Studio Sale Postmortem

The studio sale was this past weekend. I, along with two other studio members, organized it. I did the bulk of the volunteer organization and sale set up, another person dealt mainly with the studio director (a job I despise doing because of its extreme unpleasantness), and a third person handled the online advertising and postcard design.  We sold our things alongside seventeen other students and studio members.

I got three pictures of the event, the above pic of Dave's new blue bowls and the below pic of what the general sales tables (not the individual artist's tables) looked like as I exited my cubicle:

The near table is the "bargain table," things people are putting out for $10 and under. Lots of beginner work, one off functional pieces, and things that haven't sold sale after sale.  The next two tables are more expensive work and larger pieces. (I didn't get a pic of the individual artists' tables unfortunately.)

What worked (in the area that I had some control over):

1. The table sign-up sheet. (In the past, we've always just played it by ear when people came in to set up. This year I wanted to avoid the headache of being the go-to person for that mess, so Dave printed up a map of the studio and we had people sign up for their space well ahead of time.)

2. Extra volunteers for each shift on the busy days. We normally have 2 people per 3 hour volunteer shift, but this year I decided on 4 people per shift on Saturday (our busier day) and 2 per shift on Sunday. We could back it down to 3 people per Saturday shift and 2 per Sunday shift and we'd be fine.

3. The deal with the charity worked fine, I think. One potter grumbled that their sales (of our donated work) took a chunk out of our sales.

What didn't work:

1. The amount that I still had to fork over to the studio percentage-wise, despite doing as much work as I did. The studio takes 1/3 of the sale price, but my deal is that, for the amount of work I do to organize and promote the sale, I "only" get 25% taken off my sale price. That's still an excessive amount as far as I'm concerned, considering that the only expense to the studio is the postcard printing and the cashier (the owner's daughter) for the duration of the sale. If I can't negotiate this down to 0-10%, I may have to start doing smaller sales elsewhere.