NGlassworks LLC » Reflections on Show Preparation

Reflections on Show Preparation

I’m starting to plan new work that I would like to add to my line. My target date for having these new items ready is February of 2010. I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my preparation for August Buyers Market of American Craft Show. One key learning point for me is that preparation makes all the difference – not just being ready, but maintaining the right spirit during that process.

When I first started preparing for last large wholesale show, I created a production schedule. I looked at what I wanted to make, I took into account all the critical elements:

I wanted to make sure that everything could be ready by early July so that all the pieces could be photographed for the brochure and price list. I was pretty proud of myself for all this preliminary prep work. I even made sure to account for time on the road as well as commitments to completing work for current customers.

I had some ambitious ideas (like adding a gift line), but I felt that this planning would make that very doable. However, as it often likes to do, life intervened without taking into account my carefully planned schedule. Because of my saw challenges (see “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” for the full saga), I ended up losing 2 weeks work, and I still needed to go out of town which lost me even more work time. With the show deadline looming, I was now stuck playing catch up. Despite the fact that I would’ve loved to hurry things along or press the fast-forward button, there are certain things you just can’t make go faster, each step in the process takes a certain amount of time, I try to be as efficient as possible, but real efficiency comes from experience. Part of working in new areas is learning how to get it right, how to be the best you can be, where do need to spend time, where can you save time. Looking for tasks you want to get better at vs. tasks you want to delegate to other people.

I kept pushing myself to have all the things I had planned for ready, getting more and more anxious as I went along. I kept running into snags left and right, and I started making mistakes that I never make – I needed to do much more reworking than normal which ate up more time adding to my stress. I also had to juggle new set up requirements for my new items upsetting my normal production rhythm. Not to mention, I had to keep my inventory levels up for regular orders! I did end up making a variety of new items, but not all of them passed my “show-ready” criteria.

Instead of continuing to push myself, what I really needed to do was stop and reanalyzes my situation. Looking back, all of the problems I ran into were a result of not readjusting when life changed. I got so caught up in trying to do so many new things that I lost my focus and stopped enjoying the process of creation – one of my favorite parts of being a glass artist. I did have some success along the way. But here’s the real deal, the only one that had any expectations of me was me. So as I work through my plans for February it doesn’t really matter how many new items I have what matters is that I enjoy the journey. That I give myself permission to just stop and change my plans if I need to. I want to make sure that I don’t lose the joy of experimentation again.

Here are some of the new items I came up with.