Susan Sogaro of Trumbull, Texas writes:
I am an Italian Diorama artist, and my hand-made, three-dimensional Nativities include town scenes which have homesteads, vendors, shops and market scenes. Our art and gift shop caters to Italian art lovers in the U.S. Crafts range from the Diroamas to small travertine coasters and ceremic boxes and tiles.
I can’t find anyone in the Houston area doing the same work and would really like to get the word out there about my artwork, with very limited resources. We invested all our savings in setting up the company. Do your Hounds have any suggestions on how to promote the artwork and our online store? You can find us at http://www.shsartandgift.com, http://www.youtube.com/susansogaro and http://www.susansogaro.blogspot.com/
Susan – The first thing I have to say is that you need to get your visuals right up front on the website. Don’t make visitors search for them!
A natural market niche for you would be folks who’ve traveled to Italy or want to. Make contact with travel agencies and also with language schools in the area. Offer to make a presentation to them (maybe in Italian for the language classes…in English for everybody else). Use your art to remind them of good memories of Italy.
It took three clicks to see any of your work. And, when I finally got to a picture, it was not of high quality. If you want to sell great artwork, you have to make sure it looks great. You need closeups to see the 3-D details.
Susan,
For an artist, I think that your website could use a little of your artistic input.
There isn’t one of your items on the home page. I had to look through your tabs to find your work.
Have you thought of contacting any travel agencies that specialize in Italian travel? They may have a client list that is particularly interested in this form of art.
You could also set up a Facebook page, with an added product page that would then create a fan-base for your work.
Susan, I’m very near you in Tomball(I was looking up
Trumbull:)
There is a huge Christian community in Houston, which
is just one niche I know. The Italian Festival is in October I think, and there are tons of church
and secular festivals in the fall. The paper publishes a whole section in September, you can plan for next year.
There are also many speciality shops such as in the Galleria, Highland Village and the Village.
I’ll be sending your website to anyone I can think of.
Have you considered donating a piece to a non-profit for a fundraiser? It could be a door prize or an item for a silent auction. Donors are listed in the program and are often mentioned in press write-ups of the fundraiser. You could get some free publicity from your support of a worthy cause.
Susan, your work is beautiful and unusual. Please, immediately, get visuals on the home page! Maybe a moving stream of photos. Look at other artisans’ websites and see how they display their art on their home pages.
Order of the Son’s of Italy,
Dante, and
there are other talian organizations would be a great place for you to visit. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS239US239&q=Italian%2dAmerican+Organization
Usually there are Festa’s in different cities ( a weekend) and that would be a good place to donate to the “main” raffle — this way your stuff would be on the table all 3 days without cost to you. I would make sure that plenty of business cards and pictures are there, too, for the taking.
How about going to resturants and giving them your work as decorations — “on loan” and by each item placed on shelves on their wall, you put your business cards? You could do that for a few Italian busineses — you know, the ones you find in your local OSIA newsletter. But I’d go to a few meetings and get to know folks first; w/o mentioning this suggestion. The businesses you want to display your talents in are those whose clients are your niche (and can pay you the most amount of money, in the least amount of time, and really value what you offer)
Please change your website. Remove the black backround and harsh red/green. There are so many ways to do a well done Italian colored website without hurting people’s eyes. (It was hard to stay on your sites and read stuff)
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