Perfect pitching

Does the thought of asking a retailer to stock your products bring you out in a cold sweat? Or do you want to email a journalist about featuring your work in a magazine but just sit there staring at a blank screen?

Then you must sign up for our Getting to grips with pitching workshops. These three interactive workshops are specially designed for makers with no or little experience of pitching to help you develop your pitching skills.

The written pitch
Wednesday, 26 September, 7-9pm, led by Kim Winter

This workshop will help you craft the perfect written pitch that will grab the reader’s attention and make sure she doesn’t hit the “delete” button. We’ll show you how to highlight your unique selling points and tell your story in the most appealing way. And we’ll discuss the importance of getting the tone right too.

Preparing to pitch to shops
Wednesday, 3 October, 7-9pm, led by Carole Mourier and Jane Doxey

So your product is ready and you’re raring to go and sell it to shops. But when you’re there, what do you say about your product and how will you present yourself?

This workshop will prepare you to successfully pitch your product to retailers, identify potential buyers, and present it in an engaging way. From packaging to questions and answers, it’s all about first impressions.

Pitching with confidence and calm
Wednesday 10 October, 7-9pm, led by Tanya Shoop and Andry Anastasiou

Have you noticed that some people seem so confident when pitching and selling, yet you just feel nervous? So what’s the trick? It’s all about preparation, learning how to manage nerves and working with techniques to create presence and confidence.

Explore how to present yourself with confidence when pitching to buyers or promoting your products. Learn techniques for managing nerves, good body language and staying grounded and energised. We will draw on and practise methods from the Alexander Technique and from a whole-person coaching approach.

We’re offering all three workshops for a discount price of £25, or individual workshops for £10 each. If you book early, you get all three workshops for just £20. You can book on Eventbrite, where you’ll also find more details on each workshop and the facilitators .

http://pitchingformakers.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

The lovely drawing at the top is by GOLDTOP.

The photo is from our Product Surgery event in June.

“Journalists love freebies”

Our panellists, from left, Kim Winter (Makerhood), Tim Dickens (Brixton Blog), Fiona Douglas (Oh Sew Brixton) and Helen Ward (West Norwood Feast)

As Kim mentioned here, last Thursday Makerhood held a joint event with West Norwood Business Club at Portico Gallery on Knights Hill, where our knowledgable and friendly experts answered questions from makers and business people.

Our host John Price from Portico Gallery

The audience came from Brixton, West Norwood and even as far away as Streatham (I’m kidding, Streatham – it was great to meet you). They asked intelligent questions such as “What’s the best way to keep in touch with your regular customers?”, “As a local business what’s the best way to approach local press?” and “Do you think goody bags are a good way to promote your business?”

As you can imagine, given the successful businesses and organisations that our panellists represent, their advice and tips were practical, insightful and – most importantly – easy to follow for any maker or small business. Advice such as offering something extra in your newsletter to keep people reading, making sure you have new information when you contact your customers, and using social media, local forums and meet ups to promote events are simple – yet our panellists prove how effective they can be.

One of the pieces of advice I found most interesting was how to approach journalists (not surprisingly, the title of this post comes from this part of the event!). Tim Dickens described how to begin to build a relationship with journalists and how to present your information in a way that makes it easy for journalists to see its value. That’s useful knowledge for anyone trying to get their work noticed!

We’d like to say a big thank you to John Price and Portico Gallery for hosting this event and providing drinks, to West Norwood Business Club for collaborating with us and to our panellists for sharing their experience. And of course, thanks to everyone who came along and took part.

Makerhood at Urban Art

Next weekend is Urban Art, Brixton’s popular annual open-air art fair, held on leafy Josephine Avenue. For the second year, Makerhood will have a pitch, featuring four very different Makerhood artists. Mike Fell is a Brixton-based painter and print maker who also makes unusual pieces out of old cassette tapes and found boards.http://brixton.makerhood.com/mike-fell

Ray Stanbrook is known for his locally inspired screen prints, featuring recognisable landmarks around Herne Hill and Brixton. You may have seen his menu in the Ritzy Café! http://brixton.makerhood.com/ray-stanbrook
Sweet View sells limited edition prints of different London boroughs, including of course Lambeth, based on sketches of everyday life. http://brixton.makerhood.com/sweet-view
We’ll also have some plaster plaques by Sharon Kaye. We don’t have any photos of these at the moment – will tweet and post when we get some!

West Norwood event on 26 July

We’re planning a makers’ event in West Norwood on the evening of 26 July, before everyone disappears for the summer.

John Price has very kindly offered the Portico Gallery, along with drinks and nibbles.

Ideas
At our first meeting in West Norwood in April, the makers who came discussed various ideas for an event, including the following:

an impromptu exhibition, where everyone brings one of their
products to put on display, talks to other makers and gets feedback
an expert on using social media
an expert on running making workshops for adults and children
a speaker from West Norwood Feast.

We also thought it would be fun to have an interactive space where everyone can contribute to a drawing/collage/painting on a particular theme, eg London 2012.

We need your help
For this event to happen, we need your help! If you can help with any of the following, please let us know:

volunteering as a speaker (yourself or someone else who is interested!)
helping set up on the day
promoting the event in advance
helping organise the interactive activity.

If you have any other ideas or comments, do get in touch by emailing kim@makerhood.com.

I will be out of London next week but will try to respond to emails as promptly as possible. If there’s enough interest in the event going ahead, we’ll hold a planning meeting the week after, probably 18 July, to confirm plans and details.

Bridging the gap between making and selling

Many local makers who are Makerhood members are either thinking about starting their own business or are at the early stages of selling their work.

One of the key aims of the project is to support these efforts by exchanging expertise and knowledge locally, and by helping makers talk and share the excitement and challenges of running their own businesses.

Our latest event in the business support series was a product surgery on 13 June. It was an opportunity for makers to bring a product or idea and get feedback from business experts in arts, crafts, retail and food. They also got to listen in and learn from the advice given to others.

Thank you to Jane Doxey, John Price, Binki Taylor, Anne Fairbrother and Medeia Cohan for volunteering their knowledge and expertise!

It is not easy starting your own making business. A creator who is intimately involved with making a product and a salesperson who is marketing and selling the result can seem like two entirely different identities – yet makers have to master both, and learn to move seamlessly between them. Advice from specialists who have many years of experience in the field can be great support, and help you avoid common mistakes.

Below are some examples of questions that were covered at the event.

Q: How do I approach shops to get them to stock my product?
A: Be bold! Do your research and visit places where you think your product will fit in. If you feel it’s the right place for you, contact the manager, send photos of your products and a link to your website or Makerhood stall and then give them a call. The most important thing is to do your research and start to build a relationship with the shop.

Q: Should we contact a shop again when they say they will get back to us and they don’t?
A: Absolutely. After you’ve tried three times, though, don’t work too hard at the relationship – just send them an email every now and then to tell them what you’re up to and move on to finding new contacts.

Q: We’ve been selling our goods at markets and initially they sold well. That was between September and December, but it’s really tailed off since February. Why do you think this might be?
A: It’s the pattern of gift purchasing. September to January are good months for selling gifts. People think January won’t be good for sellin,g but people have often got money for Christmas and are still looking to buy. But February and March are always very flat; then it tends to pick up again from around May.

Q: Is it worth doing trade exhibitions as a small maker?
A: No. Far better to start by looking at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills or British Council websites, as they give grants and opportunities to new makers.

Q: How do I price my products?
A: There’s a lot of material out there nowadays on how to think about pricing. The thing to remember is that your time has value – make sure you build it into the price. Many makers and artists don’t: they assume their time is free. And then work from the other angle – what are people likely to pay for it (remember this might differ significantly depending on where you sell, too). The aim is to find a happy balance between the two, and where you can’t find it, consider not taking the product forward.

Q: How do I present my unique items made from recycled clothing so my market stall doesn’t look like a charity shop?
A: You need to create a story for your products that comes through in your presentation and packaging. When everything is unique it’s also really important to have some kind of consistency to your designs. This is very difficult when every piece is unique, but it might be consistency in the sizing or the packaging.

Q: How do I decide which of my art-based products to focus on?
A: Look to develop a style. Often new starters have a lot of very different things they try to sell. What is sometimes lacking is a strong, unique identity that comes through the products. Try, experiment, and see what works for you. Carry out research – which of your pieces do people most like and connect to? Which of your creations have intrinsic value that is just about you?

Our next event will build on the lessons from the product surgery. One of the common challenges for makers is around pitching their work – whether in person or in writing, to markets or shops, or in social media. We will address this at the next workshop in September, which will focus on how to pitch handmade products.

To hear about it first, sign up to our mailing list by entering your email on the right-hand sidebar.

We look forward to seeing you at future events!

Come and join the gang!

Last month we set up some working groups made up of makers, making
enthusiasts and locals – to open up the running of the Makerhood
project to anyone who wants to get involved.

Our next meeting is on 23 May at the Dogstar. We are all volunteers
inspired by the idea of making a difference to our community and our
environment, and to help local talent thrive and be appreciated
locally. If you want to be part of the gang, come and join us.

Together, we organise markets, events and workshops, participate in
exhibitions and fairs, maintain and develop the Makerhood.com website,
do PR and social media for the project… The list is long, but it’s
all good fun, with a diverse group of contributors who are becoming
great friends too.

You are welcome to get involved in any capacity, however little or
much time you have. There’s plenty to do, and we’re a very open and
democratic bunch. The only requirement is that you should live in Brixton,
Camberwell, Clapham, Herne Hill, Loughborough Junction or Stockwell.

It’s an exciting time for the project as we are growing, and it would
be lovely to have more local people running it together with us.

If you’re interested in coming, sign up on our Facebook page. We look forward to seeing you!

Makerhood at the Windmill Festival

Last Sunday Makerhood took part in Brixton Windmill festival. The festival is an annual event that takes place in the park at the foot of Brixton’s very own windmill (Yes – with sails and everything! Hopefully there will even be Brixton-milled flour in the near future). We were ready and waiting with the other stall holders* when the floats and crowd arrived at the windmill after parading up Brixton Hill.

By offering to teach people how to knit we hoped to inspire the makers of the future, and by offering goods for sale by Makerhood makers Flextiles, Eight B Design, Viv Moriarty and Dreamy Me we aimed to show just how creative the makers of Brixton are.

And we did well! We collected numerous contact details on our Makerhood map from people who wanted to find out more. These names have all now been added to our network – welcome to the Makerhood community everyone!

Makerhood at the Windmill Festival — Knitting and map-making at the Makerhood stall

Chuka Umunna, our local MP, stopped by the stall

* Our stall was next door to the lovely people from Brixton Green. Check them out at www.brixtongreen.org

Help Makerhood grow!

Over the past eight months Makerhood has grown into a passionate, enthusiastic community of makers and supporters.

Until now, the bulk of project organising has been done by a core group of volunteers. We’re now opening it up so that anyone who’d like to get involved could help Makerhood grow even further.

It’s a great opportunity for you to learn some new skills, meet new people – and have fun!

So we’re planning to hold a meeting for anyone who’s interested in helping in the following areas:

Organising stalls at markets
Organising local makers’ forums/networking events
Helping with publicity/PR
Forming links with local community groups/councils
Website work (dealing with user queries, helping with curations).

The idea is to form working groups in each area, with help and guidance as needed from Kristina, Karen or Kim.

So if you want to be involved, we’re meeting in Kaff Bar on Wednesday 4 April at 7pm. The Kaff Bar can be found at 64-68 Atlantic Road, London, SW9 8PY. Be there or be square!

If you’re interested but can’t make it that day, email us on hello@makerhood.com, and we’ll get back to you.

Product photography workshop

Last Saturday we ran our first workshop on how to take better product shots.

Eye-catching images are obviously very important when selling online, because potential buyers are unable to pick up and handle your work before buying, so it’s important that your photos show your work at its best. If your images are poor, buyers are likely to equate the quality of your photos with the quality of your work.

And it’s not just buyers – selection panels at trade shows, journalists and picture editors will make similar judgments. So if you’re hoping to get picked for a prestigious craft fair or have your work featured in a glossy magazine, you need to get your product shots right.

We started by discussing some of the images on the Makerhood website: which ones worked, which ones could be improved – and why. We also talked about the requirements of journalists and picture editors, and the resolution needed for print.

Then photographer Adrian Flower set up some shots of typical products, such as ceramics, cake, jewellery and bottles, using cheap and widely available props like cartridge paper and a tabletop tripod. He also photographed some of the products that makers had brought with them.

Finally – the fun part. Using the free photo-editing software Picasa, Adrian showed how even the most unpromising shots could be totally transformed. No more excuses for dark, blurry product shots!

Many thanks to Adrian, to Fiona Douglas of Oh Sew Brixton for letting us use her studio and providing tea and coffee, to Carly Telford of Picakes for the yummy brownies and shortbread, and to Maya Kar of Bright Side Dark Side for lending us her projector.