We were lucky to catch up with Karen Casey recently and have shared our conversation below.
Karen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Durham has always had a vibrant community of artists. As a founding member of The Durham Craft Market, which will celebrate it’s 20th year soon, it seemed that both artists and the public needed more outlets to showcase and sell the works of our local talent on a regular basis. So the process started. Curating a space, figuring out a workable model for artists to be in the store, and figuring out who would be a good fit for the the local community and the tourists. I had met our landlord in the past, and we agreed on turning part of his space into a storefront right in the center of downtown. Perfect! The Durham Small Business Center was invaluable in offering tools and advice for starting a business. And then the real work of starting up began! My business partner at the time and both of our husbands were invaluable in making this small business get off the ground. Our opening night success showed us just how much the community loved this idea. And here we still are after 7 years!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As a fused glass artist, I had my own small business for 20 years, selling at pop up markets and in other stores in nearby towns. This helped me understand what artists might be looking for and connect with them on a different business level. I also can appreciate when a customer falls in love with a piece of art or a funny quote on a towel and it just makes their day.
Our store represents 50-60 artists at any given time and each one of them is local and everything is handmade! We specialize in knowing our artists and what they are offering so we can talk about them and their own stories. It is so fun to hear customers walking out of the store chatting about how much fun their visit was and to hear teenagers equally say how comfortable they are in out store. We want to offer something for everyone and represent our diverse Durham community. As the store owner, I want to participate in the community I love, so we support the local events, attend CIty Council meetings, work with Downtown businesses and try to make it a win-win for everyone!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Just when it felt like the store was about to hit its stride towards it’s third year, the pandemic hit. Time to pivot and figure out how to survive the unknown. At that time, my business partner quit, so I was busy writing grants to survive and figuring out how to keep cash flow coming. Kindness goes a long way so I offered for my artists to pay a very minimal amount of rent if they could and several were working from home and continued to pay their full rent to help us get through! We quickly threw up an online store and emailed our friends and customers to help in any way. And we made it over the hump.
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
It is hard to be a profitable arts business, give the percentage due back to the deserving artists each month and make a payroll! Never expecting or planning to work 6 days a week myself in the business, I’d always expected to use a payroll service, but that is costly! If the customers aren’t coming in, payroll can’t be made. So regular monitoring of cash flow is needed and summer can be slow. Last August, I had to send my employees home for ten days and work myself do to the slump. Luckily, I was available to do that, but that is not always the case.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theartisanmarketat305.com/
- Instagram: @theartisanmarketat305
- Facebook: @theartisanmarketat305
Image Credits
Caroline Gilmore Photography