Frenetic, Frantic and other big F words

2014 Version 1: Panoramic photo. Fabric covering the studs on the walls, raw plywood floor and draped tables

2015 Version 2: Insulated and finished!

You know, some days I wonder how we keep up with it all. There has been so much going on in the last couple weeks, all of it on a deadline and much of it seemingly out of our direct control.

The major things have been about getting our little Tionesta Market Village store ready to open for the season. Doing some final repairs on the house we have for sale in State College and making a lot of work to stock the store and also make work for our wholesale clients.


We've been back and forth to the old house a lot! Somehow we got all the construction and studio work done between trips. I think it has all started to come together.

The store is now much brighter and we got the tables off the floor and added many shelves. We actually have more work in it and it also appears to be more spacious. I had 3 people shopping comfortably at the same time on Sunday. 

 I'm looking forward to really focusing on the studio work! I've always tried to plan my life so only one major thing happens at a time and the last few years I've failed miserably. That's where that last F word shows up. Wow. Overwhelmed!

Reflections on NW PA Living: 5 ways to tap into the growing tourist market in northwestern PA.

 

Photo by Rowan Rose

It’s beautiful in NW PA isn't it? It's one of the reasons we moved here with our pottery business!

There is access to everything you could want to do outdoors and it’s peaceful in a way city dwellers will never know. 

Outdoors tourism is the natural industry of our area. When you live in an area that requires tourist dollars for your local economy to thrive, it is important to make sure every dollar that walks through your town has the potential to end up passing through your business and sticking to your fingers. Town leaders always talk about revitalization, to revitalize, residents in historic towns have to be willing to live in the present and look to the future while preserving the very best of local history.

All those people who made your town thrive were scrambling to make a future.

My wife and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to better market our pottery. We have both spent  years traveling all over the east coast to sell pottery.  There was a time when I was on the road 40 weekends a year, going from New Hampshire to Florida. We've been in a lot of small towns and even while selling our pottery at festivals, we are also being tourists and visitors. It gave us a good perspective for looking at towns from an outsiders point of view. We are practiced at searching for businesses to take care of our needs and have spent a huge amount of money at some businesses because they took certain steps to raise their visibility, offer hospitality and inspired us to have confidence the them.

Photographer Unknown, but what a great picture!

One of the things I have noticed about small towns is they are fierce about their independence and frugality runs in their veins like blood. You hear things like “what do you need that for?” “That’s not the way we do things here!” “It was good enough for me, good enough for my folks and their folks, why do you want to change things?” These are great tenacious characteristics but often the very thing that can keep success just out of reach. The independence and need to preserve the past in an unchanging way stifles new growth and leads to a slow disintegration of otherwise valuable assets. Our economy in the US is based on growth. Small towns are a microcosm of the nation. We must grow and change. The growth must be controlled and guided, but it must happen.

A little story from my past.

 I grew up in Lemont, a small town outside of Penn State University and State College, PA. My family wasn't affiliated with the university but they had deep roots in Lemont going back to the late 1700’s. While I was growing up, we had some of the only undeveloped land left in Lemont and my mother and grandmother had that old school, fierce, small town independence. Any new growth project the township sponsored was a waste of tax money. Any changes to the scenery was an unfortunate shame. Everything should always stay as it was.

That beautiful property had passed from generation to generation and gradually become more and more a burden as it passed from a 1790’s homestead to farm, to rental farm, and finally into disuse.

 That was the part I remember most vividly.

 My mother told me stories of active farming and big family gardens, horses, pigs and chickens. They were beautiful, wondrous stories of the past, presented with bright eyes in full glorious color and the clear beauty of happy memories. But they were only memories. The 13 acres that remained were expensive to maintain and slowly falling into disrepair because no one was actively caring for, or using the land. We didn't think too much about it, that’s just the way things looked. At the time the land finally passed to my aging mother it was too late. The only value left was in the land. The antiques stored in outbuildings had been compromised along with the integrity of the buildings.

At the time PA had a draconian death tax on the assessed value of the property, so taxes forced my mother to have to sell the property to pay the taxes. It's a neo-Victorian development now, and occasionally I look back and realize that instead of the total destruction of the our collective family memories we could have re-purposed and reinvented the land and made it useful and productive again. If only the idea of preservation of the past had been backed by new vision for the future, we would still be living there.

Since moving to the NW region of PA, I see a lot of similarities to growing up on that dying farm. There is a great reverence for the past and people don’t seem to notice the slow degradation of something that was once grand and vibrant. In their memories everything is perfect and we can’t change things because that will disturb the vision of the past they hold so dear.

Distressed buildings are cool right? Very rustic.So what if that place doesn’t actually look open, or have a sign. Everyone knows about it right? And who wants a bunch of people in town anyway? It’s quiet around here and we like it that way! Except that the services the town offers slowly degrade and soon it’s so quiet you can’t even get a coffee and a sandwich without driving 30 miles.

It is unlikely that any big manufacturing will come back to the area, most of our employment opportunities in the future will come from the service or recreation industries. People who need to escape from urban life will come to our small towns in droves if we can offer them the things they need and are used to having.  If we give them a reason hunters, hikers, fishermen, birders, campers, leaf-lookers and their families will come and spend their time and hard earned money.

Here are things you can do to increase your business's appeal to tourists and visitors.

1. WWW:  If you do nothing else, this is the most important thing to do. If they can’t find you, they can’t give you money! Get a professional website of some sort. Here is the one my wife made for The Tionesta Market Village.  It can be simple, but it should be clean, direct and have all the important and most current contact information as well as hours of operation. Remember this is for people who don’t know you, or the area. No one stops at a gas station to look at the Yellowpages anymore. Families on the road use their smartphones, or they do research from their home computers. People use Google, Yelp. Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor to look for interesting regional activities, services and restaurants. Make sure your business is listed on all these sites! This can make your business a destination, not just a lucky find. Once you have a web presence, expand into social media to keep contact and let your customers know what the specials are, or what the latest event is.
   
   
2. Beautification:   A welcoming, clean and tidy storefront inspires confidence for new customers. A craftsman knows the details are important. Tidy your storefront, Wash the windows, replace or repair your sign. Add a coat of fresh paint, add some landscaping, sweep your sidewalk and show that you care about the appearance of your business. If you can’t clean your front door or windows, no one is going to believe you keep a sanitary kitchen. Disrepair isn’t rustic. It’s neglect and you pay for it in consumer confidence.

3. Hospitality: Be friendly to everyone! Don’t politicize your business. You want money from both sides of the aisle. Be welcoming! Be open, be courteous, treat all your visitors like the welcome guests they are! Not everyone who walks in your door will be an immediate customer, but eventually they might be! Make sure they are willing to come back!

4. Be positive: Take down all those handwritten, negatively worded signs. Those who really need to read them don't and it just makes you look grumpy to everyone else. The only signs you should see are for the services you offer, exits, or directions to the restrooms. Which of course you should offer to anyone who walks in your door. These are people and people need restrooms, it doesn’t matter if they buy something or not.
   
   
5. Take Credit Cards: Remember, today’s economy is not the economy of 30 years ago. Money flows differently and cash is not as convenient as it used to be. Many people never see an actual paycheck because they have direct deposit and many haven’t written an actual check in years. Debit and Credit cards are king. Tourists and visitors carry limited amounts of cash but may have fat bank accounts. If you are worried about that 1.75 to 3% charge, raise your prices by 5% and your costs are more than covered. Customers are willing to pay for convenience, not having to go to an ATM or bank to complete the transaction is convenience. You won’t be sorry.
   
    No one will ever complain that you do accept credit cards, but they will often walk away if you don’t.  Make those dollars stick to your fingers!
   
   These ideas are just a start. There are a lot of great resources available. Check out the PA Wilds Resources website. If you don't have a business yet, there are still plenty of consumer needs to be met! What can you bring to your town?  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Online Marketing for? or to? Potters.

I think online marketing is tough for potters.

I think we do it pretty well, but I notice some problems that we have that I don't think other folks have, especially those who are resellers. Resellers have a pretty straightforward deal, I have this thing, it's a cool thing and I can send it to you now at a fair price.

Potters seek out other potters, like no other group I can think of. We're very incestuous as a group, a huge number of the fans of our Facebook page are potters, I'm a huge fan of other potters Facebook pages. We just love to see what other clay people are up to.

Cone 6 Fake Ash with Cobalt or Runny Blue-Grey Coffee Mug?

Sometimes when I go to compose a post, I forget that I am sharing my story to more than the other potters. I'm telling a creative clay story for the people who are interested and want to buy things. The general public wants a story of a creative person, living a creative life and making beautiful things.They want a peek into the process and a glimpse of the dream. We should be selling to the people who say "bake" not "fire" Not the folks who know the terms Hare's Fur, Soda Fire, Oribe, or Cone 12 flat.

It took my wife about 10 minutes of looking through other potter's Etsy listing tags to figure out a major reason why some folks had more online sales than others.

The folks who had less sales were marketing to other potters, and while that is cool, potters like to buy pots too, once they get over their need to make it, not buy it. They talk about firing temperatures, type of clay, specific name of the glaze, all cool stuff to know if you are a potter talking to other potters. Or listing technical information for a show. Perhaps its not the most important thing when trying to address the general public. The general public searches for terms like "Brown and Blue Coffee Mug" while potters search for "Cone 10 Stoneware wood fired mug" Maybe we should include all those tags to get the full range of customer.

Potters, especially academic potters do themselves a disservice this way. Just like back in English Composition class, you need to know who your audience is.  Who are you talking to? Will they know the terms you are putting in that tag cloud?

Any thoughts on this? Share them in the comments. Are you a potter or a customer who loves pottery?

Feb 18 9PM Eastern Time The Big Day

Feb 18, 2015 9PM Eastern Time 

at our website. www.hughespottery.com

We've worked hard. Laughed. giggled, sweated, and cried. The final kiln is loaded.

This has been so much fun. More fun than the everyday work we have been doing for the last few years. There's always a thrill in doing new work. A carbonation of the creative spirit.

 We are Carbonated!

There will be somewhere around 80 pieces.

All of them one of a kind. All of them with the theme of Forest Spirit. Some will have faces and leaves like the traditional Greenman, some will simply have texture and leaves. None will be repeated. Some are sold in sets, most are individually sold.

More previews can be found on our Facebook page, in the 
event called Forest Spirit

Snow Jobs

Our lovely Tionesta home has been getting a few inches of snow every day. Not a huge dump and go blizzard, but a steady build. My commute has been a cold 20 steps to the studio with a carafe of hot tea and a dog who thinks snow is the best thing ever.

This weather has made it easier for me to decide to settle in, hunker down and be a homebody. I'm loving it. Rowan has been taking the time to create some really lovely homemade meals that we have been willing to go back to and consume every bit of the leftovers. There is no need to go out until we need groceries or the USPS.



Our promise to ourselves to work smarter has been in effect for a week now, it's been pretty good. We've been getting to bed before midnight and getting up between 6 and 8 and getting to work soon after. We work until early evening usually between 5 and 7 and I finally have had some time to relax, reflect and think. Its been a long time since I haven't felt completely exhausted and overburdened. This is nice and I want to keep it up as long as possible.

The best part is we have been getting a lot of work done. Rowan has even found more time to be creative in the studio. She's been making new things, working with me on the Forest Spirit things. We're building good stock and I feel on track for making this year one of working from a perspective of joy rather than burden.

Getting settled

So, here we are in Tionesta,PA. This was our backyard this afternoon. It's really exciting to finally be here. It's beautiful, but currently quite cold!

The toughest part of moving is that we have to continue to make pottery, move all our stuff and set all the stuff up in a new space and there's only two of us to do most of it.

The studio is here and I've started making work and sorting out exactly how to set up the studio..not the big stuff.. like kilns, but the little stuff like my throwing station. I had it all set up so work flowed, tools were at hand. I need to find that flow again. Part of the difficulty is we still have things stored in the garage-turned-studio that shouldn't be there..like our clothes dryer, which will go to the basement as soon as there is an outlet to plug it into :) and the gas grill, which will go somewhere...I don't know where...maybe up the stairs to the back porch. The plumbing still isn't hooked up and the heating situation isn't working out as planned. Its been so crazy cold! We're going to have to fire kilns continuously through the winter or put in a thermostat controlled heater of some sort. Brrrrr.

But speaking of kilns, we're firing our first one in the new studio tonight! It's loaded with all this stuff. Most of which is destined for Old Forge Brewing Co in Danville PA. They serve everything off of pottery there. It's really a fun place to eat!

We also got our www.hughespottery. etsy.com shop all moved up and running. Stock is shelved in the new office, boxes are ready and the USPS will pick up on our porch. Local folks can use the coupon code LOCALPICKUP1 to remove shipping fees and pick the pieces up on our porch. 
We're really excited to be getting started in this community and hope to become acquainted with everyone as we get settled in! 

A Perfect Place for Potters!

 

We have finally found a new home.

We've been looking for over a year for a place that has very specific qualifications.

1) Zoning! We have to be zoned for a home business with pretty liberal space allowances.

2) It had to have an outbuilding that could be easily converted to an improved amount of studio space.



 3) The house had to be nice, good bones, not a huge amount of work just to move in. We were hoping for a step up in square footage and living environment.

4) It had to be within a days drive of NJ where Rowan's aged parents live.

5) and of course price. We're potters here, not app developers with hot product :) Every dollar we make has to pass through my fingers as mud.


AND most important, there had to be a lighthouse in our back yard. Yep, no kidding...and a river of course.  OK I was kidding about it being a qualification, but I wasn't kidding that it was there!

So we found a lovely home, not jut a house, not just a place to work in Tionesta PA on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest.

There is a two car garage, the town just did a zoning expansion to allow homes in the borough to have commercial enterprises.

We're going to have a pottery in our garage.

One of our neighbors is going to make chocolate in his.

It's in a big hunting and fishing tourist area. As one neighbor said, "pretty much any middle-upper income hunting family that lives in Pittsburgh has a camp here, and they bring the whole family." So retail is certainly a possibility..especially with our Oak and Acorn line.

Moving will have to happen when the studio is ready for us. Our guy is ready to tear into it the moment the papers are signed. When the studio is ready, we'll move so there is no production time lost. We expect it will be in January.

We attended an auction at the property on Saturday 11/30 because we wanted to try to keep some of the furniture with the house and pick up a few things our much smaller house is lacking. We had an unexpected bonus of meeting some of the members of the family that previously owned the property. They were all really nice, and seemed glad to know we would be living there and not turning it into a rental unit. We love this place and I am hopeful it will become a happy home for us!

Maker's Marks

Over the years I've had many maker's marks, initially pretty crude, a scratched in crescent moon with my first name "Charles" scratched in beside it..That was back in 91-94, then I started scratching in "Hughes" .Then off and on over the next 10-12 years I scratched in my last name or wrote it with Iron Oxide, or sometimes Cobalt Oxide. Somewhere in early 2000 I started using what I call the radiant "H" an "H" with hash marks radiating out from around it. Then I started using a stamp that said "Hughes" but it broke eventually and I stopped. Then I thought I should make a new one, so I made one that said "CGH", Charles Gordon Hughes and I've been using it off and on with the Radiant H for a few years.

A few years ago I got married to a lovely lady who has an awesome artists name, Rowan Rose.  I taught her to throw and how to glaze and do all the things I do (except pull handles..she just doesn't want to pull handles).We made her a great maker's mark too, two R's back to back. Now in the last year or so we've been working together a lot more. and we decided we'd better start to reflect that in the work. So we came up with a new mark that combines my Radiant H and her RR.It's an H with two R's coming off of it. You'll start to see it a lot more.The work we do together is amazing. She needs to share the credit :)

The Making of our Oak and Acorn Plates

An Oak Leaf and Acorn Plate by Rowan Rose and Charles Hughes of Hughes Pottery

 

 

 

Follow this link to our Facebook Fan Page to see step by step photos!

Turning of the seasons

Ahhh the summer has passed and Fall is here. Looking back to late spring and the beginning of summer it seems like a whole new world for us.

In June and July we were dealing with some online sales problems that had us terrified. There is always a summer lull in online sales since folks are out busy doing things.in the summer folks do their pottery shopping at events, and our early summer events were hit or miss.2 in a row at the same site brought us beautiful weather and strong sales for one, and a heatwave so strong in the next that no one could stand to be out and moving during the second one.

 Looking back I think we didn't have a chance. First thing was the Google Panda update, we had to optimize for it, It seems better now, but it didn't solve our problems. The biggest problem we had was the internal search at Etsy was being experimented with.

August was better, great in fact, and magically the online sales started to reappear. Towards the beginning of August Etsy announced they had hired on a team of search engine specialists to make relevancy the basis of search results. Previously it was weighted strongly towards renewed and recently listed relevant items. They say that the site overall had record sales during July, but our records show we were down by over 65%.

As we went into September we had high hopes for business at The PA Renaissance Faire, but the hurricanes on the east coast had other plans.Fortunately the online sales are back to normal levels. and the weather has been steadily improving and now that the hurricanes have subsided, folks are coming back to the Renaissance Faire and are loving our work.

This is the most gratifying thing about making and selling pottery for us. We love making things, we love making them well, and constantly searching for new expressions of beauty and functionality in our work. It's humbling to think that folks love our work enough that we can make a living from it

Our Fall Pottery Events

Weekends Aug - Oct 31 we have the PA Renaissance Faire, the booth is beside the Privies on Privy lane.

 Nov 5,6 we have our Studio Sale 9-5 both days, with a huge spread of complimentary goodies. All are welcome for the food, pottery or both!

We're working on special orders for some individuals, several local businesses and a large special order for a Church.

We're stocking up for our studio sale, and trying to get Etsy stocked up for the upcoming holiday season. Last year we barely kept up, This year we're thinking ahead.

With all that on the agenda I just got a ton of clay and we're going to get into it this week. I anticipate another one in late October

And now it's time to get to it :) It's time to make beautiful things for you!