Buttons

The Button Board

A slow stitch....

Fabrics and small projects add to a main fabric base. I use my buttons as the feature .

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How do I begin to articulate the relationship of me the designer to supplier of my creations.?

Retail : direct to the customer by website, own store or booth at a fair etc.

Wholesale: selling at a reduced price to shops for a customer retail experience.

Designers : other design businesses which seek permission to use my designed & painted products within their design work to enhance their final pattern product.

Distributers : Businesses who buy the product at a discounted wholesale price to be able to on sell to shops.

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From me the designer :

I love the connection of making my designs directly available to my customer base.

Packaging plays a part and wrapping a box with space to fit surprises and twine and bows and stamp tissue some days.....is so satisfying. Answering an email....   

When I sell to another designer 

When I pass on the button I design to others to create another design and on sell.

  I become a commodity... the supplier of unique designs and hand painted buttons 

I lose the connection to why I design in many ways.

Also the pathway changes as another designer imprints on to the product and takes it along with their ideas ...

I now become a stockist and painter of the product needed to complete another's design.

It switches very quickly from creator to supplier of a commodity to travel with another's label.

My work volume and stock holding volumes can change fast from being the latest to not needed much but the flow through is basically an unknown in a demand & supply world. 

Maybe I am left with 100 Santa paid for, that has not sold in another designer's work but I would hold the stock to be able to process the wholesale orders required for the button product and not have delays in supplying. I may over time think that Santa I designed should now be pulled from my collection. 

However that is not possible as another designer using this button has a supply of printed patterns to sell that the button is a critical piece of the pattern..

Designers are individuals who create from their soul.....and each will have a different reason for creating and risking in the market !

 

It is quite a complex journey....as all has been done with agreement.

For me as a designer I love to illustrate, and paint.

The beauty of a product does it for me...

Also the many ways one can use the creation.

When I stopped all wholesale, my body as it ages was being  worn in places by repetitive & the sedatory way I work.

I was also under enormous pressure to work long hours to satisfy the wholesale orders I was so fortunate to have Shows were having sold outs and desperate for continuing buttons stock. It was a buzz no doubt about it but in a reflective way I was out in the "back room" out of sight plying my skills. Never really engaging in the real front world created by another designer.

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I came into this industry alone...

knowing nothing 

meeting some colleagues along the way as we all moved in a similar direction.....

Risking because it was all we could do...

A $600

 1/4 page ad in a craft magazine was a huge financial risk......

Few shops were prepared to take on unknown designers and our platform was small.

No internet then !

Newsletters by post were the connection and our mail order catalogues, as well as if one was lucky to be in a magazine profile after doing a Quilt show in a major city.

Printing was costly as no home computers.

It was a different journey to now but the risks are always there.

Maybe I will tell some more soon