the people in these episodes were nice enough to speak with me and I wanted to
return that favor so I'm going to announce some of the events they have
coming up here in Madison first one is the Valentine's market and pub crawl
it's on Saturday February 10th from noon to 5:00 p.m. the event says that you can
shop over 40 vendors with a drink in your hand that's happening at the Beau's
meatery at 849 East Washington Avenue and on March 2nd and March 3rd booth 121
will be participating in the vintage shop hop they're expecting to showcase
over 400 plus vintage shops and boutiques in Northern Illinois and
southern Wisconsin you can go to vintage shop hop blogspot.com to learn more if
there's an event that you would like mentioned on the next show you can
message me on facebook and american bandido or send an email to tom at
american Bandito dot com. now here's the show I'm Tom Ray and this is American
Bandito. Each week this season I'm talking to ten medicine businesses now
these businesses include the Yellow Rose gallery, the stone fence, anthology, one
OneThousand, Booth 121, hatch art house, confectionique, mother fool's coffeehouse,
bohemian bauble and pieces unimagined, and how they took their own creative
ventures and turned that into what they do today we learned last time about the
terrifying chance they all took when they decided to say you know what I'm
just gonna open my own place but why a place I make websites every day and I
know for me it's easy to just create a store online in no time I can even
promote it and sell things without ever leaving my house in most cases there's
even little to no overhead if you're an artist so the question I wanted to ask
everybody this week is what made you decide to open a physical place rather
than an online business
so as an artist or creator if I ask you this question what would your answer be
maybe you think that you're not computer savvy well you're not alone in that MIA
from stone fence feels the same way I am not computer savvy that's one thing and
this is I feel like I have more control over this versus an online somebody
comes in off the street they make a purchase you have this great warm fuzzy
experience online it's like oh my god I'm gonna get that to the post office I
gotta do this I got it I mean that's kind of a type of pain do you think
there's a difference between being able to walk up and see it as opposed to
absolutely okay yeah I mean I think we've all bought things online you get
it at home and you're like oh that's not that's not what I thought it was gonna
be like the order by mail type of stuff yeah yeah sea-monkeys for instance yes
in particularly if it's anything locally made you want to pick it up and see it
and feel it how did you find the money to do it I took out a loan was it that's
it I had I had decent credit and I took out alone Wow okay it seems so simple
yes how long did it take you to get it into shape for yourself I mean I know
you have your husband helps you a lot of it he did do a ton of it I would freak
out while he was here getting things done so I didn't take it took us about
maybe two weeks man did you just ask for a loan it took you weeks how do you make
the most of using this neighborhood I mean it's a great neighborhood to be in
this is this is my neighborhood I mean I grew up on the east side so it just felt
like home here and the people that come in you know they're the parents of your
kid goes to school within their teachers and I mean they're people that you see
every day it's very community oriented
when my wife and I were talking to Laura from Anthology she talks about a
disconnect from looking at a picture to seeing things up close coincidentally
you'll hear somebody going through the buttons on the table we were sitting at
during this question so that kind of proves her point I would say also
getting people to really look at things and say oh somebody made that yeah or to
think about oh maybe I can make something you know and so to me it's
like the essence of it requires a brick and mortar I get that it's hard but
there's no place I would rather be I think of it as like an intertidal zone
so you have fresh water and salt water and you have beach and land meeting each
other and you have people from everywhere in the world and they're all
coming and they're mixing here and you know there's a lot of times people come
to Madison and this is the only piece of Madison that they see you know there's
like there's a lot of hustle involved in being in this location but my old boss
used to always say it pays for itself yeah you know it's not cheap but if I
was somewhere else you'd have to pay more in advertising I think especially
for our store I really wanted to encourage people to think about what
they can do creatively and just kind of invite people to think about making
something you know doing something with their hands and I think there's so many
people for who that is so far away their life is so cut off from that that they
may walk in here and they're like oh I'm not a creative person and they're like
immediately shutting themselves down and I mean I work to try to like just tempt
them a little bit like it's really gentle but you know like just try it but
all of those people would never make the effort to get in their car and drive to
this store because they would have already dismissed us mm-hmm
you know they would say that's not for me and so instead we just basically like
lie on the sidewalk here on State Street and they triple for us and
in the store what made you decide to open up not even just more than a few
stories down from your previous vassal to me my vision was so much about the
creative element which had been so missing from there that it didn't seem
to me that it was going to be a problem and I think ultimately my boss my old
boss agreed and so we basically like called all of our friends you know there
are some dressers that came from their attics and the garages and just scrounge
together at the furniture and we started out initially a lot of consignment
artists and then our own things there was quite a lot of just getting products
from artists and making it ourselves what do you mean your own things what
what type of things that we have prints and onesies we make the buttons here
there is probably like 30% of what's in the store is designed or made by my
sister area for myself really so it was always about inspiring customers to be
creative but also providing a venue for our own creative work and then although
you can't really tell it this table here is where we have craft parties and
different craft projects and so it was also about creating a space for people
to come and either be creative here or to take things home and be creative how
often do you do that not as often as we fought and then we ended up the buttons
that political buttons kind of just exploded on us so they become Sarah from
1/1000 does do online sales as well as opening a studio that people could use
she told me about how she struggled with the idea to open a space and how she
learned something from her involvement with pop-ups that motivated her way of
thinking she also tells me about how she used an interesting social funding
company called Kiva well we do sell online as well but that's been like a
big thing that I've wrestled with because there's so much you can there's
so many different ways I could take this business and a lot of it could just be
pop-ups in an online but what I've found is like the heart of this whole business
model is really the membership base and the
and people there's something to having a brick-and-mortar that people can drop
into that really solidifies that community a lot of our members might be
all over the Midwest having like this home base where we can it just makes it
more real I think for some people and more official and then like the energy
that happens when people are working in here in a regular basis but I still
think that it's not one without the other anymore
this business is actually going to thrive financially speaking more so from
our online activities than it will from anything that's happening in the space
we sell creative supplies online and right now I'm in the midst of really
ramping those up so this is kind of a fun thing that actually happened is when
we were starting with our pop-up events one of the programs that we started with
was our creative workshops and so creative workshops to me are a fantastic
way for our professional makers to share their skills build a community around
what they're doing build an awareness about the beauty of handcrafted the
empowerment of handcrafted and also helping people understand why things
cost how they're made and why things cost what they cost so we did those
creative workshops and as we were developing them we needed to source
creative tools and supplies and one of the classes is beginner tapestry weaving
so we needed to find looms and tools and the source that I had is from a maker in
New Mexico I was commenting one day on how it would be nice if these tools are
a little bit different and one of our members is a product
engineer and he's like well how do you think they could be different like well
they just don't hold the yarn very well and then our instructor Melissa was
giving her feedback and how she'd want them different and so we developed our
own tools and now John from human crafts it makes all these proprietary tools for
us that now we sell online right now I'm working on scaling those we're working
on really making that a strong revenue stream and bringing those on Amazon
that's what I mean like I think that that helps us reach a broader community
less service based revenue stream whereas everything else takes so much
manpower and he and this allows us to like bring revenue
online to and he he devotes those himself for I'm sorry produces I mean
Salim it's a really by hand we might get them what does they call that like I
don't know all the engineering I don't just beautiful because I don't need to
he does right but there's like injection molding might be something that will do
in the future if we get in higher quantities but how do you know the
supply and demand and although most so our membership base eighty percent our
product makers so that's a common issue for a lot of them it's be like getting
to the point where how do you actually like run a business and make the product
is part of it and then when you get to a point where you actually want to make a
really sustainable income how you scale and what does that mean like how much
can you actually produce or do other people need to start producing it for
you and then how does that supply chain where it's the whole whole different
growth pattern yes
so Kevin zip if you've not heard of it as fantastic and highly recommend it it
was a very good experience so I secured $10,000 through Kiva zip and Kiva zip is
a crowd lending platform your credibility comes through your social
capital so if you have a strong Instagram account strong Facebook
account that gives you some leverage with them and you actually have to have
a business plan but the business plan can be all different types like you
needing a piece of equipment or you didn't want to start a whole business
from scratch but basically you showed them that and with a simple application
you get approved and then they tell you that you need to get 20 or 30 people
from your own network to be your first lenders and they have to lend $25 once
you get that they're like okay people believe in you we're gonna believe in
you and open it up to our community and they open it up to their community
worldwide to crowd lend the rest of it and it's zero percent interest which is
amazing that is amazing so Kiva zip I think for like any entrepreneur or a
creative person or small business person it's really good to look into okay
than the rest of it I got through Wisconsin women's business investment
corporation they support women and minority-owned businesses they helped me
secure part of that money came through a city grant or a City loan I should say
at 5% and then they give you the rest and you also get a consultant with that
well so I think there are another really great resource because they really want
you to succeed whereas a lot of lenders where she's like here's the money you
better figure it out it's funny you hear so many companies explain that's how
they got started there was something they were doing and the tools they
needed just weren't right so they made their own and her networking from
pop-ups helped find those people and of course we can't mention pop-ups without
talking to Tammy from Bohemian bauble this question was a strange one to ask
her because she started with a brick and mortar store and then closed it but she
still doesn't really sell online which of course fascinates me I don't do
online right now and the biggest reason I don't is because most of my items are
one-of-a-kind and that's the way I like to work the idea of having to crank out
20 pair of the same earring kind of makes my skin crawl okay well but I'm
gonna have to start doing that because I do need to get online and and doing the
one a kind thing online is gonna be way too time-consuming and there's gonna be
too many issues with that so I'm gonna have to change the way I work what would
you decide to do pop-ups I think the very first one I did was on the tip top
patio in case you came to one of those shows I was there for lunch one day and
I went oh my god this would be a great space to have a little show that was it
that was it have you've heard of pop-ups before no they were just kind of
starting to happen I would say they were just starting to come pop-up was just
starting to become a thing when I started with the with the tip top shell
did you do any research or did you go I'm just gonna show up here one day you
guys cool with that yeah I just went in it was like hey what do you think about
having some artists set up on your patio like on a Sunday for six hours or
whatever we'll bring a bunch of people your bar bill will go up that day your
food bill will go up and we'll sell our stuff yeah and they were like absolutely
let's do it no cut no nothing no but not everybody does that they're generous
that way some places some establishments do take
a cut okay which is understandable I mean you've never seen their space and
all that good stuff grace how did you find the other people
to actually know so many people like most of my friends are artists so good
when I had my shop my world of friends opened up so huge because I met so many
amazing people that started out as maybe just a customer became a friend or
started out as an artist in my shop became a friend and from doing so many
shows I do all the street festivals in town Willie Street Fair Atwood fest la
fête I just meet I'm super friendly and I'm chatty and I like to meet the other
artists so I I know a ton of people to do shows it's easy to gather them up
what type of stuff do you need to create a pop up you're not getting a building
you're setting up in different places you have a standard set up like how do
you plan for this so the biggest thing is you need a space you got to go up
somewhere and say hey can we come in here yeah and then you gather your
people and most everybody has a certain set up that they do when they do a show
maybe it's just one six-foot table or two six-foot tables or whatever it is
everybody's usually already got their thing so you just let somebody know this
is how much space you can have at this show and then they work within that
space so you don't do like a cart thing or anything no okay which makes sense
because you're saying you don't know where you're gonna be put right
when you look for the nation's what do you look for so you you were at the tip
top and you did as you've described me that was kind of like hey what do we did
this here so how do you do that to other places you just show up at places and go
yes these people yeah really that's what I do please walk up so rockhound brewery
just opened on Park Street like two years ago so that's in my neighborhood I
I have these two other artist friends that we do lunch once a month and I was
like let's go do it at rockhound so we can scout it out and we get there and
then I'm like who's the owner Nate ain't come here I got I got a
Picchi an idea and I pitch him the idea now he hasn't done one yet he's thinking
about it okay but every time I go in I'm like hey Nate he's like I know I it's
still in my mind most places are pretty open to the idea how do you build up the
supply and demand for what you're making once you do that your supplies have been
diminished so I mean how often do you have to take breaks to make more stuff
and then do another one most of the artists that I know have a day job still
so they started just like I did so they work their day job during the week they
craft at night and then they do shows on the weekend for me I work during the
week making my things and then do the shows on the weekends do you need
anything from the places aside from not really a space like I'm in a lot of
places like I'll say I'll move all the tables so you don't have to do any of
that you know I'll make the space you just have good service for people that
want to come and drink and eat I like to do them at bars because who doesn't like
to go to a bar and have a cocktail or a bite to eat when they shop or meet a
friend or whatever so I tend to look at bars and restaurants for Pappas
I've gone to a couple of the pop ups that Tammy has been involved in and it's
quite a community of people working together for the same goal I'd never
really experienced this kind of for lack of a better way of putting it
storefront concept before you heard me mention how Anastasia lets people do
pop-ups in her parking lot when she has an event but what made her decide to
have a physical building especially since she was only going to be open a
few times a year you put so much work into being in a craft show hauling goods
setting up and waiting and waiting and waiting for people to come to your table
look at your goods perhaps buy something to at least meet the obligation that you
initially had to pay to be there it's a lot of hard work and it's going from
show to show to show often times I want to nest more and you know people come
into my shop and they'll say no wait you closed for all that time your stuff
stays here yep I nest I can't help it I guess
and then I I've had on I have at three Etsy shops that I've actually put on
hold I don't care for working with Etsy it's a lot of work I've heard that a lot
yeah they just don't make it easy I get it because I'm a web developer so for me
that all makes sense and I'm like that's not that hard but I get it for people
that don't spend every single day in front of a computer building websites
and messing with computer interfaces that walking in and seeing this is
different than seeing a picture of it or once somebody comes in and says I sort
of have this really good idea but I'm just not sure how to make it come alive
and so we consider and talk about it and we could try these things and what do
you have at home that we could put with it
you just can't have those conversations about creativity
my partner at the time and I were able to get this space at a very good price
to start and it was sitting vacant for a while and I wondered sometimes if that's
not a good way for other shopkeepers to kind of look for opportunities go look
perhaps for a space that's been sitting vacant for a while a person who owns it
would love to have somebody in there doing something with it is everything so
it started out with that and truly cobbled I mean I was bringing stuff from
home to use this displays and I was going to garage sales and secondhand
stores to see what I could fix up and bring in his displays one of the nicest
compliments I got is a woman who came back she came like the first year we
were open and she never came back until the October market she said this is a
complete transformation from where you began and I'm like thank you as that's
taken forever yeah yeah but honestly I encourage people go check out Habitat
ReStore go go check out garage sales or Craigslist and see what you can do to to
work with products that are already out there and you can dress them up and put
them in your shop and use them for a while until you can bank a little bit of
money to do something else more expansive in your shop I've just never
been about giving loans or we just sort of make it work the other thing is if
something's not going try something different if that thing that you've got
out right now no one seems to be interested in pack it away for a while
and then maybe a year to bring it back out again and see if people like it
better at that time or abandon the idea altogether I mean listen to your
customers and what they like and what they expect if I don't have a successful
market it's always a an opportunity to look at what did I change what did I do
that people didn't want me doing always have a mission statement and goals to go
back to and build some that's always
Kyle of pieces unimaginative the kind things but there's an obvious reason he
tells me that he doesn't sell online
yeah shipping has got to be a pain I mean you have a website but you don't
have an online storefront no we really don't
I mean you can buy stuff off of it but that's not our Rus it's really you got
to see it you can't tell that it weighs 450 pounds there's a lot of people
recreating industrial modern furniture and it doesn't wait anything and it's
made of a brittle cast iron on and on and on and all of our stuff is like
top-notch I just challenged people to push our tables like just try to make
the table wiggle yeah and you can't pencil you're not gonna get that online
we participate a person gallery night and then we make it a big to-do and then
we've got like three other events so when I came on the street I saw that
there was a growing number of retailers so I started a Merchants Association and
so even that's called we are Willie we coordinate our efforts right now to do
events and they are evening events and like they do free wine and beer pourings
free analogue music or live music hors d'oeuvres and it's basically just say
have fun a lot of people say they just love to just sit here that's the night
you can do that Oh what made you decide to start that organization I was
thinking I would have more time and I wanted to develop it and be like stain
streets so that's what the goal is okay and we just need other people to step up
to the plate and be able to do the things it takes to get there but we do
get this events are incredibly successful yeah well they're like 750 to
1200 people to come in between 5:00 and 9:00 but we want a map but we want a
better web presence we have a web page but it's you know that it's not great so
we have goals but it is just to tell people this is a good shopping corridor
and it's a hip shopping
previously Lia from booth 121 talked about how she used to show her stuff
right out of her storage space her business partner Rebecca tells me about
how she found the space that they would eventually open the story I was driving
down Monona Drive and I noticed too big for lease sign right there and I just
flipped aue and I was looking in the windows and I called the number we had
checked out a couple of different spots we knew we wanted to be on the east side
we looked at a place on Atwood it was too much too much we couldn't spend that
much we didn't want to take that big relief then we looked at another place
on Atwood which we were thinking of but we really wanted to have my workshop on
site so when we found this place I love monona I love this area great outlet
from the west side monona means another place at a place like this
and I have my workshop right on site so it's perfect I can be here be here
working when it was slow and then I saw Sarah come in as and Tammy from the
hatch art house never thought twice about having a store instead of selling
online never question there is just you really need to see the work and
experience it in person I mean nothing against online stores that's not what I
I don't think I would be very good at it honestly I do enjoy being in the shop
and working with customers and especially people trying to decide what
kind of art they want to have on their walls for the very first time do they
come up to you and say I'm looking for something like this yes I'm looking for
a soap dish so we're gonna wait till after this but we have also have a
purpose to be yeah we have some debris Patterson herself
I want it to be on Willy Street it reminded me a lot of of Portland and
some of my favorite neighborhoods they are very eclectic just emerging itself
of course this was seven years ago there was a lot that was changing at that time
this building that were in right now was built seven years or was finished seven
years ago so I was the very first it was a perking love wasn't it it was a
parking lot I forgot before that it was a gas station there's apartments
upstairs and then we have three shops here
yeah and that was the first one so I looked at it when I was empty and I had
to do the build-out and everything these were all new experiences for me I waited
tables and I wasn't artists I was selling my work on my own and doing that
kind of thing and I had experience in working in art galleries and things as
well so when this came on the market I came here the landlord was awesome he
was he really wanted to help out somebody like me that was just starting
out a small shop you did not want to have anybody that was like a franchisee
of some sort
so I always wanted to be called art house instead of art gallery because I
thought was more inviting this is this is a house that's filled
with art and hatch because of the hatching artists and emerging and hatch
is also a form of drawing hash marks so it was it's just it means it has a lot
of different meanings they all in one way or another pertain to art I feel
like I mean my last name is not hatch I
just wanted you to know that we did end up buying a ceramic soap dish while we
were there it was a lot easier to make a decision while we were looking at it
mother fools as a coffee house so you go there to get coffee not really a way
around that so I asked John how he dealt with that location and how the coffee
house culture has changed over the years I think the thing that for me has been
hardest to deal with though as far as change in culture his laptops when they
first came in I sincerely thought it was gonna put us out of business because one
of the things that we loved about our space is we were really different than
those downtown coffee houses we had big tables you could sprawl out you could
really bring in a group of friends and play a board game or have fun together
and the first wave of laptops we're really big they're like these coal-fired
steam engine things you know they're massive it's like being on your grater
around yeah I set up and they right this is my table so all the sudden you'd have
a three or four people in here and there's no other effective seating so
it's just really weird and people we tried things with little table tennis
and please share your table and people got really angry about that huh it was
really hard to transition and it's also it was really emotionally difficult for
for myself but also our long-term baristas when phones came in and all of
a sudden people weren't talking to you anymore I feel like that's swung back
again it's more human but for a while it's
like if you had a phone or a computer it seems like now we've got better
etiquette again but we I totally thought we're gonna go to a business when
laptops came and it was really hard so we had to one by one get rid of our big
tables you know put in smaller tables and we put inside counters where people
can sit that makes perfect sense when you say it but now coffee shops are so
connected to those particular devices like it's important to have Wi-Fi at a
coffee you know I you know do you guys get a deal for a Wi-Fi it's the same as
everybody else you have a business account okay yeah so it's different than
a residential account but well yes and that just popped into my head because
it's like free Wi-Fi at a coffee shop is pretty much a given good like you expect
it mm-hmm and so but it costs the coffee shop money it doesn't really cost us
more than what we would pay to have our own service yeah we use the Internet in
our office and Twitter we put up our soup every day on Twitter and things
kind of yes we use internet so we would still have that basic service and of
course it's also pretty self-explanatory why the Yellow Rose gallery is a
physical space it's a gallery then you go to a gallery to see people's works
but I did ask Micah how they got their location the original owner of the
gallery had a working relationship with the owner of the building that goes back
a while I guess again knowing people it's since raised about knowing people
so we have a really good deal here in that allows us to have to make use of
this the sixth floor and part of the second floor which is the main area of
the gallery he owns a lot of stuff in Madison yeah his name is Harold
forgot his last name that's a weird lesson club really it's just known that
feral imp
during these conversations I was kind of being swayed to the benefit of opening a
physical store I get that when you see pictures of things online it doesn't
overwhelm you in the same way it does when actually seeing it but I still have
to argue with the reach that one can have if you sell things online you can't
beat that either I want to thank you for listening to the show today and if you
haven't already you can subscribe to this show at American Bandido comm slash
subscribe it's also available on Apple podcasts and Google Play the music for
this episode is by rom-com let's come with two M's you can hear more at
American vendido calm slash music I'll be asking another question next week so
until then so long
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