Artists gather to create business/marketing plans

Fifteen artists gathered around an L-shaped table Tuesday night in the John Waldron Arts Center as Kelley School of Business professor Carolyn Wiethoff asked them about their business goals. Weithoff encouraged the artists to develop a marketing plan for future business endeavors. \n“This session is about thinking in a very program-planned way about marketing your work,” Wiethoff said. “And so come thinking strategically how you’re going to place and promote your work becomes kind of important.”\nThe meeting was part of a monthly program held at the center called “Artists After Hours,” said Jonna Risher, director of arts at the John Waldron Arts Center. Risher explained that “Artists After Hours” is a program that was developed for the different art organizations and artists around Bloomington to promote their works.\nAfter learning that most of the artists were interested in finding a way to get their businesses or goals off the ground, Wiethoff gave a mini-lecture based on the “four P’s of marketing”: price, production, place and promotion.\nWiethoff started with an example about how to market water. Wiethoff explained that if you’re going to market water, you’re not marketing the water itself, but the need that water is filling.\n“What need are you reaching?” Wiethoff asked. “Usually with art, it’s emotional. What feeling am I trying to sell?”\nWiethoff explained that product definition drives everything else you’re looking for. All of the other “P’s” fall into place once you know what need it is.\nWood artist Velma McGlothin recently relocated to Monroe County from Artists Switzerland County, Ind. She explained that her work with wood art over the past six years has only been a hobby, but now she wants to get serious about it.\n“I want to learn how to go step-by-step without trying to get to the top and then falling flat on your face,” McGlothin said.\nMcGlothin owns Two Pond Ridge Wood Art, located on Kent Road. She will have two original design articles in the August 2007 issue of Creative Woodworks & Crafts Magazine.\nSusie T. Seligman began working as a textile designer after graduating college. She spent the last six to seven years developing a furniture line and currently owns a furniture company called Tesoro Mio.\nShe explained that she began working on prototypes when her daughter was in high school. She brought them to companies to get them produced in quantities. She \nis currently working with Best Chair Company and Jasper Seating Company.\n“It feels like we took a quantum leap in my development and in the development of my company,” Seligman said. “We got out production people, we got some designs, we have our wholesale fabric sources. Now we’re down to marketing.”\nSeligman explained that. although her work has received great feedback at art shows, she wanted to create a company. With the \nguidance of the organization “Artists After Hours,” that’s what she \nis doing. \n“For the first time this year, I can say everything has just come together after eight years of very long work,” she said.\nWiethoff said the only problem with small businesses is that people remember the work but they don’t remember who did it. Wiethoff suggested making postcards, so the name of the artist or art organization would be there with a visual. \n“This kind of program, the reason I do it is because it just makes Bloomington a better place to live,” Wiethoff said. “We just have more out there, more art opportunities. It’s just one of those things, I think, where the whole culture of the city benefits when the artists are successful.”