Gifting artist-made merch this holiday season? It matters to these makers
They do it to pay the bills, but there's more to the grind than selling cute T-shirts
Heather Buchanan is a professional artist, but the Calgarian juggles at least a dozen other full-time responsibilities to make it work. She's a product designer, a social-media manager, an expert in customer service and supplier relationships. And she's never busier than during the holidays.
Like countless other illustrators, Buchanan manages a line of her own products: prints and a variety of embellished merchandise which she sells online and in-person at the occasional artist fair.
"Right now, in this sort of Christmas season, it's pretty full-time," she says of running her online store. During the rest of the year, she's more likely to devote her attention to painting — the main focus of her art practice — but it's sweatshirts, pins, illustrated greeting cards and other things that actually pay the bills. Freelance assignments come and go, but her shop? Says Buchanan: "It's the vast majority of my income."
Making stuff to make it work
Canadian visual artists define themselves as self-employed, by and large. According to a 2016 study co-funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, 66 per cent checked that particular box on the survey, more than any other category of cultural worker — and compared to the general population (of which just 12 per cent are free agents) they are, perhaps, a more entrepreneurial lot than most. And if a few artist-made gifts are currently languishing in your Etsy cart, one side hustle might be more on your radar right now than usual: the business of making and selling merch.
At the RBC Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers (CEAD) at Toronto's OCAD U, students and alumni can seek help on a variety of professional topics, including creative entrepreneurship. Frequently, those emerging artists are looking for advice on setting up their own product lines: What goes into developing an item, maybe a run of screen printed T-shirts or embroidered patches? What's their target market? How much should they charge?
It's a common scenario, says Alexandra Hong, project officer at CEAD. "I would say extremely common," she emphasizes. And nurturing an entrepreneurial impulse is part of how she and her colleagues encourage artists to think practically about the world of work.
"There may be any number of moments in your professional life where there is going to be an emphasis on one direction over another," says Zev Farber, director at CEAD. "Your practice may flourish in one year and be a bit quieter in another, and you might have another job on the side or more than one job or other way in which to generate income." They suggest that students keep themselves open to pursuing multiple endeavours simultaneously. Making and selling merch is one such option.
A pandemic-proof source of income
In Buchanan's experience, running an online shop has seen her through rough times, most recently during the early days of the pandemic. Leading into 2020, she says her career was "steamrolling in the fine-art direction," and she had opened a new exhibition at a Calgary gallery days before lockdown went into effect. "So I immediately pivoted," she says. Buchanan created a few new products and turned all her energy toward merch sales.
It was a similar situation facing Ambivalently Yours, an Ontario artist who's worked anonymously under that name since the mid 2010s. Because of the pandemic, her usual freelance illustration opportunities disappeared. Even her merch sales took a hit; stores that stock her products stopped ordering while they were closed. But because she was already set up to sell her own merch online, she was still able to support herself.
Even in a regular year, the artist says that she plans ahead with the expectation of earning half her income off shirts and cards and other items inspired by her artwork. "It really does help me sustain myself financially," she says. Relying on artist grants and exhibition fees is not enough to survive on, in her experience. "I do some contract work, but even that is not always consistent. The shop kind of gives me the ability to have a bit more predictability in terms of income coming in," she says. "I try to really push this time of year to float through those leaner months."
Turning a side-hustle into a full-time gig
In Hilary Jane Boulé Petersen's case, selling merch is more than a back-up plan. Best known online as Hilary Jane, the Montrealer spent 16 years building a reputation as a sought-after tattoo artist, and in the beginning, her online shop sold nothing but prints. "There was a really high demand for my tattoos, but I just couldn't take that number of clients in," she explains. So if a fan couldn't land a spot in her appointment book, they could at least take some art home.
A little more than a year ago, however, Petersen was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease. The symptoms make tattooing too challenging to pursue full-time, she says, but even on bad days, when she's suffering from chronic fatigue, she can run her online store from bed.
It's still an enormous amount of work; Peterson oversees nearly every aspect of the job, from pattern-making to website design. (She recently hired an employee to help with packaging and customer service.) As of last year, she's expanded her offering to include a line of home goods (Hilary Jane Home), which includes everything from patterned wallpapers and tapestries to kitchenware and candles.
"I had to remodel my whole system and figure out what I can do to have a more flexible business and a more flexible way of living," says Peterson, but the career switch has been energizing from a creative perspective. "It's a really fun way for me to expand my art. It was like a natural next step, and being sick has kind of forced me to make that decision."
What sells?
All of Peterson's products are inspired by her illustrations, and prints remain her top-selling item, she says. For Ambivalently Yours, wearable goods are always popular. "A lot of people, they like buying things that have some sort of function," says the artist.
Buchanan's made the same discovery, and it's intel that she applies when brainstorming items to add to her shop. "I started to think about ways to make art, you know, a little bit more practical in people's lives." (An example? Her collection of illustrated weed grinders.) And as a one-person operation, she's privy to plenty of insight into what people want, specifically what her followers are into.
They appreciate your customer feedback
Kezna Dalz, a Montreal-based artist who signs her work Teenadult, occasionally polls her Instagram followers before dropping a new design, and her whole reason for launching an online store was to satisfy demand from her fans. It started with prints, she says; her DMs were filling up with requests. Nowadays, velvety illustrated cushions are the most coveted items she sells. But she's also at a moment in her career where she's able to rely on commissioned work for the overwhelming majority of her income. The shop is far from her top priority, she says, but its value goes beyond generating extra cash.
Every sale is like a "big self-esteem boost," says Dalz. "Someone wants to bring something you created into their home because that's where they are most of the time. They look at it, it makes them feel good. Like, that's when you know that people feel things from looking at your [art]."
And though the impact can be impossible to accurately measure, there's a certain amount of exposure that comes through having your work out in the world via T-shirt or tote bag.
"I've done a certain amount of exhibitions in the United States and Canada and elsewhere," says Buchanan, but when she measures how far her reach extends, she thinks about her product sales. "I think I've sold stuff to — it's getting close to 50 countries now. To get my art out into that many different people's lives? You know, it's pretty incredible."
More than a way to make a buck
When Buchanan began selling prints online 10 years ago, she did it "as, like, a survival thing." Now, it's a legitimate passion. "I do love making the stuff," she says. Every product is a new problem-solving challenge, and the digital skills she's acquired while teaching herself about things like product design have wound up seeping into her personal practice. "It's really fun to make digital work, and now I'm making a ton of it just for myself."
If hawking merch is a necessary evil for working artists, Ambivalently Yours doesn't have mixed feelings about it either. "If I could afford to just be an artist and just work on my own projects, I don't know that I would put so much energy into my shop," she says. But she also thinks back to what she was doing before becoming a full-time artist. In a past life, she worked "creative roles" in the corporate world. "Being self-employed, for me, works best," she says. "I have control over what I'm putting out and I can let myself grow the way I want."
And as the lone person calling the shots, she has the freedom to be a bit thoughtful — and occasionally a smidge ironic — when adding a new design to her inventory. More often than not, her merch repurposes drawings or phrases from the most popular illustrations she's posted online. This example is no different: a top emblazoned with the phrase, "I shared my most vulnerable feelings on the internet and all I got was this lousy shirt."
"It's kind of a joke," she laughs, and she designed it at the behest of her followers. (It's based on an illustrated "ode to [her] inner Tumblr girl.")
"I think there is still a joy in buying products, especially by artists that you like. I really like doing that, too. So I don't think it's necessarily an evil, but there is ... like, the machine around can be exhausting."
"There is a lot of pressure on artists," she says. "To just be producing all the time? After a while, it gets so draining. And because my art is so emotional, I have to put a lot into it."
"At the end of the day, like, what am I getting? I'm just selling people a T-shirt? The irony of that," she laughs. "So I just laugh at it and embrace it — and wear a T-shirt about it."
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