“What marketing strategy should I use to sell my limited edition prints?” – Camilla Howalt E54

Jessica Craddock: Welcome back to Intuitive Art Sales. I am here with Camilla Howalt. She described her work as a construction of elements based on specific art periods and tools and subjects that she has had interest in throughout her life. And most of these works tend to appear more abstract, but they can't be read linearly.

Isn't that an interesting description? She told me that she moved countries a few years ago, so she is currently reintegrating her new studio space and routines and restarting her art practice as A business from a creative point of view, and also a financially viable practice while she's working towards some of these long term goals she's had for a long time.

So welcome Camila.

Camilla Howalt: Thank you so much.

Jessica Craddock: You are so welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Let's actually start with some of these long term goals that you've had so we can find out where we're going and construct something around that.

Camilla Howalt: For me, the sort of, a nice position would be to work, with my artwork full time as a fine art business. I'd like a gallery representation, and I'd like also to be able to do larger pieces, than I'm doing now. They are, part of the practice is quite large, but I'd like to go into wall pieces and maybe room pieces that are bigger than what I am making at the minute.

Also to go back to sort of the beginning of my practice, which was very installatory made with installations using the space, using spatial components, to sort of, enable the, you were to move in and out between the artworks, and that's always been something I liked.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah, I love installation.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah, but the elements are also individual.

So it's also possible to, to just have one image and, and look at that if you like.

Jessica Craddock: So before we move into what's the difference between what you're making now and what your highest vision is. Can we go actually just a bit deeper into that because you said you said gallery but you also said, and I can always picture an installation and gallery that makes sense to me that's a little easier, but in a home, what would that highest vision look like? Can you give me an example?

Camilla Howalt: In terms of, was someone having one of my pieces at home?

Jessica Craddock: Right? So you said, Yes, you can view it just as a piece. And great, we can do that. But also, you said what I really would like to do is move into having multiple pieces that work together where you move in and out of that.

Is that something that you see being in a home or no?

Camilla Howalt: Only some of, I think mainly the wall pieces, but also depending on the sculptural aspect and how big and what kind it is, those are possible also to, to take home, has been in the past. But you're right, that can be, that can be a challenge sometimes if you do installation art.

Jessica Craddock: It can.

[00:04:01] Imagine your vision of what you would create if anything were possible.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah, but also before we think about the challenges where I just want to explore the if anything were possible, what would it be? How would it look? What would you pull together? And I know that it would change over time. And each let's call it a piece would be a little bit different. But if you could go create something right now, that was in alignment with whatever you want to make, what would that look like?

Camilla Howalt: Very fond of the sort of oval or egg shaped, um, format. And I have already done a few, also that are a little bit more freeform, we're actually talking about a, a wall piece.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Camilla Howalt: But which can, depending on the, the possibilities, they can be wall pieces or they could be free hanging pieces.

So, which means that they would have two sides. They would have a work on one side and the other. That kind of piece I've done in the past where I had 24 works hanging in a room, a bit like a forest of images that you could walk in and out of. And each, I had two different sort of compositions. On the one side, you had an image either of, A portrait of a person in sort of a shaking, shaking her head. It's me.

Jessica Craddock: Mm-hmm..

Camilla Howalt: But it was sort of trying to catch that little bit blurry, element that comes with photographing something in movement. And the others were architecture of concrete elements inside a kind of cave that was where I lived at the time. And the backside was very painted like, uh, like almost a fresco or like a sky of the Renaissance paintings.

So I was sort of trying to work with, historically, a few elements, uh, both from a kind of painterly technique perspective, uh, in terms of the materials themselves, and then the modern technique of photography. And the photography I had, I think it's called transferred so that I'd glued it onto the wooden surface and then wash the paper off.

So in a way the photographs was backward, but you get quite a, a ripped effect, which I like.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Okay. So in this scenario, which you just described, It was a gallery installation, and it was something that people could walk through. Is that element something that you would like to bring into collectors homes, or do you see that exclusively as something that would be in the gallery, and then you would translate them into wall pieces for homes?

Camilla Howalt: I think it depends on the gallery's space, no, the collector's space. It's sort of by nature very hard to have free hanging work, I think, in a home but it's not impossible.

Jessica Craddock: Well, one way that it could be done, and I'm just spitballing here. Like you said, that is how you display... I don't know,

your next couple of shows in galleries. They are these free hanging, but then you bring those into also wall pieces, whether it's the front, the back, you know, the front and the back assemblage together something along those lines so that they could take a piece of that but it's more practical for a home.

Camilla Howalt: I'm working on a project that is reminiscent of this, but it's wall pieces, so it's 12 oval egg shaped, if you like, and wooden works. Which, I've already done a pair of three, like a triptych, and I would like to extend it into, this one is a triptych of the pomegranate.

So there's a few stories involved in that, but I would like to extend it into using other fruits. Hmm.

Jessica Craddock: I wasn't sure what you said there. I was like, I'm just going to sit here and wait and I'll figure it out. Pomegranate. That's what she said. That's okay. That's okay. Okay.

So you're describing to me that you're already sort of moving in the direction that you have been wanting to move. Is there anything missing in between the vision and what you are currently doing, or do you feel like you're on track?

Camilla Howalt: For me to be able to do the large body of work, that's very low, practical stuff, you know, finding the right woodworker to help me do the grounds. Because that aspect, I think, it's not something I'm super good at, so I might as well have someone do it who is good at it.

Jessica Craddock: And then moved. So that's a little bit harder because now you have to find new setups.

 Camilla Howalt: Yeah, exactly. I have been looking out and try to find the new suppliers of different elements. But this particular one I haven't found yet. So that's one aspect. And then there's the financial, I have a few applications out for this project because I think it's, it's a very time consuming one and also a bit costly in the sort of cost of the different elements that goes into making them.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Sometimes the thing we really wanna make has that initial, we have to upfront the cost of all the materials and, yes. So actually I'm remembering, if this is me remembering correctly, you recently applied for and received a grant. Is that accurate?

Camilla Howalt: I received different things. I received like a stipendium, but that was like an incubator stipendium, which is like a development of your practice. But it's sort of, it doesn't give you a studio space. The artistic work is not developed the same.

Jessica Craddock: It's like paying yourself while you are in this moment of creating the work.

Camilla Howalt: Correct. But I got a, a grant last year to finish a book I was writing at the minute. This visual work is, that's a new project, so I haven't gotten any money yet.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, great.

[00:10:48] Determine what you are doing to work toward your goals.

Jessica Craddock: So we are looking for funding for this project. What about what you are doing right now in order to move toward all of that.

Camilla Howalt: I am working with a couple of things. One aspect of it is ink works. I did a few years back, which are very graphic in the visuality of it. But I overlay them with, again, with a photographic image. So they appear together, like as if they are layered and it's as if there is a middle space where they sort of merge together.

And I want to do them as limited edition prints. And that's one aspect. And the other one is. That I am doing another body of work, which are based on some works I've done over the last few years as well, which are called love letter, which are also inks on paper, but they have been transformed into bribe, but for aesthetic reasons and for code reasons.

Jessica Craddock: So you are, I think I'm hearing is you are stepping stone. You are doing the level of what you can do now to create the work that you want to create, even with this higher vision of what I'd really like to do is this, but you are doing some version of that with what you have at the moment.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah.

Both in terms of space and functionality and Yes.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. And you said, I want to sell them as limited edition prints, the first body of work that you described. So, how do you feel on a scale of 1 to 10 with your comfort level of the audience that you have and the way that you describe your work and how you're marketing it and all of those parts and pieces, the more, the business side of it, if you will. How is all that going?

Camilla Howalt: I am this year. I decided to, and it came out of wanting to, well, let's backtrack a little bit because for the last 10 years, I've been writing alongside doing my visual practice, but the writing was always an attempt to do what I do visually, but with words. I think it was out of this frustration between the abstraction of it and what was really going on inside of it. At the same time, I really wanted them to be merged as well at some level to try and I agree and give everything, you know, to have everything in one and that's not succeeded quite yet, but I'm still working on it.

Jessica Craddock: Oh, we're going to work on that, but keep going. Yeah.

Camilla Howalt: Okay. But it meant that I had these I have a lot of short stories that I've written all over the years and I wanted to share them on Instagram, but I don't like just words in Instagram. For me, it's visually unsatisfactory. So I decided to take a photograph every day and then write a piece of this short story.

So I divided the short story into 365 days and you know, so that I knew how much words were needed more or less. And then I took a photograph every day of wherever I was in terms of architecture, because the main guy in the story is an architect. And that worked well in terms of routine and in terms of just doing it and not thinking about it too much.

That worked really well. And, I came to the summer and I had, I think, a break for the summer. And in that period, I signed up with you and I started working a bit differently with my art and I thought I really need to start using my artwork more. The photography is not my practice. It's a tool I use, and I like to use it and to merge it into the other work. But rarely on its own.

Some of it, maybe, there's some requests for them, so maybe, but for me there is a little bit of a complicated matter. So I just started to use more my images and then still with this short story, but that got complicated because my artwork, visual artwork I shared had nothing to do with the short story. So right now I'm sharing this story for the end of the year in stories.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Camilla Howalt: Just by themselves with no photographs or anything. And then I have started to share my work and to share writings I did in relation to my work and that I'm trying to continue working on. But it's still, it's you know, it's to do with information.

It's not really targeting anyone in particular or going towards sales. So it doesn't have sort of that aspect of it is showing what I do, but it is not.

Jessica Craddock: So you feel like you are just putting things out there, but there's no, I'm using quotes, strategy, behind creating the art sales.

Camilla Howalt: That's right.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. But I will not, first of all, say I am proud of you because even though you feel like I don't really know what to do or how to do it. You're still doing something. A lot of people will just freeze and not do anything.

Camilla Howalt: I used to, so I get that.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. So let's talk about assets.

[00:16:36] Draw on your current assets when building a marketing strategy.

Jessica Craddock: When I say assets, I'm particularly thinking about marketing assets. So Instagram followers, do you have an email list? Do you, I know that you've moved, but do you have what you feel to be some sort of community in your new space, or would you be interested in tapping into that community from your old country or like what's happening in terms of what you've already established.

Camilla Howalt: I have the largest community I have is probably on Instagram. I used to be on Facebook as well, but I've closed that down because It became a bit too many different pages. And I wanted to try and focus on one and try and get strong one place, and not thinking that I had to share everything everywhere that got into my head in a bad way.

So I decided to sort of close most of them. So the only one I'm focusing on right now is my Instagram. And that's also the largest space for people I don't know. Then I have a newsletter as well. It's not very, very large, but I have kept a newsletter going for more than a year now, on a weekly basis. 

Jessica Craddock: On a weekly basis?

Camilla Howalt: Yeah, but with four months a year off. So I take, like right now is a month of October. It's a month off. So I, but that's kind of in my planning. So yeah, I really work to try and get something solid. It's again, it's sharing creative processes, images, my work. And at one point I tried to sell an English translation of my Danish book that I published a few years back.

That wasn't massively successful. Selling but it was a good lesson. But it also, I got a little bit cold feet because I realized that I had no clue about what this process was. And that set me back in the sense that I, I didn't really continue trying trial and error. I went down the other route I told you about trying to, to get out of the uncomfortable feelings around visibility and sort of speaking about my work.

And yeah, I tried to sort of make a foundation inside of me before I decided to go for sales.

Jessica Craddock: How's that foundation doing right now?

Camilla Howalt: Much better. Much better. Yeah. I mean, it got me to, to take it seriously to, to find, a mentor, business mentor, and I, I have a community as well here in Malmö with different areas.

 Of course it takes time to get to know people, but I, I am establishing it and it's growing and also deepening, of course, because you get to know people in time.

[00:19:39] Committing to the same marketing strategy for a longer period teaches your audience how you sell.

Jessica Craddock: So. I mean, there's a hundred million different strategies, but one of the strategies that I'm thinking about for you to try is really promoting one singular work at a time and saying, I am taking pre-orders for this piece. It will be open X amount of days, and then after that, it will no longer be available. I just pulled one out of a hat, but let's say I was telling you that was the best strategy for you. What would you say, think, do? How would you feel about that?

Camilla Howalt: I would feel all right with that in terms of my paperwork. I think my sort of the more solid, what I call solid works or larger works, I think they are important to share, but I think they are too expensive to sell in an online environment.

Jessica Craddock: Possibly, but I'm, I'm really thinking about, you said at one point, limited edition prints.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: When you are in that space of, I'm really trying to build that foundation in myself so I can feel more confident to put myself out there. Sometimes starting with the lower price stuff is the way to go. Not always, but sometimes. And you told me I have an Instagram community. I have an email list. It's not the biggest, but I have one. What if, as an experiment, we tried that strategy, and not just once, because we never know what's going to happen with once.

But picking a number of times, say, how many of these paper pieces do you have?

Camilla Howalt: I have about, they're a little bit different ones. I've got some with ink and some with stitches, you know, like French knot stitches. I guess I have about 15, 20 or something.

Jessica Craddock: And you send, when you are not on an off month, you send four emails a month, which is great.

What if we said as one strategy for the next 12 months, we pick our 12 favorite and we feature one per month. We talk about it in email one and in email two and then an email three, we say it's open for pre orders for the next seven days. Maybe there's one more email in there that is an extra saying, Hey, remember, or Here's the story, or both probably. And then the last one is, 24 more hours remain to get this price. And again, we can, we can play with this, but I'm, I'm just spitballing here. So that would give you once a month, a seven day window, both in your email and in your Instagram to promote the presale of that print. When it closes, it closes.

And then, you know, I got three orders this time, which doesn't sound like a lot. In my mind, the more often you do this, the more people learn, Hey, this is how she works. This is what to expect. If I really like that one, I need to order it. So let's say you get three orders. Then you know it's a limited edition of three. You go print three. There's no upfront cost to you because they have already paid for them. You ship them off. That work is still available as an original, but as a limited edition print, it's off the table. Next month we move to the next one. What would you think about trying something like that?

Camilla Howalt: I think it's a great idea. So I just need to clarify. So when I said paperwork, I do originals and paperwork as well. And I do the limited edition prints. So they are different in my eyes, at least price wise.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah, of course.

Camilla Howalt: But it could be both, I think, right?

Jessica Craddock: Right, so you still have the original. In the marketing, you can say the original is also available for sale. But as a limited edition print, I will have orders open for these dates.

Camilla Howalt: Yes. Okay. Great. That goes very much in line with what I want. Not the strategy; I hadn't thought it out. I have had a little bit of a sort of what you call when you can't think properly about that.

Jessica Craddock: Just cloudy.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah, exactly.

[00:26:59] Choose a marketing strategy that limits financial risk.

Jessica Craddock: Did you have something different in mind?

Camilla Howalt: Nope. No, no, no. I, I know I just would like to start doing something with them and, to me it feels easier to do it with limited edition prints. I don't really know why, but it feels easier to go into the sales process with them than it does with the... Apart from a little bit of financial risk.

Jessica Craddock: Where's the financial risk? Well, you don't make them until they buy them.

Camilla Howalt: Oh, I will.

Jessica Craddock: You will?

Camilla Howalt: Yes, I've decided to work with a local printer . And I will have, for the first batch, I'll have 25 made.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. You can totally do it that way. That is a choice, and that is an upfront cost. The way that I was describing, I was thinking more along the lines of, let's not have an upfront cost. Let's see how the sale goes before investing money in this. We don't know exactly how it is going to go. It may go really well, and it may not go as well. And maybe some prints are going to do great, and some are not. And that just gives you that safety net of not having to produce and create something that doesn't go as well, or that you don't produce enough of in order to meet the demand.

Camilla Howalt: Right. So you're saying just to clarify again, that let's say I have, I don't know, X amount of different images that I could make as limited edition prints. I will have them as, I can't remember the space. I think there is a space called Gelato here in Europe where it's on demand. So if I have one order of this particular print, then

Jessica Craddock: I'm taking on demand off the table because I want you to be able to make just for this strategy. We can layer strategies. This is just one. So it's not on demand. It's, I've got three orders at my closing dates. I'm going to go to my local printer. I'm going to work with him to make three great prints. And I'm going to ship those out to the people who have already paid me. And then I'm going to move to the next one.

The reason why I like this strategy is because one, like I mentioned earlier, it starts to teach your audience how you sell. But also by saying I'm going to do this 12 times or eight times depending on if we want to take those month long breaks. It gives you How do I describe this better? So one thing I like to talk about is that that bucket remember? I'm gonna hold my pens out of here, right? Okay, so I can illustrate okay So we've got this bucket and if we do one release with three emails and seven posts, I don't know, whatever it is. Then we've put one drop in the bucket to see what happens.

And if we make all of our decisions based on that one drop, we don't have a whole lot of information. And let's say that one failed massively. No one bought anything. And then we're like, Oh, well, we're just going to quit because nobody bought anything. But instead it takes 12 or eight or whatever drops to actually fill this bucket to have the information that we need.

And the other part of that is every time we do one, we could try something a little bit different. So this time I sent three emails and I had seven social posts. You know, that worked well, or that didn't work well. So the next time that I do it, what can I shift? Do I need to send an extra email? Do I need to do a live? Do I need to reach out and tell friends that I'm starting this new thing where every month I do a limited edition, and this is the one I've got this month. And if you're interested, let me know. Like what, what strategy can I add or subtract from what I just did? So it's almost like creating a, a pattern that you can repeat.

And the more you do it, the more you'll learn what worked well. So you can add that or subtract something else.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah. I mean, the reason why I sought to do it with this other image and to do either, X amount of pictures, would be like putting all my eggs in one basket, if you like, without knowing.

Jessica Craddock: And that's a possibility too.

You can put all your eggs in one basket if you want to.

Camilla Howalt: But I don't know if it's going to work, you see.

Jessica Craddock: Right. , yes.

Camilla Howalt: I know that people have liked this image a lot, and I have had some requests. And that made me think that that work because I hadn't made it for that reason when I first made it.  And that got me thinking that this could be one way of using my sort of manually painted works with a bit like the wooden boards I told you about with the photography and the painted element. So I, I started to think in this way. But I do think that there is maybe a point in making at least, if not to make a smaller batch first time round, if I'm not able to just do three or something.

Jessica Craddock: Somewhere in between.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah, exactly.

Jessica Craddock: Let's say you've got three orders versus you said I'm going to up front the cost of 25. Instead of saying this is only available as a limited edition print for these days and then it's going away forever.

You could say but this, it almost kind of cuts you off at the knees, but you could do it a couple of times and see how it works, I've got 10. And if you are sure that you want one, you'll want to pre order during this time period. And then I'll be sending them off on this day. And then if only three people order and you've had 10 printed, then you've still got seven as backups for when someone messages you.  It may not be as effective because there is not that cutoff, but it might be.

The opposite reason is let's say it went really well. And you said, I've only got 10 and now you've got 20 people who want it, then what do we do, and then we can figure it out, but there's that possibility as well.

My idea for this strategy came from a painter and, Oh, I wish I could remember his name, but I was following his work for a long time. I haven't seen it pop up in my Instagram in a while, but I would get emails from him every so often. And I'd say, Hey, this weekend, this one's available, and then it won't be after that. And I just loved it because it really gave me a feeling of, oh, geez, if I want this guy's work, this one in particular, I need to jump on it. And that's what I tucked that one away and put it in my brain for later.

Camilla Howalt: It's an interesting thought, Jessica, because I reuse work that hasn't been sold. So I take these works. And I will, if they're made on wood, I'll sand them down and, or also their shape. So they won't exist again. Or like with my old ink paintings, I've got a couple left from when I did them first, and I am not intending to sell, sell them because they are my own.

So they don't really exist as originals, but they could exist as limited edition prints. So in that sense, it is an interesting framework that, you know, if you want these works, they are available now, but they may not exist in the same frame or in the same way in the future.

Jessica Craddock: Right, exactly.

[00:34:41] Start by committing to something you are comfortable with, and you can add to it in time.

Jessica Craddock: So we need to wrap up, but I want to ask you to commit to something, something that you are comfortable with. Would you like me to help you with that? Or do you think I can, like, based on what we just said, I can make a commitment.

Camilla Howalt: Oh, I can make a commitment from what we've spoken about that. I I'm excited about the idea.

Jessica Craddock: Great. 

Camilla Howalt: I have to just go back and think when we've, we finished here, but I'd say at least eight months and maybe 10. I think I need the two winter and summer months, but eight or 10 months. It may mean that I organize myself differently in terms of the newsletters. And I, I think we spoke about that last week about doing blogs instead of doing intense emails.

Jessica Craddock: So that, yeah, same thing, same idea. That whole blog is about that one piece.

Camilla Howalt: Okay, yes, that's a good idea, and it actually fits in with something else, another kind of work I'm doing, which has to do with stories around my work.

Jessica Craddock: Perfect. Yeah. My favorite thing about marketing is when you have all these different elements, but you start to pull them together to just be one cohesive idea so you don't feel so scattered and they can all work together.

Camilla Howalt: Yeah, I agree. That sounds really nice.

Jessica Craddock: We already went over the reasons why to commit for a longer period of time, but I want you to get your feet under you for this rotation that we are doing. So the next, let's see, this is visibility. The next month is nurture. Next month is sales. The next month is wrap up. For at least the next two months I want you to try this idea. If you feel like you're getting a hang of it, and it is not so overwhelming, we can add more than we can layer on another strategy. But for at least the next month or two, let's really hone in and try to do this one well. Once we have a little bit of a process, if you want to try adding on something else, we'll add on something else.

Camilla Howalt: Yes.

Jessica Craddock: Great.

Camilla Howalt: There are some details I probably would like, but I can take that in our meetings outside, you know, Q and A stuff. But definitely, I think that sounds like a really good entry point to, to something I found a bit daunting.

Jessica Craddock: And so Camila is in my consistent income group program, if you're wondering what she is referring to, and I can leave a link to that in the notes as well. But Camila, where shall people look for you? How do they find you? Where do you want them to go?

Camilla Howalt: To my website, which is camilahowalt. net. Or on my Instagram, which is also Camilla Howalt.

Jessica Craddock: So let's spell it. C A M I L L A H O W A L T .net

Camilla Howalt: net, yes.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, great. So if you wanna find versions of her work or sign up for her email list. Anything else they'll find there? Oh, and her blog. Are you starting one or are you continuing?

Camilla Howalt: Continuing, although it's in its early stages of what is there.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much for being my guest, Camilla.

Camilla Howalt: Thank you, Jessica.

Jessica Craddock: All right. Bye.

Camilla Howalt: Bye.

Jessica Craddock: And I also want to do a shameless plug. I am looking for more guests because I... don't want to do seasons anymore where sometimes I just have to talk, and sometimes I have to find people to be guests. I just want to talk to people. So if you have any interest in being a guest on the show, we are going to link that application in the show notes.

Please apply even if you're scared, even if you don't know what to talk about. I don't care. We'll pull it all out. All right, so do that. Go visit Camilla's website and we'll see you next week.