Crafting crunch Artisans forced online by pandemic find business pales in comparison to shows
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2020 (1513 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In an ordinary year, Sheri Lasure would have been counting up the tables she would need for the Treasured Gifts ‘n’ Things craft show she’s helped organize the past five years.
It has become one of the city’s most popular events that match crafters and customers. About 5,000 visitors piled into a ballroom at the Club Regent Casino Hotel on a Saturday in 2019 to check out the handmade jewelry, decorative furniture, health and beauty products and specialty food items that were on sale from more than 85 vendors from Winnipeg and the surrounding area.
The year is 2020, however, and Lasure is counting hits on Treasured Gifts’ website instead. Organizers had to cancel the 2020 event, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and replace it with the website, which links to its vendors who have had to set up their own websites and social media pages to sell their goods.
It began in October and is holding two-week themed promotions that run until Dec. 13. It’s giving its Crimson + Twig artisans market a push until Nov. 15, when Christmas-focused campaigns begin.
“I guess everyone’s trying to stay safe — I’m hoping they’re trying to stay safe — and we’re giving them an option to shop online for that very reason,” says Lasure, who besides helping organize Treasured Gifts also runs My Little Peachews, a small gourmet dried soup-mix and meals business that would take her to about a dozen craft shows in the fall. Except this year.
“The vendors go to so much preparation, so much planning,” Lasure says. “In our shows, some of the table-planning and decoration they do, the presentation is just unbelievable. Just to show them on an online outlet doesn’t do them justice.”
She says Treasured Gifts started its website to help those vendors who were shut out of their regular marketplace by COVID-19 cancellations.
One of those vendors is Kim Wilson, who makes jewelry such as earrings, bracelets and necklaces from polished pebbles and semi-precious stones she finds on her hiking trips, whether around Manitoba or when she has travelled abroad.
Adapting her business, Kim’s Natural Creations, to the economic realities of the pandemic has proven to be a difficult adjustment.
“It’s a challenge to figure out how to sell my product,” Wilson says.
“I usually purchase a table in a Christmas show every year, so that’s been cancelled. I was looking at some other alternatives and there was one I was excited to get into and then the numbers went sky-high.”
There are craft businesses that embraced e-commerce and crafts-related online markets such as Etsy for several years. There are others, such as Wilson, who got into crafting as a way to keep active during retirement and find Etsy isn’t their bag.
“It’s really time-consuming because all of my items are unique,” she says. “It’s great for people who make 50 of the same item but it doesn’t really work for how I do it.”
Selling works online has been a problem the Manitoba Craft Council has had to address for its 200-plus members, says its director, Tammy Sutherland.
“It’s about half and half in our group. For some this is the first chance they’ve taken to online sales to market their work. For some people, online is just the water they swim in and they’re very able to adapt,” Sutherland says.
The council has had to join the online learning curve too. The annual Crafted sale, which begins Friday and runs until Sunday and is held in conjunction with the Winnipeg Art Gallery, decided to go online in 2020, owing to the pandemic.
That’s meant everyone involved, from artisans to organizers, had to take a crash course in selling goods using an online portal, which is based on a similar one created by the Royal Bison Art and Craft Fair in Edmonton.
“They held their online sale in April… and they had very positive results,” Sutherland says. “We contracted with them to help us with the tech side of doing our sale.”
Crafters aren’t becoming social media influencers overnight, but they’re picking up on it. Wilson, the handcrafted jewelry maker, posts an item a day on her Facebook page instead, and visitors can scroll through her posts to find something they like. She’s even held open houses for folks who wanted to see the items in person.
But she doesn’t get the volume of customers she would get at one afternoon at a busy Winnipeg craft show.
“I’ve got 140 some followers and I need to get my numbers up to get the exposure,” she says. “I’ve joined some Facebook groups that are targeted for handmade items in Winnipeg but everyone’s doing that and it’s crafting overload right now.”
“Online isn’t the only way people are connecting but the deeper we get into this the more people are using that as their way to keep (their business) going.” – Manitoba Craft Council director Tammy Sutherland
The online marketplace will remain a reality as long as the pandemic persists, Sutherland says.
“Online isn’t the only way people are connecting but the deeper we get into this the more people are using that as their way to keep (their business) going," she says.
Crystal Jupiter, who specializes in beaded jewelry, is another craftsperson who has joined the internet wave. She started Alverstone Jewelry, which she calls her side hustle, two-and-a-half years ago, and she had to heighten the business’s social media presence this fall after several shows she planned to attend postponed and then cancelled.
She understands that safety comes first, but that doesn’t mean she won’t miss the activity of busy craft show.
“It depends on the show, but almost every one I’ve been to have been big crowds,” Jupiter says. “I really miss meeting new people, new vendors and seeing their amazing works for myself.”
Winnipeg crafters focus much of their business around the lucrative fall shows that target early Christmas shoppers. For Jacquie Rivard of Shoreline Treasures in Beaconia, about 85 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, she found success in the summer when Manitoba’s COVID-19’s numbers were low.
“We were able to, fortunately, participate in some farmers’ markets this summer so we found our sales were up this year compared to the same time last year,” says Rivard, who along with her husband Tony Demeis comb the beaches of Lake Winnipeg for driftwood they transform into lamps, end tables and other small pieces of furniture.
“We just found more people were buying local and trying to support local vendors. We actually had a pretty good summer.”
But like other Manitoba crafters, Shoreline has had to go the online route for sales this fall as COVID-19 numbers soar.
“Thank goodness for social media right now, I’ll tell you,” Rivard says. We just recently did a giveaway on social media and that generated some new followers for us and that led to more sales.”
There’s more to 2020’s demise of craft shows than bottom-line results, though. Crafting is a community, and like all parts of society in 2020, the loss of human connection is the biggest hurdle artisans and customers have had to face.
“Our artists liked that opportunity to interact with the public and the public liked to get their hands on the stuff, get up close and personal. That is not happening,” the craft council’s Sutherland says.
“Our artists liked that opportunity to interact with the public and the public liked to get their hands on the stuff, get up close and personal. That is not happening.” – Manitoba Craft Council director Tammy Sutherland
Lasure says events like Treasured Gifts ‘n’ Things became more than just a marketplace for tchotchkes. Organizers charged no entry fee, but encouraged everyone to buy raffle tickets for gift baskets and to enter a 50-50 draw with all the proceeds raised going to the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation.
“Since 2016 we’ve been able to purchase two specialized bikes for them,” Lasure says. “The bikes are worth somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000.
“Now that’s all disappeared. We don’t have any fundraising ability for them anymore.”
alan.small@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter:@AlanDSmall
Alan Small
Reporter
Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.
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