Carolyn Jack
Editor and CEO, Geniocity.comA project of The Genius Group LLC
Creative Nerve
Rough selling and sailing ahead
The people who analyze such things have predicted a dismal holiday-buying season for retail businesses. Stores and online outlets that sell non-essentials, especially high-priced and luxury items, will likely take the worst hit.
And, yeah, guess what I sell? Too bad you can’t eat art or fill your gas tank with it.
On the other hand, far too many people assume that art is non-essential when they wouldn’t go a day without watching a movie or a show, listening to music, reading a book or looking at pictures and objects. We all turn to such things for fun and stimulation.
But we also turn to them for solace, diversion and uplift when life isn’t going right. And life sure isn’t going very well for a lot of us right now.
So I continue to hope that many people will want things – however small – of beauty, creativity and meaning to cheer themselves and other people through these unsettling times.
From a business point of view, I’m trying to sail around this economic Cape Horn by diversifying the merchandise in The Geniocity Shop, including the price levels, and targeting the consumers I think likeliest to keep purchasing what I sell. As a social entrepreneur, I’m also hoping to contribute to the survival of talented artists. Like so many other working Americans, a lot of them have no financial margin at all – they have to live sparely at all times and an even a few months of high prices and little work can mean disaster.
So I take it as a personal and professional responsibility to try to help artists, inventors and our whole society by informing readers about the importance of creativity to our lives and economy and increasing the chances that original work will be bought from gifted makers and enjoyed by appreciative owners.
But for me to carry out my mission, my business has to stay solvent. (Yours, too, huh?) That’s going to get even trickier over the next few months.
Shorten sail...