginary space to converse about your ideas and maybe become inspired to do something

• Only if you let it. I’m not going to listen to a computer. If you just take the information from it without putting your own work into it, yeah.
• I don’t have any interest in copying anything, I want to make it my own. I think that’s part of being an artist. 
• Replication is one thing, but creating something new is another. 
• Kim Harty’s recent work using images of her own work run through AI to generate images that inspire her sculptures. https://www.kimharty.com/artwork/birthinganatomies
• AI is remixing your creativity, but you’re not putting your own spin on it.

• “Start with your local community. They will want to support you!”
• “Friends and family are always a good support team.”
• In-person
• I started selling small flameworked pendants and paperweights when I was first starting out, 17 years ago. I think things are different now though because we didn’t have online sales of instagram or all that. 
• “If you are selling online, engage with the platform regularly to boost your visibility. (Etsy, IG)”
• The best thing you could possibly do for yourself is to find your confidence in your own work, regardless of whether it’s perfect or not. You will draw people to your work if you are confident in your work or yourself. If you’re putting out an aura of, “it could be better,”or “please buy it so I can pay my bills,” that’s not what people want. Instead try, “It may not be what I want, but I love it.” Try to be as confident as you can. It is hard for people to engage with you and your work if you are not confident, even if you are hurting. 
• Confidence is a skill you have to grow and you do that when you’re figuring out how to be confident on the torch itself. Flameworking can be scary at first.
• You set the example for how you want to be treated. So if you come in and you take your work seriously and you are not apologetic for how weird or unconventional or not to the tastes of others you might be perceived as, you’re true to yourself. And people who get you will find you and love you. 
• You will find your audience when you are fully yourself. 
• It is not the easiest path, necessarily, but you’ll be saving time in the long run from not needing to spend time figuring out who you are after you’ve been lying to yourself trying to please others. 
• When you’re trying to figure out how to price your work, what do you want to get paid per hour? What are your costs? Not just for your materials, but the overhead of your rent, utilities, and if  you have insurance, if you need to take transportation to get there- there are all these little considerations that add up for a cost. So you should expect that you deserve to get paid $50 or $60 an hour and practice your craft so that you can make it more efficiently. Then figure out: who is your audience, where are your markets? Are you going to be selling only retail or also wholesale, so that you have to cut all your prices in half again? Are you selling through a gallery and you can’t undercut them? These are all considerations you have to figure out for yourself. 
• Think about what kind of life you would like to have? If you want to live a starving artist life, you will. You are your own best supporter. It is not selfish, it is self-interested. You are interested in taking care of  yourself, you are interested in taking care of your family, and your loved ones.
• We are doing this because we have something to offer, and we are here to support our families with it.

• I’m a couple decades in, but when I started flameworking, I started selling at the local bead store, and local art events with my friends, any place where I could get a table to vend. You just learn. You learn what shows are good, which venues are good.
• As soon as I could sell it, I would sell it. 
• Sell what you’re comfortable selling. 
• “As long as they have hot seals!”
• “(Imperfection is) evidence of the hand!”
• “There is a market for everyone”
  Sell things that are not dangerous, like cracks, but are whole and nice and don’t be so hard on yourself. Even things that have a small flaw, not a dangerous one like a sharp part, but something that has like a wrong color here or a time little scuff mark – people will often see that as more special because it is handmade. 
• There’s a market for everyone, and I do sell seconds on occasion, so maybe they can afford those. 
• Sell what you can, when you can, but be honest and confident with your client. 
• People aren’t necessarily shopping for something with perfection, if so, they would be getting something that wasn’t handmade. 
• We have such a high standard for ourselves in the business world and the art world. Nothing large starts large. It has to start small. You put in the effort day by day, little by little. 
• The thing that really shows success is when you can fail over and over again and still get back up. That is success. It is not a constant uphill climb. 
• Little successes lead to big successes. 

• Sometimes it costs you $400 to get into a show and you only sell $100 worth of stuff.
• Even if you don’t sell anything and it’s a terrible vending session, you can always learn something. At the beginning of the career, that’s the most important, right?
• Pay attention to the feedback you’re getting from your customers and get used to being ok with your customers not being able to buy your work for whatever reason.
• There was a time in my early career where I was selling at the bead store, selling individual beads, and then I eventually outgrew that market, and I knew that because my clients would give me feedback. So pay attention to what people are saying whether they’re buying or not. 
• That feedback is going to tell you if you’re in the right place. You might be in the wrong market. So just keep trying until something sticks. 
• Try not to take things personally. Even though it’s your artwork, it’s not that the client is insulting your work, it’s that you’re trying to sell in the wrong venue. 
• I’ve noticed that people starting out are trying to make work that is fast and sellable, making fast art quickly that sometimes replicates other peoples’ work or becomes a generic production item. This can be very damaging to make only work that is not from your soul because you’ll burn out. 
• There is a point where (generic design production work) will ruin your ability to make your own artwork. You have to learn to start to shift towards making things that come from your own brain. I make a range of production items at different price points so there will be something there for everyone. I try to find a balance. 

• “I’m not sure how to respond to that, because I wish you could too.”
• I try to bring a varied price range so that people can afford my work. Some of the work will take me a week to make, and I cannot afford to personally make it at a lower price. 
• Another way to respond is to say “I wish you could too, but there are some other ways that you can support me. You can share my website, you can tell your friends.”
• There are a lot of ways to interact that don’t involve spending money that are still supportive to the artist. 

• I have had a lot of success bartering at farmers’ markets.
• The farmers’ markets in my area also have a handmade craft section, and seem to always be pretty busy! I’m in Brooklyn, NY. Product prices range from $50 – $200

• “Over about 5 years I built my IG to 34K and then this past year it jumped to 82K because of a few viral posts.”
• “So altogether about 6 years of @blobblob posts.”
• “It has taken so much time and work.”

• Yes, but riding the wave of novelty is not – you have to ride the wave while at the same time find something stable. For example, stability can come from lower end products that are constantly promoted.
• Maybe as a component in a more diversified financial plan
• Glass as a “passion business” meaning you’ll just barely break even when it’s all said and done. 
• Legitimacy within the glass world and in the world of business comes from setting yourself up as a legitimate company. It’s difficult to do that without a business education. 
• What is needed in order to do that sort of business that is transferable, that can grow beyond one person? We make money by using our hands. That’s not scalable. 
• Can a glassblowing business and life as an artist be scaled enough to support a family, have kids, a mortgage, transfer the business, get investors, etc.?
• The whole idea of being an entrepreneur is finding a spot in the market that you think needs to be populated and populating that space. So it has to do with your vision. And if you have vision and ability and a kind of a unique perspective, I do believe that you can design a company, or a situation for yourself that is scalable as long as you can pivot. Pivoting is an important skill.
• Geographic location matters –  I worked for many artists in NYC as assistants and learned how studios were run. Those opportunities may be more scarce in rural areas. 
• If you have a successful body of work or product line, the lifespan of it in the market is probably around 5 years. After that, plan for R&D and the cycle can start over again with new work. 

• You need to stay flexible and weird, and let yourself make things that are strange and new to you. 
• Nobody becomes famous or popular or infamous by doing the normal thing, right? So when you’re making artwork, if you’re not making things strange, shocking, new, intense, then you aren’t going to get the views, the fame, the money, or whatever you are looking for. You have to be weird. 
• Fully embrace those oddities within yourself to make the leaps that you need to make to get out of your comfort zone. 
• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 
• Look for inspiration outside of other glass artists. 
• It’s important for you to figure out what you are passionate about in life. 
• The sum of your personal interests is your artistic voice. 
• Have the confidence to go to another venue and be the only glass person in the room because then you are the novelty. 
• You’ll see people selling crappy work who may have a million followers. They have built a following, and it’s marketing, right? It’s not the most beautiful work, but they’ve built some kind of platform to sell their work. 
• Glass shops get requests for things they don’t want to make, and you can ask them to send the clients to you as a referral. If you’re just starting out you can contact shops and ask for their referrals to be sent to you. 
• Being a part of a designer community, you sell your designs. Put some time aside for research and development and come up with something that is uniquely yours. 
• All journeys are really fascinating and interesting to hear about. 
• If you are not moving at a pace that outpaces people trying to copy your work, then you are not moving fast enough. 
• Competition can make you stay fresh
• Making new stuff constantly will keep people confused and intrigued.