Recap: June Clay Cub at Shane Mickey Pottery in Bakersville

Terrific Clay Club last night at Shane Mickey Pottery! Shane's new gallery in downtown Bakersville is lovely and definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.

We had a good discussion about the state of making a living today, including selling online versus at shows versus having your own retail space. A few things that got mentioned:

Wholesale versus consignment - one school of thought was that wholesale is the only way to go - others talked about consignment being more common than wholesale than it used to be

Approaching galleries - the cold call approach versus, for example, emailing ahead of time was discussed from both the artist and gallery owner's point of view (pro tip: spell the gallery owner/manager's name right)

Restaurants - farm to table and other restaurants that want handcrafted pottery - how to make that connection

Etsy - selling there is not the same as it was when Etsy first started or even a few years ago. Etsy's changes in policies over what is handmade (and their recent IPO) have affected selling on that site. Being visible on Etsy is time-consuming and not without cost.

A couple alternatives to Etsy were mentioned: Amazon and Houzz.com

Websites and social media got mentioned - somebody said websites were dead, but I didn't catch the reasoning behind that

I'm sure I've left out some things and of course there's a lot more to be said on this topic - feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. I also see some potential future Clay Club topics here - let me know if something interests you.

Thanks again to Shane for hosting an awesome Clay Club, and to everyone who came with food and drink and ideas to share!