Week 4: Markets, Insurance, and Earrings

I always want to start these with "a weird week" or "a slow week" or "not a very productive week". In my head, I'm never as productive as I should be. And yet I have friends (mostly software devs; I used to be in that industry too) making 4-6x the money that I do who tell me they're only putting in about 50% effort most of the time.

Anyway, not much to show this week....

I spent most of the first two days putting in applications for goth and alt markets around the area. I'm based in Manchester, and I recently sold my car, so there's a limit to how far I can travel for these things right now. I'm looking at markets in Leeds, and Liverpool. Places I can travel to by public transport in 90 minutes or less.

I discovered that many markets require me to have Public Liability Insurance, and ended up spending an entire afternoon trying to get that sorted out. Most brokers have an application form that's several pages long, and I answered fully and honestly about my business. And I kept failing to get any results. I ended up on the phone to one broker, who went through the whole form with me a third time, but was still unable to offer insurance. They recommended another broker, who revealed that I'd been Too Honest in filling out my application.

Yes, more than 50% of my custom goes to America. Yes, I sell items of an individual value higher than £2500. But neither of these things are relevant for markets, where I'll be selling to Mancunians and Other Northeners, most of whom will be spending £10-50.

Eventually, having filled out about half of the form properly, the guy came back with an offer of £250 for a year's cover, which all had to be paid up front. Not a comfortable amount of money for me at the moment.

Luckily, while I was on hold waiting for the guy to set up payment, I was messaging some friends in a crafter's discord group, and one of them recommended joining an artist's union. It's possible to join a group called Axis for £24/year, and they give free Public Liability Insurance for events, including markets and fairs. That discord server has been pretty dead for the last couple of years, but all the people I used to chat to still keep an eye on it, and still have valuable advice to offer when I need it.

So, in the end I applied for four different Alt Markets, and three Tattoo Conventions. Dates vary from mid-March to end of June. Wish me luck!

I spent Wednesday sketching up designs for earrings to make on the laser cutter.

 And Thursday and Friday I spent refining a couple of those designs, converting them to vectors, and modelling the resulting earrings while my girlfriend took photos.

I've made some progress on a third design, but it's not ready for the laser cutter just yet. And I did a little bit more video/editing work.

So, certainly not a very profitable week, but hopefully laying good foundations for future profits - it's good to have a bunch of smaller, more affordable items with higher profit margins to support the more elaborate builds. And the money I've saved on insurance will cover the cost of table fair for 3-4 markets!