NO ORIGIN!
Just thinking about the fact that there will not be an Origin this year and how much it will be affecting makers who rely on it for a large amount of income. Hence increased applications for Goldsmiths this time around when many jewellers will be keeping their fingers crossed for an acceptance letter.
Too many makers will fall into the trap, no doubt, of applying for everything. Small craft fairs and less than small craft fairs that will not pay them. It is one thing making your overheads and another in clawing back all your real costs such as the time spent at the venue and the loss of all those making hours. I would have thought that a rule of thumb would be to add up all your costs and then triple them and then you have made some real profit. Anything less than that is self delusion!
WHERE IS THE RAW TALENT?
We have noticed in Dazzle that fewer and fewer exciting young makers are coming to our attention. Luckily we have a huge body of existing Dazzlers, so we need not panic, but we do miss the exciting innovative designers that we used to pick up especially at New Designers.
In Dazzle we are less than encouraging for makers to apply but still many do and good on them! Some are pretty awful (let’s be honest) with little to commend them, but every now and again some really good designer applies.
We get excited at those that work with new materials especially colour, as we are always looking for bright young things in more ways than one! Those working in plastic or aluminium, maybe in paper or wood, are particularly needed as the current batch we have tend to get over worked and maybe over shown. Jewellers selling at a retial price of between £50 and £100 are particularly sought after by us but all we seem to be offered, are those who string beads together, reminding Christine and me of those guys who used to sleep in the dunes on the Greek island of Naxos in the seventies, making a living from doing just that. Not what we are after.
DECEASED
I referred recently in a blog to the fact that our customers are ageing with us. Today the Glasgow invitations dropped through people’s letterboxes and resulted in three phone calls about people who needed to come off the mailing list. All deceased. Cheerful enough calls from two daughters and a grandaughter. Who were these people? Can we put a face to the names? Sadly not. With such a huge mailing list going back well over thirty years this is an inevitability. Luckily, we also had today a couple of requests to be put on the list. Life goes on………………………
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