A life less well-travelled

It's been a week or two of reflection and pondering. New auctions on eBay, the ressurection of JustBeads as an auction venue, more beads being listed in the US venues of Etsy and Artfire. Plenty going on and something has to give, something has to be the sacrifice to the gods of space and time.

Bead fairs. Yes, they're part of the great glassy web that is our daily existence, but they are not always the best part. It's not the people, we love that, it's not the travel (not as loveable as the people, truly) and it's not the set-up/pack-away and drive home that are the problem. It's that there are so many now and the make-up of the traders has changed.

Looking at the schedule from three or four years ago and there were significantly fewer fairs. Is that good? Is that bad? Opinions vary. Customers love the convenience of a fair that is local to them, of course. It makes a bit of one-stop shopping easy, they can see a great variety of items all at once instead of spending ages online or travelling to distant shops.

Is it good for the traders? Not always. More fairs means less revenue per fair as people generally only have so much money to spend in a year. If customers have a bead budget of several hundred pounds over the year and now don't have to save up for the one 'big' show, then they may visit several smaller shows which are new and closer and more accessible etc and so on. But the traders still have to show up for the same expenses per show and three times the shows, so for the amount of sales of one show several years ago, they are now faced with treble the costs for three shows and only the same amount of sales from the buyers. Not exactly good for them, then, when it's not a hobby but a living they're trying to make.

And, in the case of beadmakers, there are more all the time. The growth of lampworking in the UK has been very steady over the past few years. Newcomers are encouraged by friends to start selling virtually from day one, enthusiastic comments in forums and from family and friends about new beadmakers and their work creates on many occasions a very unrealistic impression of what their beads are worth and if they should really even be selling their work. Plenty of these new beadmakers have almost no overhead, they don't have studio costs or large fuel bills for hundreds of miles travelled over a year.

Many choose to only do shows local to them, which is nice. Many of them also look at any money made at a show as simply a way to buy more glass, the chicken and the egg principle operating there. More glass, more beads, more glass, more beads. And nowhere in the middle is there the necessity to pay for various other things. It makes life simple for the occasional show, pop along to the venue ten minutes from home, set up, have a natter with friends, sell a bit and spend it on glass and head home again for a cuppa and a meal.

We've had a look at shows over the past year and have taken a decision based on several factors, and one of them is the preponderance at some fairs of beadmakers. This skews the amounts of traders, in some cases with several beadmakers sharing a table it ends up with the number of 'lampwork pounds' through the door being divided rather drastically between 12-15 beadmakers rather than five or six. In a craft fair or other arts or crafts show, the organisers limit the number of any particular kind of trader or artist, yet this is not happening in bead fairs. Yes, there are the arguments about market forces and people buying what they want, but to be honest there are other factors too. New beadmakers sell cheaply. They price to buy more glass to make more beads to buy more glass, most of them are hobbyist beadmakers who simply want to keep their hobby as a self-financing one. Nothing wrong with this, but are they suitable for bead fairs where the majority of the businesses are people who work full-time and derive their income from their businesses?

When we first started being involved in lampwork, we had the great good fortune to have the assistance and guidance of a number of beadmakers and bead people who use lampwork in their designs or simply love lampwork, many of them in the US and many of them very successful people. Uniformly, they were generous with advice but sparing with effusive praise for Mike's first beads that were nice but not earth-shaking. It was a long process, and one that taught us a lot, before we felt Mike's made beads were ready to sell. They had proper dimpled ends, they were well-made, they were symmetrical and even and made to as high a standard as he was able. And when the friends who helped us said they were ready for sale, we felt that it was true. They didn't praise everything, and they certainly had the courage to criticize things they felt weren't just right. And that's something that is not common in forums/discussion groups/whatever.

People are afraid to say anything that isn't a positive, even if it's a 'false positive' in that it's simply cheering someone on when what they really need is a bit of common-sense commentary. No one is able to simply say 'no, they're not that good and here's why...' because no one wants to be hounded or slammed or labelled as 'nasty', 'envious', 'bitter', 'insecure' but those are all potential reactions. And the same with trading at bead fairs.

It's not insecurity that prompts us to cut back next year on our list of shows to attend, it's practicalities like footfall, balance of traders and venues. We base our decisions on various things, including sales, but not exclusively. So, you'll see us at shows, but not as frequently. Our sales online are easier to achieve, we can stay home and get work done without travelling, we can have a life on weekends and best of all we can put our feet up and sell without having to leave the house. It's hard work but it's worth it and it doesn't start out the day with a minimum £250 deficit of costs just to do a show for a day.

So, next year we'll be about but the schedule will be a sleeker, more svelte one with more gaps between shows. We're already looking forward to experiencing weekends at home!