Doug Richard of School for Startups and Dragon’s Den Fame guest writes for Startacus with some handy tips for Designers to beat the recession…

1. Sell your work at local events. That local market or pop up shop is your best chance to meet customers face to face, to show them your work, to find out why they buy when they buy and to see what they are selling. If the fees are too high, pair up with another artist or two to share a space.

2. Continue to design. If you come up with a good idea, document it. If you can afford to create a sample of the product, do it. This recession won’t last forever and you’ll be glad you have products already designed to sell when it is over.

3. Go to Meetups for both artists and entrepreneurs. It’s a great way to meet like minded people locally and the events are usually free and cheap. School for Startups has a free meetup you can join if you happen to be in London http://www.meetup.com/CreativeStartupsLondon/.

4. Create a website to sell your work on. There’s really no excuse at all for not having a website if you’re an artist. You can create your store free using Shopify and Etsy. You can buy a domain name that lasts a year at Godaddy.com that points people to it. Generally speaking the best domain to create is one that uses your name if you’re an artist because most of the people who buy from you will remember that more than any company name you tell them. Also you can keep that domain for a lifetime since it will always be relevant.

5. Buy visibility with your artwork. As an artist your key weakness is visibility. Initially no one knows who you are or what you do. If you can give a design to a company for free that leads customers back to your website, you’ve increased your visibility without having to pay in cash. Make sure the art has your name or domain name on it. Make sure you have to provide nothing but artwork.
6. Research Alibaba.com to learn more about ways you can have your work mass produced quickly and cheaply.

7. Research at Amazon Fulfillment and Amazon Marketplace to learn how you can market, sell and deliver your products worldwide.

8. Look for ways to produce and sell your work “on demand”. Lulu.com, Cafepress.com, Shapeways.com, Kunaki.com and a hundred other sites online can let you turn artwork into sellable products with no upfont cost.

9. Get very serious about collecting and managing contact information for the people who’ve liked your work in the past. You need to be able to reach those people through Facebook, Twitter, Emailand maybe even Pintrist and Meetup depending on what it is you do. You must create a life long, mutually fulfilling, relationship with your fans.

10. Accept that you’re an artist. Most artists are artists because they are driven to create. It is an obsession. So don’t berate yourself for “wasting time” on the work you care the most about. Do realize that part of being a working artist is finding your audience and paying your bills. Let yourself believe its going to be easy to do both. If you allow yourself to do your very best work and you allow yourself to look for people who will love it through all the channels available to you, you’ll find success during this recession and after as well.

Thank you Doug for some really helpful starter tips and we hope these tips offer some support to budding and current designers out there too…

  All Press Articles