MURKETING

Browsing “New Wave” work at the American Craft Show

One of the interesting sub-plots of the rise of Handmade 2.0 DIYism is the relationship between practitioners of the new craftiness, and practitioners of what might be called “fine craft.” Let’s just say the two groups do not always connect, and there is occasional grumbling from some of the more traditional craft creators about all the attention that the upstarts get.

So I was interested to hear that The American Craft Council was including a “New Wave” section in its recent American Craft Show — a section that would include Handmade 2.0 subjects Circa Ceramics.

The Crafty Bastard blog visited the show and offers up an account. Excerpt:

So what does ‘New Wave’ mean? Well, according to a press release dated January 14, 2008, the American Craft Council describes them as: artists typically labeled ‘indie’ as they usually exhibit and sell their work at small local craft shows.

Small local craft shows? Seriously? Is that why they were given so little space at this event? …

The New Wave artists were all crammed together in a fenced off area and barely had three feet of space each. …

Still, the post goes on to suggest that plenty of good stuff was on view. And perhaps it’s a first step toward some kind of reconciliation of what sometimes seem almost like two separate sets of ideas about craft. In any case, it’s certainly true that the “small local craft shows” line is a little weird, given how big events like Renegade have become.

The full account, with lots of pictures, is here.

Etsy (& Cyberoptix Tie Lab) on Martha

Martha Stewart will be doing an Etsy-focused episode this Friday. While Etsy was at the center of the Handmade 2.0 story, what I’m really pleased to hear is that one of the featured creators will be none other than Bethany Shorb/Toybreaker, the maker of hand-silkscreened ties, interviewed here in Murketing.com way back in August 2006, in this site’s very first Q&A. Big congrats to her, and Murketing remains a fan of her ever-growing line, and ever-expanding business. Check out the latest from her Cyberoptix Tie Lab here. Her Etsy shop is here.

Update March 3: Video of Etsy chief Rob Kalin on Martha Stewart. He does a good job; his energy level strikes me as quite a bit higher than when I met him, but that’s important on TV. Plus I’m quite confident that Martha is more fun to talk to than I am. Anyway, also featured in the segment was The Black Apple, mentioned in the Handmade 2.0 story — and according to this segment, she will be on the Martha show herself later this month. Impressive! Finally: Amusing to see a Toybreaker tie modeled by none other than Matthew Stinchcomb.

Past-subject convergences of the week

Two items (I meant to highlight last week and got distracted) from the ever-surprising world of Handmade 2.0:

Etsy seller’s laser-etched Moleskines (Moleskine Consumed June 26, 2005; Murketing/Moleskinerie Q&A.) Via Moleskinerie.

Craftster user’s crocheted Brobee (Consumed on Yo Gabba Gabba January 20, 2008). Via Craftzine blog.

More on ethics, consumption, and crafting

Vanessa at Etsy’s The Storque has written a thoughtful response to the Jean Railla column What Would Jesus Sell?, published here a few weeks back. Vanessa’s thoughts have gotten lots of comments over there, too much for me to attempt to summarize, so check it out. I’m just interested to see the discussion is continuing.

And because to so some extent it’s a subject dealt with in Buying In, I’m glad to see how much interest there is in the topic in general.

Q&A: Artist AshleyG

One of the many people I interviewed for the Handmade 2.0 story a while back, but was not able to include in the article itself, was a young artist known as AshleyG. Based in St. Louis, she’s sold thousands of prints through her Etsy shop, and her work is now finding its way into both gallery and retail settings. The Q&A that follows is a revised and condensed version of my original interview with her, with some updates and follow-ups built in.

We talked about her career, about discovering blogs and Etsy on the same night, about digital elements of her work and the “handmade” idea, about online selling as an antidote to the fear of rejection, and about what she hopes might happen next.

So what are the basics? I think you’re making a living from your art now, but at what point did that happen?

Yes, I do this full time, along withy my boyfriend, Drew Bell. He is kind of the less-visible part, but our LLC is actually AshleyG and Drew. I do all the drawing, and he’s the computer genius. He scans everything, and I make the color decisions but he’s usually the one physically doing the PhotoShopping, and the actual printing.

Etsy for me was definitely a turning point. I hadn’t gone to a lot of college; I’d taken some art classes, but I’d been waitressing and bar-tending forever. I met Drew met at a restaurant where I was bar-tending and he was waiting tables. We both had a common passion for art, but really no outlet for it. We’re in St. Louis where, maybe there’s a growing community now, but even four years ago when we met, there really wasn’t. So we started working on some collaborations, my drawings and digital stuff – but I was kind of putting drawings in drawers and just forgetting about them, and going back to hating my job.

When I was little it was drawing drawing drawing, that’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t really even know that was a possibility for me. And I don’t know, if Etsy hadn’t come to be, if it would have been a possibility for me. I had sort of thought: “Okay, now from age 16 on I’ll work in the restaurant industry, and maybe slowly go to school and things can happen. But I don’t know when I’m gonna get a career, or what career.” So this came as a total surprise, and I just feel exceptionally lucky.

So how did Etsy come onto your radar then? Read more

Etsy founder announces investment, shares story of Swimmy

Rob Kalin, CEO of Etsy, which was a key feature of the Handmade 2.0 story I did for the NYT Mag in December, writes here that the company has taken a $27 million investment from two of its current backers. He says Etsy is almost breaking even; explains why it needs the investment; and mentions the long-range plan of going public.

But if you read the Handmade 2.0 story, you might be particularly interested in the accompanying video. You may recall that the article recounted Kalin explaining Etsy to me by reading me a children’s book. Well, now you can have the same experience! Or a virtual equivalent. Click through to hear the story of Swimmy.

Update 1/31: VentureBeat links to a quite good story from Tech Confidential on Etsy’s financing. I didn’t get into any of this stuff in the Handmade 2.0 story, but everything here pretty much lines up with what Kalin said to me about that side of things. Moreover, there are a number of nice details that were news to me. (Example: “He got his first Web design job without admitting he had no experience. (The Web site he created for Manhattan pub Acme Bar and Grill is still up today.)”) So if the biz side of Etsy is of interest to you — and actually, if the general subject of VCs and company funding interests you — check it out.

Crafting and consumption: Discussion continues…

As it slips further down the page, I just want to plug again the recent guest column by Jean Railla, “What Would Jesus Sell?” The comments have gotten pretty interesting, and you might want to check them out, and possibly even weigh in yourself.

My favorite line in the comments so far:

What I think craft as a movement and Rev Billy both espouse is the idea that things should be hard to get. You shouldn’t have that many of them, and the ones that you do have you should cherish.

Guest column: “What Would Jesus Sell?”

Murketing is pleased to publish this special guest column by Jean Railla, which I believe will be interesting to many crafters and followers of the DIY scene. It was written for her regular column in Craft Magazine, which chose not to publish it out of concern, the magazine told her, that it might be “anti-religious.” (Update 1/25: The magazine says it was a matter of timing and space issues. Whatever the reason, the column addresses issues I think many participants in the crafter/DIY phenomenon are very interested in.) See what you think.

What Would Jesus Sell?

By Jean Railla

What Would Jesus Buy is the suitably ironic title of the documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame), which follows the antics of “Reverend Billy.” As the head of the Church of Stop Shopping Reverend Billy, a character developed by the New York City actor Bill Talen, preaches an anti-corporate theology with an authenticity of feeling and full gospel choir. In the film, Reverend Billy is up to his old antics–exorcising demons at Walmart Headquarters, taking over the Mall of America, and finally crashing Disney Land. His objective? “To save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!”

I wonder what Reverend Billy would have thought about the handmade pledge sponsored by Etsy, Craftster, Craft Magazine and others this past holiday season: “I pledge to buy handmade…and request that others do the same for me.”

On the one hand, this sentiment, urging us to buy handmade goods, like fingerless gloves crafted by a seller named Corpseknit on Etsy, or a lavender soap found at Seattle’s new Urban Craft Uprising fair, is in opposition to the very type of consumerism that Reverend Billy is bemoaning. On Etsy we can actually “meet” the producer, read about him or her, see photos. Doing this, we know that when we buy from them, we will be circumventing horrific labor practices like those described by John Bowe in Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, which chronicles dehumanizing cases of slavery, environmental damage and other atrocities both in America and abroad. Clearly, supporting Corpseknit, or sellers at any of the dozens of hip craft fairs around the country, is a welcome alternative to mass-production.

But I can’t help thinking: Isn’t shopping, no matter how wonderfully crafty and politically correct still, well, shopping? Can you escape the so-called sin of consumerism by buying handmade? Isn’t the whole point of modern crafting Do It Yourself — not Buy from Someone Who is Doing It Themselves? Not to be a total hypocrite; I shop Etsy and artisan crafters as well as buy the crap from China just like everyone else. It’s just that I see a new trend, which is moving away from crafting and towards consuming. What’s next? “Hip Craft” aisles at Wal-Mart?

Actually, it’s already happening. Scion, a youth-targeted-division of Toyota, which last year marketed its automobiles through West Coast street racer culture (read: Fast and the Furious), recently held a “Craft My Ride” competition, which strove to use modern craft customization to give a DIY patina to their otherwise anonymous econo-boxes. Clearly, this is not a good sign. Crafting is incredibly popular and corporate America is taking note. They are jockeying to figure out how to sell to the growing audience of crafters.

So, where does the craft community stand? Like all other subculture movements before, punk rock, indie rock, skateboarding, zinemaking etal, will crafting become just another consumer product, or is there something more meaningful happening here?

* *

Jean Railla is the founder of Getcrafty.com and author of the craft manifesto Get Crafty. Her ode to food and drink can be found at mealbymeal.blogspot.com. Murketing thanks her for allowing this piece to be published here.

DIY business variation

This Business Week story, “Arts and Crafts Find New Life Online,” includes an interesting anecdote. It notes that a German company called Hubert Burda Media, described as a “sewing-magazine and pattern giant,” has recently relaunched a U.S. site called BurdaStyle.com. Among other things, the site — which bills itself as “open source sewing” — gives away some patterns in downloadable PDF form. “Sewers can alter the patterns as they fancy, and there are no restrictions on selling finished clothing.”

Burda, according to BW is “the biggest pattern seller” in Europe, but it’s a minor player in the U.S.

It has a loyal fan in Mirela Popovici. The 28-year-old spends hours on the site downloading patterns, getting advice in the forums from other members, and creating how-to slide shows. A computer programmer by day, the Hollywood (Fla.) resident spends her evenings and weekends whipping up skirts, dresses, and tops. Last January she created a shop on Etsy … mirela.etsy.com … [where] she sells some of the clothing she makes using Burda’s patterns. “I love to alter their patterns,” Popovici says. “And having the community makes it so easy to figure out how to make different alterations.”

A few thoughts on this.

First, while BW emphasizes that users of the Burda site “can” alter the patterns they find there, this is not a meaningful point. You “can” alter any pattern, whether you found it online, or in a box of patterns your mom put in the attic in 1974. I mention this because I am very tired of being told how exciting it is that this or that company is letting us express ourselves these days. Believe it or not, people expressed themselves before the Internet.

Second, what might be meaningful is that Burda is giving the a-okay for you to sell what you make based on its patterns. However, its exact meaning is kind of interesting to consider. It happens that this is a recurring issue in the DIY world: Crafter A makes, say, embrodiary patterns; Crafter B loves them, buys some, executes the patterns on a jacket and a pillow — and then sells what (s)he has made. By and large, Crafter A is not so excited about this, because Crafter B is profiting from Crafter A’s intellectual property. Of course, Burda is in a very different position from Crafter A, insofar as it’s a “giant” company, so it can afford to do a little “open source,” to help establish its name a new market.

Third, I’m sort of curious if this kind of arrangement has an impact on the “handmade” nature of a garment. Clearly, in a literal sense, it’s still handmade. But since the “handmade” idea has been infused with a sort of anti-corporate ideology, or some sheen thereof: Does it matter where the pattern came from (a “giant” European company, this case)? What if it came from some vintage magazine, would that be better? What if it came from Wal Mart — would that be worse? Why?

Just to be clear, I have nothing against this Etsy seller and am not accusing her or anybody else, of anything. Just asking a question or two.

Handmade 2.0 reaction finale

All right then. I was pretty pleased at the overall reaction to the Handmade 2.0 story (additional links here), which I’ll shut up about after this post. I’ll return this general subject in the new year, with some new Q&As and so on, but for now I did want to pass along a few final reactions of interest to those who read the story.

Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Unmarketable and former Punk Planet editor (and Murketing Q&A victim) is currently in Cambodia and writing a great blog about her experiences there, but also took a moment to offer some thoughtful reaction from a DIY veteran point of view. Or to be more precise, a DIY veteran who happens to be learning Cambodian culture. It’s so good I refuse to excerpt it. Read it here.

I was also quite interested in this BlogHer post, which gathers up some interesting tidbits I had missed, and links to the author’s own thoughts (pre-dating my article) on living “at the intersection of craft and Web 2.0.)

This Moop post offers an interesting point of view on one crafter’s relationship with Etsy, and with the ideology of crafting.

I believe I have already noted the one very long thread that came up of reactions to the piece in the Etsy forums. It is here, and as of the moment runs to about 32 pages of comments. There’s also a much shorter thread of reactions in Etsy’s blog/magazine The Storque, right here. Another site with a discussion is the Unofficial Etsy News blog.

Broadly speaking, there’s just too much in these three threads for me to respond to, and my general policy is that while I will always read and am very interested in such reactions, I don’t respond to them. I figure in most cases they are more about people wanting to state a point of view, rather than hear from me. Which I think is fine, and in fact good: I’ve already had my say.

Besides, if somebody wants to ask me something directly — here I am, go ahead.

Other random mentions: Henry Blodget says “gushing.” Counter indicator? Maybe so, given a lot of what’s said in the threads cited above, and that Core77 (which in my view has a better track record than the former stock analyst) says “sober, non-sentimental.” Also: Design*Sponge, How, Good, PSFK, Apartment Therapy, We’ll Know When We Get There (who makes a good point about all the folks trying force community), Then Thousand Places (who writes about the Handmade Pledge), Crafty Kim, Modish, Humane Recipe, and Rubber Nun. In some cases those posts simply quoted one section, or offered a very quick reaction, but I find those kinds of things quite interesting — and much appreciated.

Handmade 2.0: Links of interest

It’s always a little weird to publish a story that I’ve been sort of thinking about for a couple of years. The craft-DIY scene, or phenomenon, or movement, has interested me for a long time, for a bunch of reasons. I guess — I hope — I’ve now covered a lot of those reasons in the Handmade 2.0 story.

I should also mention that there’s a chapter devoted largely to DIY/craft in the book I have coming out next year, Buying In. (Somewhat incredibly, you can already pre-order said book from Amazon, even though the pub date is June 2008.)

I view this story as a kind of sequel to the earlier “brand underground” article that I wrote last year. That piece actually makes offhand mention of crafters, in fact, as well as indie designers (like those written up in this New York Magazine story.) I see the participants in these various scenes as being part of the same broader indie-preneur phenomenon. There’s more about that in the book, where it makes more sense.

I’ve written about participants in the DIY/craft scene both on this site and in the Times Magazine several times before. In July of 2006 I did a column on My Paper Crane (and that was what first brought me in touch with Faythe Levine, who is in the Handmade 2.0 story); some reactions to that column collected here. I’ve also done Consumed columns on DIY-scene-related subjets including soap-makers, Poketo, Kate Bingaman-Burt, and gocco. On this site, the very first Murketing Q&A was with Bethany Shorb/Cyberoptix Tie Lab, maker of cool ties, and I’ve noted corporate sponsorship interest in the DIY idea here, here, here, and here.

Anyway. Here are a few more links:

First, some stuff from the story. Here is what I called Etsy’s running DIY business school site/blog: The Storque. The site of Faythe Levine’s eagerly-awaited documentary Handmade Nation is here. The Austin Craft Mafia is one of the great stories of crafting culture; several members of the ACM are interviewed in the book. Meanwhile, here is co-founder Jenny Hart’s Sublime Stitching. Hart has also been writing a DIY business column for VenusZine, installments of which are here and here. Here is Craft Magazine’s Craftzine blog. The story makes passing mention of Renegade, among other craft fairs. I went to the most recent Chicago version and there was a lot of great stuff I wish I could’ve gotten into the piece. They also have a store in Chicago now. I also mentioned the Craft Congress in Pittsburgh, and I believe some of the organizers of that event also organize that city’s Handmade Arcade fair.

The Etsy store of Circa Ceramics is here; their work is definitely worth checking out, and you might be interested in this interview they did for The Storque. Emily Martin, AKA The Black Apple, might be the best known Etsy seller; she’s very nice and very talented. Here is her blog, and her Etsy store. Finally, thanks to Jean Railla, who in addition to writing for Craft, can be found at her blog Meal By Meal.

Other sites of interest mentioned in the story, often just in passing, because I had so much to cover: GetCrafty.com, SuperNaturale, Craftster, Stitch N Bitch, Church of Craft.

I spoke to an awful lot of crafters who unfortunately I didn’t have space to specifically mention in the story. Atlanta-based Christy Petterson is a maker of jewelry and other cool stuff under the name a bardis, a columnist/editor for GetCrafty, and an organizer of the Indie Craft Experience. Artist AshleyG is another great Etsy success story whose work is really nice. Angel D’Amico makes cool clothes that she sells through Etsy. I quite like the work of Le Photique, another Chicago-based Etsy seller, who makes jewelry. I also want to thank Jenny of craft fair/teaching resource/store Felt Club. The unnamed crafter in the story whose observation that without a market the movement isn’t sustainable made such an impression on me at the Craft Congress, is Rachel Lyra Hospodar, of Medium Reality. Finally, Betsy Greer is one of the truly thoughtful observers of and participants in the new craft idea, and is I believe working on a book on the subject.

There are many others but this is getting ridiculous. Please check out some of these folks if you have time. The sort of unwieldiness of the craft/DIY scene is part of what made it interesting to write about, but also what made it hard to write about.

Handmade 2.0: Is the future of shopping all about the past?

There’s no Consumed column in the New York Times Magazine this week, to make way for a feature story I’ve wanted to write for quite a while. “Handmade 2.0” is about the growth of the DIY/crafting phenomenon, and Etsy, and some thoughts as to what it’s all about.
Here is a short excerpt from the opening section:

Browsing Etsy is both exhilarating and exhausting. There is enough here to mount an astonishing museum exhibition. There is also plenty of junk. Most of all there is a dizzying amount of stuff, and it is similarly difficult to figure out how to characterize what it all represents: an art movement, a craft phenomenon or shopping trend. Whatever this is, it’s not something that Etsy created but rather something that it is trying to make bigger, more visible and more accessible — partly by mixing high-minded ideas about consumer responsibility with the unsentimental notion of the profit motive.

On July 29, Etsy registered its one-millionth sale and is expecting to hit two million items sold by mid-December. Shoppers spent $4.3 million buying 300,000 items from the site’s sellers in November alone — a 43 percent increase over the previous month. Thus far in December, the site has had record-breaking sales every day. Only about two years old, the company is not currently profitable but is somewhat unusual among Internet-based start-ups of the so-called Web 2.0 era in having a model that does not depend on advertising revenue. It depends on people buying things, in a manner that the founders position as a throwback to the way consumption ought to be: individuals buying from other individuals. “Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost,” the Handmade Pledge site asserts. “Buying handmade helps us reconnect.” The idea is a digital-age version of artisanal culture — that the future of shopping is all about the past.

The whole story is here (and of course in tomorrow’s issue of the Times Magazine, where it might be more pleasurable to read, given the length). I’m putting together some related links that I’ll post tomorrow.

[ PS: In answer to the question: Why does the online version of the story on the Times site not actually link to Etsy? Or to Getcrafty, or any of other things it might link to? My answer is: I have no idea. Please ask someone who works at the Times! ]

To Do in Georgia: two craft fairs to choose from

Here in Savannah — in fact, here in my neighborhood — it’s the Mutations fair. Gallery exhibition/opening Friday night, the fair itself Saturday and Sunday, all at Starland. More info here.

And in Atlanta, it’s the latest iteration of the ever-more-popular Indie Craft Experience. Saturday at the B Complex. (ICE is co-run by friend of Murketing Christy Petterson, a/k/a a bardis.) The timing never quite works out for me to go to this, but I’ll make it at some point. . .

In Consumed: The Cult of Gocco

Print Gocco: How the end of a product turned into a publicity event — and, maybe, a new beginning.

… Print Gocco is both better known and somehow cooler than it has ever been here. And this is almost certainly because in late 2005, the Riso Kagaku Corporation, now an international and largely digital business, announced that Gocco was dead…

Read the column at the NYT Magazine site.

Additional Links: Save Gocco! … Shu-Ju Wang’s site … Blissen … Wurst Gallery Gocco show … Paper Source … Gocco at Poppytalk

Pleasing thing of the day: Paper dolls etc. by Wool and Water

This person’s work is pretty cool. Her name — I learn from Craft’s blog — is Amy Earle, a maker of paper dolls and other things. Here’s her blog, and here’s her “Wool and Water” Etsy store. Enjoyable.