At the Fair

My wife and I went to the 44th Annual East Lansing Art Fair over the weekend, because we’re the sort of people who enjoy outdoor arts & crafts fairs and because we were curious about how this one would stack up against the Hermosa Beach and West Los Angeles art fairs we used to attend back in California. It was a good time, and I can honestly say that if you’re going to be in the Greater Lansing area this time next year, I recommend you stop by; just make sure you come early if you want to get a really good parking space. But rather unexpectedly, there turned out to be a couple of business lessons to be had there among the various displays…

First, let me call to your attention the metal sculpture work done by Wisconsin artist Dick Cooley. If only because the man’s work is amazing; you can find his website here if you’d like to. As someone of a relatively whimsical personality, I found his work to be enormously entertaining as well as aesthetically interesting, and it’s clear from meeting Mr. Cooley in person that he genuinely enjoys his work – and people’s reactions to his creations. I’m not sure there’s a wrong way to work a craft show, but he’s definitely doing it right. But even more than a great example of how to interact with your customers (how to work a crowd, in fact), this gentleman is also providing the best example I’ve ever seen of repurposing things you can find…

In management texts it’s referred to as bricolage: something put together out of bits and pieces of whatever comes to hand, and used for a new purpose. In our readings on entrepreneurship this spring we encountered examples of multinational corporations based entirely on this relatively simple concept, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a better example of creating treasure out of discarded materials. It’s enough to make you wonder if any of the stuff you’ve got in inventory (carried on the books because it hasn’t been amortized yet, or just because you can’t afford to have it hauled to the dump) could be used as the basis for a new line of products…

The other example I wanted to call to your attention were two Michigan artists named Mike and Dee Miller, and their products, which are vases and artificial flowers made entirely out of wood. You can find their site here if you’d like. We’ve all seen fake flowers before – usually silk, but occasionally plastic or paper – and while most of these are as lame as you would expect from fake vegetation, I’ve also seen arrangements that you’d have to examine closely to determine aren’t the real thing. What is remarkable about these wooden flowers isn’t how lifelike they are – although you might have trouble telling the difference from more than a few feet away – but rather that they are individual, hand-crafted works of art that are beautiful in their own right. The fact that they will never fade, wilt or die is just an added bonus…

We should also note that if you’re not near an art fair, the Millers will wrap up and ship any of their creations to anywhere in the world at a surprisingly reasonable price. So if there’s someone you’d like to send flowers to who happens to be allergic to real flowers (and opposed to fake ones), this company provides you with an interesting alternative. It’s an excellent example of changing the boundary conditions for a product classification – usually bastardized as “thinking outside the box” in the popular press – and also a lesson worth thinking about. Is there something new you could produce for sale using your current resources? Maybe you should give it some thought...