Marketing for Makers: Half-Day Hustle

Strategy First: Visualizing the Big Picture In Marketing

In this 2-hour interactive talk, participants will be able to look at the bigger picture before diving into things like the importance of purpose, business model, positioning and implications for marketing. Ideal for those looking at ways of creating a sustainable business beyond periodic shows…but still instructive for the creator who’s comfortable with where they are (with a few tweaks here and there.)

Recommended pre-read: Zingerman’s Guide and doing the visioning exercise. 

Led by Regina Connell.

Marketing In The Age of Authenticity

What does it mean to be authentic and why is it so important for growing your business? In this Lunch Speaker Panel, hear from experienced makers on how they have applied and maintained authenticity to communicate and engage with their customers in alignment with their brand principles. 

Guest speakers: Lori Theriault, Marketing Director for The Village Potters Clay Center, Berry Bate, Ironwork and Sculpture artist. 

Moderator: Lisa Zahiya.

Growing Sales Online

This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the different online sales channels used by makers, including Etsy, Shopify, Squarespace, and Instagram. We’ll compare each platform, weigh the pros and cons and discuss strategies for increasing your sales. Participants will leave with a better understanding of which platform is right for them. 

Guest speakers: Hunter Munday of Carolina Leg Co, Colin O’Reilly of Terrane Glass, Mary Lynn Schroeder of In Blue Handmade and Holden Mesk, Illustrator and Collage Artist.

Moderator: Regina Connell

Regina Connell specializes in finding unexpected connections between people, ideas, brands, and market opportunities. A connector with deep expertise in the intersection where strategy, brand, media, and experiences meet, Regina specializes in helping design, lifestyle and new luxury brands position themselves to define and intensify their relationships with customers old and new. Her particular expertise lies in illuminating unexpected connections between people, ideas, brands, and market opportunities. 

Over the course of a 20-year consulting career, she’s helped a wide range of clients create and launch first-of-their-kind initiatives.  Clients have ranged from large consumer products brands (Proctor and Gamble, LEGO, Ford, Toyota) to emerging designers, architects, and makers (UmeStudio, Fyrn, the NWBLK, and others). She’s also worked with social innovators to create hybrid investment/philanthropic opportunities (Calvert, Social Capital Markets, Social Venture Partners). Regina was also the Director of Communications at Heath Ceramics, where she led marketing, PR, events, and collaborations through a period of significant growth and product expansion. 

She is also a writer and editor: she founded the magazine Handful of Salt, which covers the intersection of art, craft, and design, and contributes to design and luxury industry publications, focusing on emerging artists and the future of consumption, connection, making and meaning. Regina holds degrees in Law from Hastings and International Relations from Stanford University.

Lori Theriault is the Marketing Director for The Village Potters Clay Center, where she is also a founding Resident Potter and Mentor. As Marketing Director, she draws on past experiences in event management, stage production management, and her own entrepreneurial endeavors to leverage online marketing and social media to extend the brand of The Village Potters Clay Center.  The Village Potters Clay Center comprise an intentional Collective of potters who share a commitment to inspire a passion for ceramic art and nurture creative exploration through education, experience, relationships, and community. The Village Potters includes three showrooms, a Teaching Center offering ongoing classes in wheel and hand building for adults, an Advanced Ceramic Studies Program, and scheduled demonstration and hands-on workshops. The Village Potters Clay Center is an educational member of The Craft Guild of the Southern Highlands, and is an official distributor for Laguna Clays.

Berry Bate is not your typical artist. Her 45-year career has taken her from classical music halls to the feet of the Statue of Liberty, from teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Wyoming, to hanging off the face of Chimney Rock. She graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina with a Bachelor of Music degree in voice in 1975. It was during those college years that she found her true calling by working with metal. She attended graduate school at Western Carolina University majoring in sculpture. She also attended John Campbell Folk School and learned the art of blacksmithing.

Berry started her first business, “Fire Form” in 1979 in a chicken coop in Waynesville, North Carolina. In 1980 she moved to Asheville and founded Asheville Ironworks, Inc. One of her first challenges was the fabrication of the primary fence atop the pinnacle of Chimney Rock State Park, where she and her crew had to rappel off the edge of the rock in order to do the installation. For two decades she worked at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville creating various architectural pieces, including a main gate, garden wall railings, and numerous chandeliers. In 1986 she was a consultant for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. She’s built work for the Omni Grove Park Inn and Billy Graham’s “The Cove”.

In 1995 Berry sold Asheville Ironworks, Inc. and then founded Sculpture by Berry Bate where she and her talented assistants still create beautiful artistic architectural ironwork and sculptures in iron, bronze and copper.

Ashleigh Hardes is the Marketing Director, business manager and a founding member of Lexington Glassworks with 10 years of small business marketing experience. She wears many hats at Lexington Glassworks including managing the studio’s digital marketing strategies, branding, media relations, PR and B2B development. Ashleigh is an active member in both the arts and business community of Asheville. She is a current board member of the Asheville Downtown Association, serves on the Downtown Asheville Arts District leadership committee, was the 2018 Summer of Glass marketing chair and the former South Slope Neighborhood Association President helping to spearhead the SSN Mural Project. Originally from Ithaca, New York, she lives on a mini-farm with her husband, daughter and two dogs outside of Weaverville.