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Lexington, KY - Imagine splitting your business brain in two: one part focusing on wholesale to retailers and the other on selling retail products to individuals. Artisan entrepreneurs do this all the time, especially during events such as Kentucky Crafted: The Market.
The four-day event at Lexington Center, sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, is actually two separate events. March 1-2 are “trade-only” days for retail businesses to place orders with the artists, and March 3-4 are open to the public. The market features about 250 artist businesses, 185 of whom are visual and craft artists. Artists’ sales at the market were right under a million dollars last year.
In 1982, Kentucky Crafted: The Market was the first state-sponsored wholesale and retail marketplace in the nation. It was held at the Kentucky Horse Park. After a long run in Louisville, the market has returned to the Bluegrass for its 30th anniversary at Lexington Center.
“It was really quite a coup to accomplish a move from their previous home base at the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center in Louisville,” said Becky Trimble, Lexington Center’s senior convention sales manager. “It is one of the biggest public shows we will have this year at Lexington Center, and we would be honored to host it for several years to come.”
The event will utilize around 86,000 square feet of space at Lexington Center, requiring the efforts of 115 full-time and 20 or more part-time employees two days before the show starts. The sales and marketing departments at Lexington Center have been working on operational aspects of the project since 2010.
On Thursday and Friday of the market, at least 500 retail business owners from Kentucky and a dozen other states come in to place orders with the artisans.
“They’re not buying off the floor, but placing orders for delivery throughout the year,” said Lori Meadows, executive director of the Kentucky Arts Council. “A lot of these artists may take wholesale orders at the market that will be their orders for the entire year.”
The two public days of the market are an opportunity for artists to test new products before heading off to summer craft fairs to sell their jewelry, pottery, stained glass, furniture and other types of art.
For Rachel Savané, owner of Savané Silver, the trade-only days got her business off the ground.
“A designated quantity of work to do with the promise of being paid at completion is a wonderful prospect for any entrepreneur,” she said. Savané quickly learned how to calculate prices based on materials, labor and wholesale selling.
“If it doesn’t feel good to sell it at 50 percent of retail, then you probably are underpriced,” she said.
Savané’s jewelry business began as a booth at the Kentucky Crafted event in Louisville in 1997. Six years later, she opened a gallery in Victorian Square, and in 2009, she moved to a 1,000-square-foot showroom at the corner of Broadway and Short Street in downtown Lexington, which is open seven days a week.
“Thanks to retail customers purchasing my jewelry, as well as businesses that had confidence in their ability to resell my work in their venue, I was able to grow and grow,” Savané said.
Participating artists at the market are juried members of the Kentucky Crafted program. “They have gone through a rigorous adjudication process,” Meadows said. “Their products are of a certain quality and are market ready.”
Kentucky Crafted is a marketing program for juried visual and craft artists across the state. The Kentucky Arts Council has three other standards of adjudication for performing arts, teaching artists and architectural artists.
All 50 states, plus five U.S. territories and Washington D.C., have a state arts agency. When the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965, the Kentucky Arts Commission was created. In 1981, NEA funding was frozen and the commonwealth’s commission was abolished, but it was granted a new incarnation in 1982 and a new name: the Kentucky Arts Council. The council receives funding by the NEA and Kentucky General Assembly and in turn provides operating support to 100 arts organizations across the state.
“We have some of the strongest individual artist programs among state arts agencies,” Meadows said. “We’re pretty proud of that.”
The price of general admission to Kentucky Crafted: The Market is $10. For more information, check the Kentucky Arts Council website at www.artscouncil.ky.gov.
Kathie Stamps posts grammar tips at www.facebook.com/GrammarTips.