|
Furniture Artists Report Top Sales in 2003
Full- and Part-Time Artists Still Report Few Sales Via The Internet
Furniture was the top earner in the past year, with four full-time furniture artists reporting average total sales of $239,250 per artist. The two part-time artists who reported figures for furniture did even better, reporting total sales of $2,003,000 in 2003. Both full-time and part-time furniture artists reported their largest single source for sales was in galleries with 52 percent of full-time furniture makers’ sales and 37 percent of part-time reported as coming from selling direct to galleries.
This is the fourth year that the staff of The Crafts Report has conducted an Insight Survey. The graphs on the opposite page compare sales in various media and in different crafts markets, as reported to The Crafts Report by 389 full-time and part-time artists.
Overall, the year’s figures show that, as in past years, retail shows were the greatest single source of income for most artists in 2003. As a group, the 197 full-time artists reported that 43 percent of their total sales came from retail shows, the same percentage for this group in 2002.
Full-time artists in 2003 reported that 22 percent of their total sales were at wholesale shows, down from 23 percent in 2002 and 28 percent in this category in 2001. Many more part-time artists were selling at wholesale shows in 2003 than in the past, with 16 percent of the total sales for the 191 part-time artists reported in this category, up from 5 percent in 2002 and 7 percent in 2001.
This year’s part-time artists reported fewer direct sales to galleries, with 22 percent of their total sales in that category this year, dropping from 32 percent in 2002. In 2001, part-time artists reported that only 10 percent of their total sales were direct to galleries.
Other comparisons:
• Both full- and part-time artists again reported that the smallest portion of their gross annual sales came from the Internet. However, part-time artists, as a group, reported increased total sales through the Internet to 5 percent of their total sales in 2003, compared to 2 percent in 2002 and 1 percent in 2001. Notably, several categories of part-time artists, including book and paper art, garden art, metal, wood and baskets, did not report any sales through the Internet. The 24 full-time glass artists reported the highest sales through the Internet, averaging $11,742 per artist.
• The average total sales per full-time artist in 2003 was reported as $65,904. For part-time artists, the average total sales per artist was $20,425.
• The average per full-time artist in a category ranged from the previously noted high of the furniture artists to $27,000 in the medium of toys. The lowest per capita average for part-time artists was $500 in the medium of clocks.
2004 Insight Survey Insight’s effectiveness is based on artists’ participation. Please take the time to fill out the 2004 Insight Survey by the deadline for your medium . Readers can fill out the Insight survey online HERE.
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
