I am wondering if anyone has had experience working with another
artist collaborating on making pieces and marketing them. Has anyone
had a partnership with someone they were not in a personal
relationship making jewelry and doing shows?
How did you work out who got paid for what, as in who supplied the
stones and how did you keep track of who put in how much time making
the pieces or who did marketing and how that got compensated.
Is anyone married and working with another metal artist of the
opposite sex that is married and what are the issues that come up?
If anyone needs to contact me off-list, please e-mail denverjeweler@etzero.com.
It’s interesting that you asked this Richard because I’ve been
considering asking people on orchid about a partnership arrangement.
I cut and carve stone and it’s gets a little tiresome always trying
to find someone to sell to rather than finding a way to use and
design together. I do some metal work but it’s not my strength.
I’ve been wondering about the same issues though about payment etc.
It seem like there ought to be some way to work out an arrangement
for like minded artists.
I am part of a group of 8 women that have joined forces to market
ourselves more effectively. We are quite far flung from each other
geographically, do quite different work and got to know each other
via a forum. One woman saw the need and invited the others to join
her - she had almost sent herself broke by committing to advertising
in a national magazine and realised that if there were a few of us we
could do so much better. At the moment we have a joint website as
well as our own and we plan to do shows together. We have just had
our first advertisement in a national magazine too - and no $$$
stress this time as it is split between all of us and quite
achievable!
We all contribute equally to the cost of the website, any associated
costs and any advertising we undertake. If we do a show we plan to do
the same -
split everything equally. No % of sales is kept by the group - if
you sell a piece, you post it off to the buyer and the money goes to
you (via the group bank account).
We all do different jobs for the group - one is in charge of
finances, one the ‘webmistress’ and she also receives the orders, one
for newsletters etc. We don’t get compensated for this - we are doing
this to promote ourselves and sell our jewellery.
I’ve am doing a collaboration at the moment, not with another jeweler
but with a leather artist. We are creating a line of leather clutches
& hand bags that are accented with semi-precious stones set in
sterling silver. She creates the base bag and we sit down together to
make sketches of stone placement. Once that is finished I take the
bag to my studio and set the stones & silver in the leather.
The way we work out payment is that we each add up our own cost &
time seperately to get an individual base “cost” for the bag, which
we record on our own version of a price list. We then add these
costs together and do our calculating to find wholesale & retail
pricing based on our combined cost. When a bag sells we each get our
own individual base cost back, plus half of the remaining sale price.
For instance if a bag sells for $800, she put $100 into it in time &
materials and I put $200, the remaining would be $500…so I would
then get my $200 + $250 and she would get her $100 + $250.