Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#308: Gina DeSantis (Ceramic Artist) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with Gina DeSantis. She’s the lead creator behind Gina DeSantis Ceramics—the company she founded in 2013.
She began her ceramic studies at her local community college and by 2006 earned her MFA from Kent State University. Her works are in 400 retailers throughout the US such as Uncommon Goods, Anthropologie, and McGee & Co.
Gina is the embodiment of persistence and lifelong learning, so if you or someone you know needs inspiration to power through a tough time, make sure they hear this interview! https://www.ginadesantisceramics.com/
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:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heiss and.
Nick Petrella:I'm Nick Petrella. Gina DeSantis is with us today. She's the lead creator behind Gina DeSantis Ceramics, the company she founded in 2013. She began her ceramic studies at her local community college and by 2006, earned her MFA from Kent State University. Her works are in 400 retailers throughout the US, such as Uncommon Goods, Anthropologie and Magee Company. We'll have Gina's website in the show notes so you can read more about her and shop from her beautiful inventory of ceramic pieces. It's great to have you on the podcast, Gina.
Gina DeSantis:Thank you for having me.
Andy Heise:You said a bulk of your sales are through through wholesale. What do? What should an artist know if they want to get started in wholesale?
Gina DeSantis:so the thing with wholesale is it's a long game. First of all, payment. Most wholesale accounts are net 30, which means you get paid 30 days after product is received. If you work with a larger company they might say it's net 60 or net 90, and you have no control over that. So you have to plan. So you could be sending $3,000 order out and not seeing that money for two months.
Nick Petrella:Right, so they set your terms.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, If it's the larger the company that the terms are set by them.
Andy Heise:And so you're, you're fronting the production costs for that upfront, and then maybe up to 90 days later you might see payment.
Gina DeSantis:Or you should see payment. Yeah, fingers crossed, yeah. And so with Uncommon Goods, because my items are personalized, we do drop ship.
Andy Heise:Okay, so just to elaborate on that, that means they place the order through Uncommon Goods and then the order comes to you and then you make it and you ship it directly to the customer.
Gina DeSantis:Correct. We have a login, a console, where we are able to obtain the orders, obtain shipping labels. So you know everything is we just print and make and we are of course, you know shipping of our packing costs are part of our product costs. So when I do work with them I do what's called net 10, 2%, so I get paid within 10 days but they subtract 2% from that so I can get paid in less than 30 days.
Gina DeSantis:Fair, which is the website I use for most of my wholesale, which is I like it. You know artists complain about the fees that they take, but I also never have to chase down anyone for payment because fair pays me. So fair is paying me within 30 days, but the customer doesn't have to pay fair until 60 days. So it's nice and that's how some people also plan their ordering. They might order in December knowing I'm going to get it in January and they can't afford to pay for it till March anyway. So they, they kind of know how to do that. I have local wholesale accounts that will pay me up front before they even get the order. It's just, you know, it's who you work with and if they know how you work Some people, you know it depends on their payment cycles too.
Gina DeSantis:They might be doing payroll every two weeks and paying you, so if you might hit them with the invoice the day before you luck out and you get paid, so that's one big thing. Wholesale is a lot of shipping. Wholesale is a lot of building relationships and starting slow. So a customer that orders a $200 order might be a customer that orders $200 four times a year. Their sales, they might go wow, this is really selling, and all of a sudden they're spending $3,000 a year on your website. A lot of stores want exclusivity, which is challenging because of my presence on larger sites. So they'll say, you know, hey, this person is down the street from us and I'll say, okay, well, you know, they're carrying ornaments, you're carrying all my dinnerware, so you have two totally different items. But I understand it. But because you can find my stuff on my website, because you can find it on anthropology, and shopping it's tricky to offer that exclusivity because it's omnipresent on the website.
Andy Heise:Yeah, and go ahead, nick.
Nick Petrella:I was going to say does Fair charge more of a?
Gina DeSantis:percentage, since they're holding the risk. They're paying you for this. They take a small fee and if you bring them customers you don't get a fee to subtract it. So I have customers that I brought to them and they broke the bet. So but if you do a wholesale show, you know I live in cleveland, I'm either flying to mark one of the carolinas, texas vegas, I'm shipping crate, I am setting up, you know I'm a catalog. So a wholesale show can run you $10,000. So for what I can make on fair to cost me the same amount, I've never made that much at a wholesale show. Short term, the most the best shows I've had wholesale have been digital because of the customers that found me and realizing now that I'm doing a New York show and all my customers are in California, they're not flying to New York, right, you know. And sometimes too, the other thing the wholesale customer is. You know they have name tags but they walk in your booth and they have their name tag flipped.
Nick Petrella:Yeah.
Gina DeSantis:So I've had incidents where someone's like hey, there's a wind chime at target that kind of looks like yours. And I'm like it's a wind chime, what can I do, you know? I mean, I didn't invent wind chimes and I I looked and it was like my color palette, but it looked like another artist called pigeon toe and I'm like what can you do? Like it's yeah, it's too ambiguous of a thing where you're like maybe target saw this at new york.
Gina DeSantis:Now, maybe they didn't, maybe it's just you know, it's a wind chime, so you have to um, you have to be prepared for certain things like that, and I think a lot more magazines used to go to wholesale shows and that's not necessarily how I find press now, so that's changed too. It's an expensive endeavor and I think with digital media, I think that's shifting.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so start slow, be ready for all the shipping and logistics aspects of it, and then I think the other thing I hear you saying is look into attending these wholesale shows, either digital or in person.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, I think so. I think it's good to try one. Some artists do really well at them. Yeah, I've yet to find a wholesale show. That, I think, is the perfect fit for what I do. I think, yeah, and you know, if you're working with someone who's not seen your work in person, you're likely to send them samples, that sort of thing. So that helps. But the more accounts you have, it's kind of like you know, when you invest money, it kind of snowballs, it's like a. It's kind of like you know, when you invest money, it kind of snowballs. It's like that with artists, a store can go on anthropology, find my work online and be like, ooh, I want to carry her work and realize I'm unfair. So it's a certain level of brand recognition and also integrity that they know that you're a legitimate business. Wholesale shows if you just do one wholesale show, they're kind of like who is this person?
Gina DeSantis:They want to see you all the time and know you're legit, and that's a lot of money and time, so you have to kind of also, too, you don't like. What kind of production do you do Like? It's a lot easier for a mold maker to maybe do a show like that.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, yeah, well, and you're right, that's 100% a branding function. I mean because the sales could pick up and it gives them peace of mind. And then so when I was working in the music products industry at a company I used when I started out, I was doing 12 of those a year and then I think it whittled down to about six. But the cost of paying one shipping, one union member to get it to the door, the other union crew to move it to your booth, all that stuff adds up and I have to imagine it's at least $10,000 if you're shipping. Yeah, when you hotels staff.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, like the one thing that helped me in New York is I have a place to stay, so that was like a catalyst for being able to do that show. Shipping a crate, you know, back and forth is probably going to cost you $1,500 there and back If it's a like unions. So if you have to hang shelves someplace won't let you use a drill so you have to pay a union worker to do that. And the last show I did I had to show the union worker how to hang an anchor for my wall stuff. So you know you have like all that kind of stuff and then other shows they don't have union people so you can get in there and you can do what you need to. And that's where my visual merchandising background pays off.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah. And so you have clients through fair, you have clients that you kind of manage on your own through the wholesale, is that right? So it just depends on who the client is. And I've always kind of wondered that about fair is like how do you maintain, how does fair maintain that customer? Because I'm just imagining you make the connection with a retailer and then you're like we could cut out this middleman here, right, that seems pretty simple.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, I've had some customers leave fair for that reason. They, just as handmade artists themselves, don't feel comfortable with that cut and they've just left fair completely in order for me. I have other people that love it because fair offers them incentives.
Andy Heise:Okay.
Gina DeSantis:So there's, you know it might be a free shipping incentive on fairs part Twice a year. They do like a wholesale show online where they match your discount up to 5%. So if I offer 5% off, I'll offer 10, I think it's 10% total so, and it's a lot easier to keep track of.
Andy Heise:Right, they've got the system set up for you Like everything's right there. Yeah.
Gina DeSantis:So, yeah, it does save me a lot of work and that's what I think those fees go into. It's easier to have to manage, but you know it's not without its hangups and you do get customers who you know. There's a lot of stuff on fair right now. It's not handmade and that's a big issue. It's like you know, I'm competing with someone who's buying stuff off Timu and they're selling it and of course, you're going to get it immediately because they have it in stock. You're're gonna have you want to buy from me.
Gina DeSantis:You're probably going to have to wait a few weeks, yeah, so you have to promise, you have to be. You know I'm promising. It's worth the wait for my artwork, but it's a different kind of market for handmade versus that, and that's what that's. What I don't like about fair or these other sites is letting these third parties in that are just, you know, resellinglling and white things. And for people who don't know, white labeling means they go online, they buy things, and I've had this happen on fair. It's actually illegal on fair, but people want me to send them my work without my logo on it, so they rebranded under their brand.
Andy Heise:Yeah, Gina. One more quick thing about wholesale what is a line sheet?
Gina DeSantis:A line sheet is how you present your products to a customer, so it's not a catalog in the sense it's not bound, because what happens is a wholesale customer like, let's say we'll use anthropology as an example they're building out their brand collection for spring 2025. They're building out their brand collection for spring 2025. It's not just your brand. So they're going to have a lot of products. They're pulling together to create the vision for the store and a line sheet is going to be photos of your products with the prices, and some people call them tear sheets as well, but they're not bound, so that way they can start putting together sheets of products and seeing what fits together to build their collection. So it's.
Gina DeSantis:I use Canva, which I think is a really cool resource for artists because it has everything for social media catalogs. I'm using it right now to format a cookbook so you can get all kinds of graphic design things that I don't have a budget for and it's also tricky to sometimes to communicate. You know, if I have a wholesale catalog catalog, I'm updating it twice a year. It doesn't mean I'm redoing it completely. It might mean I'm pulling five products, adding 10. I can quick go in there and do that on cam, yeah, and that way. Um, the other thing I like about canva is you can print and you can also send digital links, and then you can also send a downloaded pdf. So there's a lot of ways to view the line sheets that they can print up on their own at their office and, you know, start matching them with their, their kind of vision, for whatever their next collection is going to be.
Nick Petrella:so because it's all unique, do you surely? You have skews, do you have barcodes? And so you don't have weights and specs? Right, because you couldn't.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, so I don't really with my business the way it is now. I don't need like the PC codes, but I did spend some time. I will tell you this story. It's a good story for't get all these meet an account and get hired I this year which I should be online with Macy's right now and I am not and that would have been a huge game changer for my business. But unfortunately, this handmade online thing they were doing just fizzled and the person who was running it quit. No one emailed us to tell us. So I spent $2,500 and countless hours uploading most of my products into UPC codes. So I have them if anyone wants me to send them UPC code. But yeah, that was a lot of time and money lost on something that didn't work out. So I mean $2,500 plus, I already know how many hours I spent. My staff watched me sitting there trying to do the spreadsheet and you had to input every item individually and the weight and it was just a nightmare.
Nick Petrella:Why can't that just? I don't know, but I just can't use it for anything, but why can't you use that with the other retailers?
Gina DeSantis:They don't really demand it because they do their own barcodes.
Nick Petrella:They do okay, so the wholesale.
Gina DeSantis:People are going to put their own barcode for their own system on there even the photos, the weights and things like that yeah, they. They just kind of do their own thing okay, that's good for you? Yeah, it's good for me, but it's, you know, um, right now I have a bunch of barcodes that are sitting around. If I had a retail like storefront, yeah, I don't it's fun because this is.
Nick Petrella:it is totally different than the industry I was in. We had to do that ourselves Upfront yeah Companies yeah, totally, totally different and time consuming.
Announcer:Yeah.
Andy Heise:So it sounds like kind of going back to one of my earlier questions if somebody's going to get into wholesale, they probably need to know line sheets or tear sheets and have those ready to go as well for their pieces.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, so you yeah, I mean, I think a lot of running a business right now is you are really in charge of your own marketing. You know, you have to learn to take photos, learn to edit, learn to be a graphic designer. You know, again, there's so many costs that I could not incur right now and be open, it's just unrealistic. I'd love to have a graphic designer on my team. I would love to have a social media manager. That's just not in the budget right now.
Nick Petrella:You had talked about a variety of different things and the stuff that you've learned. And, andy, you just brought up a bunch with the line sheets and things like that. I'm wondering having shipped internationally, it's quite a bit different than shipping domestically. And since you have retailers international retailers do you handle all the custom forms and everything, or do you have a third party do that for you?
Gina DeSantis:So I try to stick with shipping between the US and Canada. It is not cost effective. For me to ship an item to someone in Europe. It will cost more than the item itself which is unfortunate.
Gina DeSantis:So you know, I don't really. I have like one or two retailers in Canada. I have worked with a store in Japan and it was so tricky with me trying to set up FedEx. They actually I actually sent them the specs and they sent me the label. So sometimes two accounts will do that like. Sometimes, like if we freight in order to sundance catalog, we use their freight shipper. So it depends on who you're shipping with too. They might have a preferred shipping method. Uh, fair, like fair, will print all the custom forms for you when you print that.
Gina DeSantis:Oh okay, yeah which is fantastic, you know it's easy. But freight's a whole nother beast. Like freight, I have to set up my staff. That's one thing my staff cannot do is set up freight. So I have to find the correct carrier. I have to make sure everything is labeled correctly. You have to have bill of lading which goes with the shipment. You know the shipping carrier gets one, I get one, the package gets one, the recipient gets one. So there's like little things like that I had to learn and which you know. Now I'm grateful. My studio is in a factory with forklifts and that sort of thing, yeah, and tray elevators, and that's something I never would have thought of starting off.
Nick Petrella:Well, that's what I was going to ask. So I thought on your website I saw UK and Sweden.
Gina DeSantis:Maybe I'm not remembering correctly if you have reached, but if you're sending a crate there's different prices prices if you're shop, leaving it at the dock, if you're taking it to the door, right. Yes. So all that kind of stuff, absolutely yeah. So you know, and it just depends, we have a lot of. There's a company I use called freight quote and they I've used that.
Gina DeSantis:I put on my phone and I find out what the best carrier is. Um, and that helps me. You know, insurance is actually really cheap on an order like that too, which is kind of fascinating, but highly worth it. Um, but less breaks when you ship freight too, because so that's always nice at christmas, all bets are off. I don't know what happens, yeah it's funny.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, good luck. I hope your package gets to you. I mean, we could wrap it in five boxes and I swear to god, some shipping carriers like dropped it off a balcony, I I don't know what happens.
Andy Heise:I think FreightQuote's a Kansas City-based business.
Gina DeSantis:Oh, okay.
Andy Heise:I think, so I thought it was California, I don't know. Anyway, maybe they I might be making stuff up. I'll have to fact-check that and edit as necessary.
Nick Petrella:I'll see if I can do that quickly.
Andy Heise:Edit as necessary. And again you said something that was like oh, I want to ask about that, but I was looking at something else. My attention span is gone these days.
Gina DeSantis:I understand.
Andy Heise:You're right, it is Kansas City. No-transcript. I see on your website you have a number of mentions from some pretty popular publications, including Better Homes and Gardens, reader's Digest and Medium. How did those come about and did those impact your business?
Gina DeSantis:Better Homes and Gardens. I think that was through a wholesale show. That was a long time ago. And then you know it depends. Some people find you through anthropology, for example. Um, I've tried working with a PR company. That did not work for me. Um, the price was too high. It just presses a long game too. You know you have to build those relationships and you know you might ship off a sample in August and in October it finally gets press.
Gina DeSantis:I have samples that I shipped out in June that I'm waiting to hear on from huge publications, um, like major magazines and websites. So, and it's like you don't ever want to say it out loud or jinx it, because you know, like, I didn't tell anyone, I got picked up by Macy's and the reason I didn't is because I got dropped. So you know, for all those accounts that I have, they're I got dropped. So you know, for all those accounts that I have, they're amazing.
Gina DeSantis:There's a lot of you know things that don't follow through and you really have to kind of build those relationships. You have to send samples, you have to follow up and you know you want to send your best of the best items and sometimes they may get in a gift guide and sometimes they don't. I was in Midwest living years ago. That was probably one of my first ones and the funniest thing was I was getting like little grandmas from the Midwest calling me because they didn't know how to work the Internet and so I'd have to handwrite a receipt charge their car. It was adorable, but you know you have things like that and then not scalable.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, it does help. I do affiliate marketing too. I've started developing that. So, you know, press is something that I wanted to take off my plate and I found that the company I worked with really wasn't. They didn't get me. You know, that's what I had trouble with.
Gina DeSantis:I remember calling one PR company in Cleveland years ago and the guy was so rude to me and he goes. Well, you know, like I'm looking at your website right now, but like I could just Google noodle bowl and come up with world market and I'm like you have no idea what I do, so you have to find someone that understands handmade too. Again, you're going to have to wait for what I do. It's going to be smaller batch. You know a team of people in Cleveland are working on this for you. So you have to. Working with a PR company just did not work for me at this time. Maybe if my brand builds and I build it myself, that would be great. But I think you know, organically, right now I'm trying to learn to be a better at making reels and all that kind of content, which is annoying, but it's also you need to find, like a 25 year old who can make a reel for me.
Andy Heise:Yeah, when I'm thinking, like in those magazines, like um, you know, usually it's a there's, there's a stylist who's setting up the photo shoot, and really it's probably the mug might be part of some other broader story, but they'll say mug by Gina DeSantis, right, I mean that's. And when you're sending them stuff, are they paying for it? Or are you just kind of crossing your fingers and saying I hope that this You're usually just sending it to them.
Gina DeSantis:You're just sending it to them.
Andy Heise:Yeah, it's a marketing expense for you.
Gina DeSantis:Exactly, and then, if it's like an influencer I'm sending things to, they will say gifted collaboration, you know so they're. They're shoppers now.
Nick Petrella:Product placement yeah exactly.
Gina DeSantis:So. Some things are like I can do some customers, like some influencers can do a real and I'll get a couple. I'll make a thousand dollars. Other things I just get some followers on instagram, so it is all kind of snowballs and builds, but it's its own beast and I do have a bit of a marketing background with oh right, we're going to nail polish for a few years and then everything I've done with my own stuff. So it's just about like timing too.
Nick Petrella:You know, I think a lot of things do come down to timing totally so before we get to our final three questions, I just have one more on this. 400 retailers, that's a big number to take care of. Do you have a sales team or do you look after all those sales yourself?
Gina DeSantis:I am the sales team we're talking to them.
Gina DeSantis:Yeah, you know it's. You're not shipping 400 to, you know, 400 retailers at once, right? So these people, some things sell a lot quicker than others. Depends on the store. Um, some of those stores have closed, some of those stores have expanded, some have online presence. So you know, it kind of just depends um the time of year, sales trends, so it's constantly changing. Wholesale has been down this year with FAIR, but it's been up with my larger retailers so it balances out Like we're 25% behind FAIR last year. I don't know if we'll catch up this year. Just, you know, people are, if retailers aren't selling, they're not buying. People are if retailers aren't selling, they're not buying. So it's this, you know again, it's this weird ebb and flow and the buying patterns have changed. So you have to kind of accommodate to that and keep expanding.
Andy Heise:Well, Gina, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?
Gina DeSantis:I would say be careful of people that want to hold you back, which is maybe more of life advice too. But there's a lot of things you have to learn to say no. And not every opportunity is for you and your business. Um, you know it might be. Um, like I get you know, I get asked for a lot of donations, for example, which I'm happy to do for local organizations, but, like, if you're a PTA in Seattle, why are you mailing me for a donation? Like that doesn't make sense. Um, you or you'll get things that seemingly are interesting, like other wholesale storefronts that want to sell your work.
Gina DeSantis:I was on Wolf and Badger for two months and quit. It wasn't for me. So you have to really figure out what works for you and what doesn't, and I think there's a lot of things that will hold you back as a business owner. And the other big thing is don't compare yourself to other businesses. You have to, you know, carve out your own way. You can really make a mistake by paying attention to what everyone else is doing, and that's very easy with social media. Social media, you can present yourself in any way you see fit. It's not necessarily the truth.
Nick Petrella:There's three business sites. You're welcome to visit, yeah, no that's great.
Andy Heise:Those are all fantastic.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Gina DeSantis:I would say continued education about the arts. I think people don't realize. You know, when COVID hit, what was the one thing you turned to? It was the arts. Everyone was listening to music, watching TV, realizing movies, realizing how much they miss concerts, going to the art museum and looking at artwork, and I think those are the things that keep us creative and keep us learning new things.
Gina DeSantis:Arts can teach us a lot. It can be a commentary on social things. It can teach us values of how things are made and how things are used and I think that more handmade makers that are out there talking about what they do and why they do it is important. So I think social media is really helpful in that manner. I think podcasts like this are really helpful and interviews. I've done some interviews with like Authority Magazine explaining. You know, a lot of my speaking engagements with schools are how I run a business, not my artwork. You know I can sit here and I can do a presentation with all the slides of everything I've ever made, but that doesn't really tell you the whole story.
Andy Heise:That's great. Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Gina DeSantis:Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given? I think grow slowly. I think a lot of times it's challenging, for example, with wholesale catalogs come out in February. I should be coming up with new ideas right now, but it's Christmas and so what works for larger retail channels and wholesale channels doesn't always work for smaller, small batch handmade. So I think that is probably, you know, the biggest takeaway for me is you know how I work, taking more time to be creative, that sort of thing, and sometimes you have to. It's hard to balance business and creativity right.
Nick Petrella:You can't just like wake up and be like, well, I'm gonna be creative from eight to 5pm today, yeah, yeah. Well, this has been. This has been great. It's been a lot of fun. It's. It's nice to hear your persistence in just how you're always learning and applying what you're learning to your business.
Gina DeSantis:Thanks so much, I think yeah, yeah, you can't get frustrated. You're gonna make mistakes. That's part of running a business, it's, you know. Shake it off and keep, keep moving. That's great. Thanks so much for your time.
Announcer:Gina, thank you. Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. Visit artsentrepreneurshippodcastcom to learn more about our guest and how you can help support artists, the arts and this podcast.
