Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#245: Kate Schroeder & Thayer Bray (Kate Schroeder Ceramics) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with Kate Schroeder and her husband Thayer Bray. Kate is the artist behind Kate Schroeder Ceramics, whose works are in collections around the globe. Before becoming a full-time artist, she spent nearly a decade as an educator, and spent several years working in non-profits. She also managed Accessible Arts, a not-for-profit arts organization which specialized in teaching art to people with disabilities. Thayer is a printmaker with experience as a shop assistant at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop, a gallery assistant at Crane Yard Clay, and teaches bookbinding, papermaking, and lithography workshops. Thayer also helps with many aspects of the ceramics business. Join us as we touch upon a wide variety of entrepreneurial activities in this interview.
Join us as we engage with Kate Schrader and Thayer Bray, who transformed Kate's love for art into a thriving enterprise, Kate Schrader Ceramics. We traverse their journey from selling directly to customers to expanding into B2B selling, and discuss how Kate's lively personality has contributed to their successful navigation through the art entrepreneurship landscape.
Learn about the challenges of selling art online, the complexities of mission-driven and product-driven businesses, and how setting up a retirement plan can ease tax burdens and aid in future planning.
Finally, Kate and Thayer share their top advice and lessons learned on making art more accessible and reaching a wider audience, and more. They emphasize the importance of starting with online selling, being unafraid to ask questions, and offering lower threshold educational experiences. Tune in and get inspired to explore your artistic passions!
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Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hello podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heiss and I'm Nick.
Nick Petrella:Petrella, kate Schrader and her husband, thayer Bray, are joining us today. Kate is the artist behind Kate Schrader's ceramics, whose works are in collections around the globe. Before becoming a full-time artist, she spent nearly a decade as an educator and spent several years working in nonprofits. She also managed Accessible Arts, a not-for-profit arts organization which specialized in teaching art to people with disabilities. Thayer is a printmaker with experience as a shop assistant at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop, a gallery assistant at Craneyard Clay, and teaches book binding, paper making and lithography workshops. Thayer also helps with many aspects of the ceramics business. The website for Kate Schrader ceramics is in the show notes so you can learn more about her art exhibitions and more. Thanks for being with us, kate and Thayer. Thank you.
Andy Heise:So, thayer, as you mentioned, you quit your mail-carrying job and started helping out with the business. What were some of the first tasks or the things that you were jumping in and helping with?
Thayer Bray:Sounds like production, but yeah, it was definitely like learn. I went back to basically kindergarten to learn how to do the Just handle clay. There's so many nuances to it, like difference between just like other hard or soft or too soft to work with. It's not just clay and it's not just cutting out shapes. Kate said like I had difficulty because I didn't, I had to mention out that like 8, 3, 8 inch slab and then there's like just that little bit of dimensionality that I can't. I was more cavalier holding an exacto cutting through paper than cutting through clay. So that was basically my first job is eat my humble pie and learn the process.
Thayer Bray:And you know my role now is technically fulfillment manager. I do most of the back office stuff. You know I build the spreadsheets which I'm embarrassed to say I very much enjoy building spreadsheets Populate them with all the orders, manage all the orders that come in, talk with customers. I like to be the first touch point with customers. Sometimes I can't, sometimes they just email Kate directly, but I usually do like to prefer to have that, just get that off her hands. Send everything out, handle everything, package everything, collaborate with Kate on a lot of.
Thayer Bray:You know she is the visual design and so much of her, if you, when you start following her Instagram, I think 40% of the reason she sells so much is that she has the excellent personality and just a joyful personality to encounter, especially on the internet. So people are like I, like her and like there's so much joy in her and so much joy in her work and it's like, yes, this, it energizes them to buy it, as well as having that aspirational I think I heard it called aspirational purchasing like they want to buy it because they want they. This is a token of what they want their world and want their space to be. But also on that, you know, I, I would, I would been getting my MBA and I would get really excited. There's some this this is another thing that Kate is amazing at is just business.
Thayer Bray:I would come home and be like, oh yeah, like she knows, you know she, she's a physical worker, so she knows you know a lot of OEM and a lot of stuff like this. I'm like, oh yeah, there's this thing I got in finance or an accounting that she'll never know anything about this and I'll present it to her. She's like, oh yeah, I've been doing that for like three years. It's cool, it has a name and I'm like, oh, like, this is awesome that you like know this intuitively and know this from you know, gained it by experience, not just you know, manifested out from nothing. But she's so smart to be able to get to that stuff that I am paying money to learn you know.
Kate Schroeder:I had to ask him today from your questions what does B2B and B2C mean? It seems that we do, but I'm like I don't know what this is, and he's like it's this. And I was like, oh okay, I got it. We do that Well that's actually yeah.
Andy Heise:Yeah, well, speaking of yeah, that's actually the next question.
Nick Petrella:So so you, you sell both B2C and B2B. So business to consumer, business to business. What did you do first and when did you realize there was an opportunity for both customer segments?
Kate Schroeder:So I I definitely started B2C and that was just, you know, going straight from street fairs, basically markets, that is, all directs to customer or consumer, whichever one that is. And then it wasn't until, well, I've done some wholesaling for certain shops that, like for those ones, like when I've had my jewelry line and stuff like that shops would come in and be like this is great, can we wholesale? And I'm like I'll let it run out. And then I did do for that line. In 2017, I went to one of the big wholesale markets down in Dallas. It's the Dallas market, I guess, yeah, and it's like the third largest wholesale market in the nation.
Kate Schroeder:I didn't know what I was doing. I was in a place that was the cash and carry, so mostly it was a lot of like big-haired ladies with like rhinestone blessed on their butts, like coming in with their husbands like Bob's Big Lumber, like just so they could buy at wholesale prices. Like that's where I was and I was like, oh, this isn't what I wanted. I didn't want to sell my work to Bob's wife for half off. I wanted to get wholesale accounts.
Kate Schroeder:So I did get like three no, seven wholesale accounts there, but it was not what I'd hoped it could be, and then after that I came back and it was really shortly after that I switched my fine art to something different and then that started to explode. So I kind of like it's like I'll just push that onto the back burner and then, with the one of the kind pieces I've never had, a whole film that it just doesn't make sense. My prices are set to what I need to make out of them and I'd have to double and then I'd have to charge for shipping, which we do through domestic shipping on the website, and if anybody's interested, I have a whole reason why we do that. On my story, highlights of like survey polls and everything with my clientele, with the collectors.
Andy Heise:That's why you do free shipping. Is that what you said? Okay?
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, and so if you go to my story highlights on Instagram, you'll see it and it's really important. But so then, with the Malm line for so long and had shops asking to wholesale and we could barely keep our head over water to make the 50 a month, so that wasn't happening. And then it was really when things were like we had a good rhythm, like we could make 50 a month no big deal. We could make 60 a month no big deal. And so I was like, okay, well, why don't we start opening it? We only have it on our own website. We don't market it a lot, but if a store contacts us, we're like here's the stuff you know. So we do have the option for wholesale.
Kate Schroeder:But I'm thinking, you know, at first I think my assistant, katie, and they were both like this is silly, why are we selling them? Like, I know we get to sell more at once, but we're already selling them full price. And then it wasn't until we had that one explosion from a wholesale shop up in the Yukon like this the shop is thousands of miles away. Somebody in the states bought it and then they posted a video and then we sold 140 of them. So that's a connection that never could have been made without that, and so we're still. We are effectively treading water right now, and I we're getting to a point that maybe we can put the them on to fair or one of the other wholesale markets, but it has not been a huge priority because the sales are coming without it.
Andy Heise:Yeah, okay. So besides the production of the production line, as well as your, your, more your fine art pieces, what administrative tasks did need to be taken care of outside of just the making of the products, and how do you handle them? Do you it sounds like they are maybe handles most of those or some of those, and do you outsource any of that to you know, experts?
Kate Schroeder:I have a CPA. He helps with taxes at tax time, but we're also I know this is a question down the line too of LLT, s Corp, blah, blah, blah. We're in the transition of. We will be applying for S Corp status soon and my assistant, katie, has been a contact worker since she started. Because she's been, you know, it all falls under the legality of being a contract worker, but I'd like for her to be a W2 employee now and so that is. That is part of that. So that's the only outsourcing we do and, starting to have a math corp in needing to do monthly books, we might have to outsource more.
Kate Schroeder:Versus my once a year tax time CPA there does the rest of almost all the back house. At this point I do do the books just because it's a. I do them once a year, like it is a sit with a mountain of receipts and fill up the books and he's like I don't know he's looked at me doing it a few times like I can do it and I'm like I feel like this is just a thing I have to do, like this isn't a thing that I think you can make a mistake on. You type of type of thing we could throw away a ceramic object that isn't working out, but taxes are a different beast. But hopefully we can outsource more in the future.
Kate Schroeder:He does do most of the back office stuff of even just like emails, like he said, sometimes I'll get an email from somebody and I'll just like forward it to him, like I know that there is the week we sort of talked about it earlier. Like, in some respects I feel a little guilty because a lot of my collectors follow me, like we have a Paris, paris social relationship. But sometimes I'm just like I gotta be, my hands are dirty, like I'm over here, he's on the computer, he's doing that, so you have a better chance of getting ahold of just me on Instagram, because I'm like this old person that does that.
Nick Petrella:Then the email that generally goes straight to there, yeah, okay in my unscientific sample, it seems that musicians, for instance, they want to start for profit businesses and artists have an affinity for nonprofit. Given that you manage nonprofits for several years and you run a for profit business, what do you think is the biggest difference in the way you approach both organizations?
Kate Schroeder:Well, so when I manage the nonprofit, I was a program manager, so I mostly focused on the education side and I wasn't writing grants or directing the whole organization. I will say, though, that, generally speaking, with musicians, I think the distinction there is a single person versus an organization Like we I don't know that we have time to get into this, but there is in an MBA to start this print shop, and we're still weighing the options of going nonprofit versus for profit on that, mainly because it will be an arts organization and whereas I am a single artist that's just making and selling. So it is much harder. Like as an artist, I can apply for grants and I can get funding, but it's very different, very different grants are available for single, single member, llcs or single member, so there's sole proprietors, there are for, like, full arts organizations, and I think I feel like musicians, even if you're like, going in as a band you're still not like an organization but like inside topics.
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, I was gonna say what?
Nick Petrella:yeah, go ahead, thayer. What is your gut? What do you wanna do as far?
Thayer Bray:as organization or for profit. Well, I'm looking at it by who it's directed to. So when you're talking about, like an arts organization, they are mostly serving other artists, whereas people like even Kate, and musicians, they are generally serving a consumer public. Not to say artists aren't a consumer public, but there is in my mind and of course I'm not a musician there appears to be like when a musician plays, they're not playing to other musicians necessarily, they're playing to, like a bar, with people coming in paying money to see them or at least paying money to be around people who are playing music. Whereas and same with Kate she's making work for people to buy, not necessarily for artists to consume, although artists obviously can, and most art most. I'm doing a lot of research on this right now. Most arts organizations are serving artists so that artists can do things rather than being a consumer producer.
Andy Heise:Yep, yeah, and so it comes back to that sort of mission versus product or service. Yes yes, exactly.
Kate Schroeder:Much more succinct Well one silly anecdote is when I made my very first website. I think it was like 2010, and I didn't understand the internet yet. My first website is ktradercom was taken.
Thayer Bray:The domain's cheaper when it's an order.
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, I still have it and I pay like $20 a year or something Super cheap.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So when I think about a lot of art space businesses, many of them are primarily focused on the making of product, like we've been talking about here, and so much so that it seems like it can be difficult to kind of hit the pause button and say, okay, what are we doing now? How do we begin to think about the future? What's our strategy? Moving forward, that sort of thing Is that something that you find difficult to do or is it something you're trying? You, specifically and intentionally, are carving out time to think about?
Kate Schroeder:Well, I've actually been talking about this quite a lot is that having the production line, where that is where the main source of our income comes from. And then my one of the kind work. I put that online and I'm generally able to sell that. But it is like price points are so individualized. But with my work the one of the kind work, like my mugs for the most simple version of one of my mugs is about $165, and then the most advanced versions of my mugs are like $500 to $600. But then when I start to make pieces, I've noticed that, like getting above that $500, $600 price point, it can be harder to sell or it takes a longer to sell.
Kate Schroeder:So making like lamps is something that I'm really interested in and I have made quite a few of, but some of those can be over $1,500.
Kate Schroeder:And when it's an object that somebody has not seen in real life, they're just seeing online, it's harder to pull the trigger on, say, $165 versus $1,500. So something there and I've been talking about for months, I've been talking about for my career moving forward is having the smaller objects be for online but actually maybe getting back into gallery shows and making much larger pieces that they're hopefully we can sell, and having a partnership with a gallery can help with that as well. Obviously, the cut for the artist is much smaller, but when you start making pieces that you can, you can factor in your own price what you need out of it, and then the gallery helps you sell. So I keep, I have been making, trying to make in each of my making cycles, like at least one of those, like $1,500 pieces, and I'm like, okay, that one will sit there on the website for a while and I keep thinking I'm going to build myself a show.
Kate Schroeder:They have been selling online. It just takes longer, but they are moving, and so I keep not actually building this inventory that I'd like. But I'm also a deadline based person, so I think I need to actually just get back into applying more shows to make this future idea possible.
Nick Petrella:So this next question you had already answered that you're transitioning to an S-Corp. What I was interested in, especially for the young artists here who are, you know there are many things that you know now that you didn't know before. Do you have retirement plan in place to help lessen the tax burden and prepare for the future? And if you do, what was that selection process like? And maybe Thayer, I don't know who would who looks after that?
Kate Schroeder:So I do that because he does have his own IRAs through the post office that were just set up, but he still has them. My CPA helped me decide to do what's called a SEP. You can put in more money per year. I didn't start saving for retirement until I was in my mid-30s. I wanted to be able to put in is you know, start putting more money in than probably a standard person would put, because I think a lot of IRAs cap out at like $5,000 a year.
Kate Schroeder:The biggest issue with a SEP is moving forward. I will not be able to keep it because if you have a SEP, you have to match every employee that you have. You have to match what you put in. You have to put in for them too, and I understand that we need to compensate our employees very well.
Kate Schroeder:I'm already, you know, by moving into having her as like a W-2 employee. I will be putting into her social security and for Medicaid and things like that, and I pay her a fair weight. But I can't afford to aggressively save for her retirement as well as mine, and so I will be switching over to having an IRA when I transition. But transitioning to an S-Corp will also allow me more easily to save, because having an S-Corp means that you can pay yourself payroll. Having an LLC, you cannot do that. Well, an S-Corp is a part of an LLC, but just like a, you know, yeah, I mean it's. So at this point all of our money is just, it's coming and going and there's a count here and there's a count there, and you know it's all intertwined, it is not?
Nick Petrella:coming in, you're good.
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, exactly, and I can spend it on my business stuff or my personal stuff, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be separate. But having having an S-Corp would mean that I will decide on my fair wage and that will lessen my tax burden because I won't be paying taxes income taxes on all of the business profits. I will only be paying income taxes on my own income, and so that is a big thing. Like we were just looking into it, we actually did a webinar yesterday and the savings, just in taxes alone per year that we will expect is probably going to be about $20,000 a year, which is why From an LLC.
Kate Schroeder:From an LLC to an S-Corp. Now it is the webinar that we went to. It did talk about like you need to make at least $60,000 in profits to make it worth it, Exactly yeah, which I thought was a really good number, Like my CPA has always been like it's a personal decision, and I'm like, well, this seems like a lot of savings. Like why aren't we there yet? You know, yeah, but I think that I mean we are above $60,000 a year and so it makes sense for us at this point now and then I can also, with having a paycheck is also save for retirement. With each monthly paycheck versus normally how I do it is at the end of the year, my CPA tells me a really big, scary number that I owe and he's like you can make it this much less by putting that money towards your retirement and I'm like, okay, this will help you plan, yeah.
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, yeah. So I put in sort of whatever I have like when I do taxes. I'm like this is how much money I have in my bank account. I'll keep this much to do my normal living and I'll put the rest of it into my retirement. And now I'll show you that's my. It will lessen my tax burden for that particular the year.
Andy Heise:Yeah, All right, we're going to do rapid fire Final three questions. Maybe get rapid fire responses from each of you on this one Final three questions. We ask all of our interviewees what advice would you give to others wanting to become an arts entrepreneur? I thought the cat was going to answer.
Kate Schroeder:I know I was like what's happening. I think the biggest thing is just make your work available to sell in any revenue that you can. I would honestly say try online. Go online first, then go to markets, but do not exclude the internet, because it is the biggest pool of clients that you can have.
Thayer Bray:I would say don't be afraid to ask questions, Don't be afraid to look stupid. I have made more mistakes because I thought I knew what was going on but I didn't ask when something I thought was not going to go well. And this happened in the shop where, just like you know, we could lost days of work or even you know, thousands of dollars worth of prints, because I didn't say like, hey, is that, is this really how we're supposed to do it? And it took me a long time to learn like no, just ask, it's better to, it's better to look stupid and then learn something than not ask when you actually, you know, could have learned something. And then, you know, bad things happen.
Andy Heise:Yeah, those are. Those are great answers. Just get started and ask questions.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, what can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Kate Schroeder:I think there is a big need for education and a need for a lower threshold to enter education, not just like go take a class.
Thayer Bray:But, you know, make art not scary for people. There's so many people that are just, you know, even you know my friends and family who are, you know, they're not scared of people. There's so many people that are just you know, even you know my friends and family who are, you know, supported of me, but they're like I don't, I can't even begin to understand what. You know, my best friend doesn't know anything about art and I'm just like there's going to be an art that you're going to find that just talks to you and it doesn't matter what, the, what hippie-dippy content or like deep, like you know, 80,000 pages of French theory, is going to inform that it's going to talk to you. It's going to talk to you because it's that. And you know, I took him to a gallery show and he was like huffing and puffing, like oh, dude, stupid.
Thayer Bray:I respect you, but the stupid. And then there were, there were just photo, realistic, gorgeous paintings of lizards and you know turtles and stuff, and he was just like he didn't understand that he was there for two hours looking at this stuff. Because it just spoke to him in a way like that's it, that's art and that's. You know, there's no, there's no amount of extra education you need. But I think it should be that kind of education where it's just issuing at the beginning all the content and theory and just like looking at stuff and being like teaching people. It's okay to look at stuff and okay to think about stuff.
Kate Schroeder:Yeah, Okay, yeah, I think all of that.
Kate Schroeder:I also think that more more, just like experiences are great versus like having to go in and take a lot of our earlier, earliest education and art is like starting with like taking art class and then, like in high school, you have to take a whole class, like that is still like a large undertaking. You know it takes up a whole semester or a whole year. So just having those like you know, a date night experience or a four week style class that you can do, type things, I think is not really valid for the community. Not only just like teaching them that they like art, but also having a deeper appreciation for what it takes to make. I have a few friends that have done some of those like date night pottery classes where they sat down for two hours and trying to throw pots, and then they contacted me and they were like well, your job is way harder than I thought it was, and I think that just that like that gives so much more of an appreciation for the arts of having tried it yourself.
Andy Heise:Last question what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial business advice you've ever been given? So both of you at once now.
Kate Schroeder:Mine. I think I'll go back to this. And then one is I think I've said this on almost every podcast that I've done and it is something that I've heard on a podcast, but there's a comedian and podcaster named Karen kill garif that talks about, like, local jokes, get local work, and I've been doing local shows. I noticed that the people selling the best for the people that would just slap Kansas City on something and it's like okay, that is great for this very, very small market, but that's not what I want to do. I want to be a bigger global market and so now I want my work and this.
Kate Schroeder:This also translates into like, where my work was really trauma based. I think that in art school, that is thought of as being the more serious work of like oh well, serious subjects and serious artwork, and now I just want my work to be joy, like. That is something that we can all understand and all want, whereas trauma work is important and I am so glad that I did it, but people don't want to sit for two hours in that, you know, whereas you might want to sit for two hours in a very joyful, kind of universally human experience. That's great.
Thayer Bray:I think mine is more don't be afraid A lot of the things that stop me from making work and people.
Thayer Bray:You know, when I hear people like have blocks, it's more about like you know there's some sort of anxiety or fear about it and that's not just making the work but it's also like networking.
Thayer Bray:And Kate and I both have this problem where we love to make the work but once we have to step outside the you know the studio and you know talk to people and you know, you know shake hands and kiss babies and all this other stuff, it's just like this no, oh, I could go to first Friday or I could still make work, but you need to do both. And whether that, like helping to fight that anxiety and fear, is going to a therapist, just going out and doing it, having friends I have several extrovert friends that I'm very grateful for because they really help me to. You know they'll grab me and shove me in somebody's face and be like this person is cool, you need to talk to them. And then you know, once you actually talk to people, it's fine. It's just the leading up to it and the anticipation is nerve wracking. So, less fear, more just getting out and doing it. Stop trying to think about it, just do it.
Nick Petrella:That's great. It's a great way to end. Thank you both so much for being on the podcast. It's great to hear how you incorporate your varied background and experiences into growing your business Well thank you so much for having us.
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