We recently connected with Nobuo Wellington Yuko Makuuchi and have shared our conversation below.

Nobuo Wellington, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Yuko and I launched WM Craftworks in 2014. Our company is a very small business that creates handcrafted ceramic and wood home goods. In 2019 we transitioned from WM being our side hustle to it being my full time gig. A lot of what I discuss in this interview is how going from side hustle to main gig changed our relationship to our craft and how we’ve been dealing with some of the issues we’ve encountered along the way. For anyone who has never run a business or more specifically a business built on a creative endeavor (woodworking, ceramics, baking, writing, etc.) it may seem romantic or ideal in some ways. What we have learned along the way is that it’s a lot of really hard work. It always amazes me how people outside the creative community look at artists as lazy, flakey, irresponsible dreamers. The one thing I can say with certainty is every artist I know who has even a modicum of success has an incredible work ethic. You may enjoy a particular activity, in my case woodworking. You may even be very good at it. But love of the craft is not nearly enough to get you through it. Your love is important and may very well get you through the tough times, but there is a hell of a lot of WORK involved to be successful. You have to constantly be working on your craft AND run a business. Have you ever heard the cliché “start your own business and be your own boss?” Well we started our own business, I am my own boss, my boss is still a jerk and we work really long hours seven days a week. What follows is some of our story as we navigated an exciting journey.

Nobuo Wellington, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

WM Craftworks is the creative venture of Yuko Makuuchi and Nobuo Wellington. We make handcrafted originals, ceramics and woodworking is our game. Yuko is a really diverse, multi skilled creative and maker. She knits and crochets, she’s studied photography and dabbled in wood carving. Yuko also designs and creates leather goods and works with textiles. If you ask her if she does flower arrangements she’ll say “no”, but her arrangements are extraordinary. For the last almost 20 years, Yuko has specialized in retail operations at not for profit arts organizations as a “day job.” But a lot of retail operations is super left brain stuff, scheduling, logistics, number crunching, forecasting and logistics. Yuko needed to find an outlet for the other side of her brain. You know how some people have to go to the gym and sweat out their work stress, Yuko needs to go the studio and craft out her work stress. So she signed up for a ceramics class at a local community college. For the last 15 years or so, 90% of Yuko’s creative talent has been committed to developing her voice as a ceramic artist. Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Yuko combines her particular cultural perspective with the many things she’s learned from her varied disciplines to create a wonderfully unique and vibrant ceramics style. As you can imagine, Yuko isn’t busy at all. Nobuo (Nobu) Wellington provides the woodworking side of the operation. Although the arts have been part of my life from day one . . . literally . . .my parents were a music teachers, I came to woodworking kind of by happenstance and later in life. In 2009 as part of the recovery from The Great Recession the government had a tax rebate program for first time home buyers and one of my sister pushed me to apply for a home loan. Long story short, on my birthday that year, I bought a house. I guess the thing to know is at this point in my life I didn’t own any tools. My entire adult life I was living in apartments and had no need to own tools. Something breaks, call the super and schedule the repair. The only tool I need was my phone. I think it’s also a good time to mention I never really felt particularly mechanically inclined by nature. But the house I bought needed a lot of work and I couldn’t afford to hire someone else to do the work, so I had to figure it out for myself. I was literally trying to remember stuff from my 8th grade woodshop class. I started slowly at first and began to figure thing out. With every project I started buying tools. I found that I like buying tools. I like it a lot. Long about the time I finished as much work as I could do on the house, Yuko started randomly showing me pictures and saying “You can make that right.” She never asked can you make this, she would state it as a matter of fact. “You can make this right.” This was at once very empowering and kind of intimidating. On the one hand it’s a great feeling when someone I admire has that much faith in my ability. On the other hand, I had no idea where to begin even thinking about it. But my standard response was and continues to be “Let me think about it. See if I can figure it out.” If you watch enough YouTube you can find as least 10 somebodies who have posted content doing what you’re trying to do. I watch a lot of YouTube.
Around 2012 or 13, Yuko is producing pieces like gangbusters. We had ceramics all over the house. We had gifted as many cups and bowls to our friends and family as they could take and we were still tripping over boxes and boxes of ceramics. It got to the point that I asked do you think we can sell your work? Yuko was hesitant, she wasn’t sure if it was “good enough”. Well we gave it a try and the response was really positive. We did a couple more sales, which increased our confidence and in 2014 we decide to launch WM Craftworks and start building a brand. In the beginning WM craftworks was our side hustle. We both had full time jobs. We were once described as “DINKs” . . . Double Income No Kids. For the first few years, WM was a money pit. It took every penny that came in through sales and a health subsidy from our household checking account to keep operations going. We come a long way in 9 years. Yuko still works full time in non profit retail. But I no longer have a full time job (working for someone else). WM Craftworks doesn’t fully replace my full time income, but it does provide enough income for us to keep moving forward. I would say the single thing that we are most proud of is how much of our business comes from repeat sales. I would say well over 50% of our sales are to repeat customers. And everyday we’re out at markets someone will come to the booth and tell us how much they love the piece the bought from us. We were particularly honored when two couples asked us make pieces for their wedding celebrations.

Have you ever had to pivot?

There are actually two pivot points in our journey that I would like to share, when we decided to move WM Craftworks to primary focus (for me at least) and the business model review that we are currently working through. As I mentioned before for the first 5 years WM Craftworks was our side hustle. We were doing maybe 4 or 5 shows a year. Crafting was really work stress relief and as long as the subsidy from our household checking account wasn’t overly debilitating and we made enough to justify our tax returns we were cool. Then in February of 2019 the company I was working for went out of business and I lost my job. I was 56 years old and my life on paper didn’t really look all that good. I had been sitting at the computer for many hours a day looking and applying for jobs. One day Yuko came into the office and told me to stop what I was doing and come out on the front porch. She opened a beer handed it to me and said let’s talk. Historically when a woman has said those words “we have to talk” something was wrong or about to end. But in this instance it was different, (the beer should have been my first clue). Yuko said she’d been looking at the jobs I was applying for and she had one question, was I actually interested in the jobs I was applying for or was I just trying to pay the mortgage? My response was “you know paying the mortgage isn’t a bad thing to do”. To which she replied “yes I see your point . . . but . . (there’s always a but), what about this . . . how about instead looking for just some random job that will generate a paycheck. Why don’t I focus on WM Craftworks. That will become my new full time job.” To say this was a gamble would be a profound understatement. At the time WM was doing just a little better than breaking even. So to hang half the household expenses on that meager hook was risky. When we finally decided to pull the trigger and commit to this course of action, it was a radical departure from how we had been doing business before and how our household economy had been set up. So far it’s been working out pretty well. We can’t say that WM has completely replaced my full time income, but it’s been enough for us to keep moving forward. And I can honestly say that I am healthier and happier than I was when I was pulling down a full time paycheck but working for people I didn’t always respect and was confident they didn’t respect me. This also represented a major lifestyle change. Instead of having regularly scheduled days off, we are working all the time. Sometimes it feels like when we started WM Craftworks was our adventure together and now it’s what keeps us apart. Not emotionally or spiritually, but physically sometimes it feels that way. When we were doing only 4 or 5 events a year, we would pack the truck and a lunch and go off together on that adventure and it was as much fun and hanging out as anything else. Any more, except for the really big events, Yuko doesn’t come to the markets with me anymore. She still has her full time job and the markets we’ve been doing have primarily been on Saturdays and Sundays and it got to the point that she wasn’t getting enough rest and I had to make the decision to ask her to stay home on market days. So now our schedule is such that she works when I’m off and I’m at market when she’s off and we really have to make an effort to spend time together. This whole adventure is still really rewarding, but not nearly as much fun. Which leads me to the business model review that we are currently working through. When we first changed gears and moved WM to the front burner as it were, we tried to structure it like a conventional job. We scheduled a market every Saturday and Sunday. We are currently evaluating that strategy. It really started about this time last year when the weather starts to get really hot. In those dog days of summer foot traffic at markets really falls off and sales number do likewise. Yuko would look at the numbers when I got home and she’d be like is it worth it to spend 11 hours of the day for these returns? Not to mention is it healthy for you to be out on extreme heat days for that much time? Those questions started the review, which lead to bigger questions like are the markets we’re currently doing the right audience for our product. So we’ve cut back on the number of markets we do. We’re no longer trying to go out every Saturday and Sunday. This change does a couple of things. First it relieves some of the grind for lack of a better expression. Anytime you make the transition from an activity being a hobby, or something you’re studying to making it a source of your livelihood you will experience a change in how you relate to that activity. Case in point I have friends that are actors. They tell me when they were in school they would be in shows that generally ran for two weekends. The sense of novelty never wore off. One week you’re opening and the next week you’re closing and everything is special and super emotionally charged for those reasons. When you get out into the world, if you’re lucky enough to land a show that runs for 6 months or 9 months or even luckier if you land an open ended commercial gig that runs for years, being in a show can be just as much of a grind as any other gig. 8 shows a week, week in and week out. There will be days when you’re less inspired, and or just not feeling it. It isn’t always “fun.” It’s a job. When you’re in a show for two weeks It doesn’t matter how you feel, you’re basically running on adrenaline and you can get through anything for two weeks. The same thing can be said of being a crafter. When the primary function of the activity is stress reduction and you’re going to market a few time a year it’s always fun. When your crafting becomes how you put food on the table it’s not always as much “fun”. There is a pressure to produce. And when you’re going out ever Saturday and Sunday you have a really short workweek in the shop. You wake up Monday morning feeling beat up, your voice is horse because you’ve been talking to people all weekend and you’re already feel behind schedule producing for the coming weekend. Then you have to stop working in the shop by Friday afternoon so you can do market prep for the coming weekend. This kind of cycle just lead to head down grinding is what it felt like. By reevaluating our schedule I’ve been able to get my head up and actually learn some new skills. Previously I would think about projects I wanted to tackle but just didn’t have the time or bandwidth to get much beyond thinking about it because I had to make cutting boards for the weekend. I recently accepted a commission to make a live edge desk for a client. I’m just about finished with the design and testing phase and I’m about to build it out. These kinds of larger furniture projects are the direction I want to take my woodwork in. They are more challenging and rewarding. And the return on time invested in a furniture project is a lot greater than that of a cutting board. I don’t think I would have had the confidence to say yes to the project without the extra breath lightening up our schedule provided. Reducing our market schedule also gives us more time to tackle the oh so fun administrative side of running a business. Being a “full time creator” isn’t all crafting in the studio/shop. We had to find a way to make the time to do the desk work, writing application, responding to email, bookkeeping, scheduling, and reevaluating our schedule has really help with that. Instead of being constantly scheduled, we’re trying to schedule smarter. I guess it’s an example of taking a step back to allow yourself to move forward. In the short term it may or may not mean less revenue generated, we’ll see. Every weekend isn’t a home run. And some are straight up whiffs. We’ll have to see, but we feel good about the change.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

First we need a nationalized healthcare system like every other major industrialized country in the world (and some pretty small ones too). The quality of life for most Americans would improve under a national health plan, with the exception perhaps of those who already have gold plated healthcare plans. The idea that a county that touts itself as the richest country in the world can have such a punitive and money based healthcare system in beyond absurd, it’s obscene. I think the need for and the cost of health insurance is one of the greatest barriers keeping more creatives from making the leap and pursuing it as full time occupation. Nationalized health care or Medicare for all or what ever you want to call it would give creatives the freedom to chose the road less traveled as it were. The only reason we could make the decision for me to focus on WM Craftworks full time is that I get my health insurance through Yuko’s employer. If not for that, we couldn’t afford it. At my age a mediocre premium from the health care exchange website would cost over $1,000 a month. I also think we need to recalibrate or change the way we talk about and define success. Is it only measured by how much money one makes. If you make a lot of money then you’re successful and if you don’t then you’re a failure. By that metric I am a failure. But when someone tells me every morning they drink their coffee out of a mug that got at our booth and it brings them so much joy, does that not have some value. It’s not the kind of value I can spend in a store, but surely it has some value. Changing the way define success would allow creatives to feel better about making a choice to pursue what makes them truly happy. And lastly, support your local artist. Go to craft fairs, or local galleries and buy something. Find an artist or creator that you like and establish a relationship with them. Keep your eye on them, support them by showing up and when you can pick something up. When you have an occasion that requires a gift, think of your local artist before you go to mall. I guarantee your gift will stand out in the mind of the recipient. The client that I’m making the desk for said she was looking at several options online and in stores and she decided to work with me because she sees me at the local farmers market and she wanted to support a local artist. It’s so unbelievably important.

Contact Info:

• Website: wmcraftworks.com
• Instagram: @wmcraftworks
• Facebook: wmcraftworks

Image Credits
All images are the property of Yuko Makuuchi, Nobuo Wellington or WM Craftworks