Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephanie Krist. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephanie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

I think it is really important to mention right at the top that from the start of my business I have lived with a very supportive partner working a full-time “traditional” job. His steady income has allowed me to take risks, make mistakes, and grow my business with less stress than I would have had trying to fund a living all on my own. As entrepreneurs, it can be easy to get caught up in shining a light on all of our accomplishments. We may also easily get caught comparing ourselves to others. As proud as I am of my story, I think it is important to remember that none of us are truly “self-made.” You would not be where you are without the support of those around you, be it monetary, emotional, or physical.

I have been working as a full-time artist since the end of 2019, but I began my pottery business, Fired Figments, in 2015. Creating and selling art is practically the only path I’ve ever known. In elementary school I organized my friends into an assembly line – crafting various projects and selling them to our classmates during recess. As a senior in high school, I joined the Young Entrepreneur’s Academy, a national after school program that took students through the entire process of writing a business plan, presenting to investors, and creating their first product line. I handcrafted greeting cards and sold them wholesale to local gift shops and florists.

All that being said, I knew that I wanted to create a living making and selling pottery and ceramic sculptures right out of college (where I double-majored in studio art and art history, and minored in business administration.) But, as a recent graduate, I definitely wasn’t ready to jump straight into full-time art. I had luckily made some connections with local artists in one of my city’s main artistic hubs – an old factory that had been turned into five floors of rental studios. I started by trading working hours for a corner in one artist’s studio, and for kiln space in another. Meanwhile, I worked part time at a local fine art and gift shop where I also sold my pottery.

There were three big turning points in those first few years, and the final push in 2019, that helped me to fully establish my business. First was finally creating a product that was true to my personal style. I have always been inspired by the fantasy genre, and especially dragons, but I felt like I needed to make “basic” pottery to appeal to the largest audience. In 2016 I decided to make a mug with a dragon as the handle. Posting that mug online was the first time I received major attention for my work. Suddenly, I had months worth of pre-orders and I was able to incrementally increase my prices as I responded to demand. Dragon mugs are still one of my staple products, and I have built my entire business to serve a fantasy niche.

The second big turning point was moving into a new studio. Many of my friends from the first building were moving into a new building across town. I joined them and was able to get an unbelievable introductory deal on rent. I worked with the building owner to customize my space for the ideal ceramics studio with a separate retail space as well. My move was made possible because some friends gifted me an old manual kiln that had been sitting in their garage for nine years. That kiln taught me a lot about maintenance, but it allowed me to have full control over the production of my work, and I eventually bought a new kiln to replace it.

Right around the time that I moved into the new studio, I also started a new part-time job. My job at the gift shop was generally three or four days a week of eight hour days. I found that on my days off, I wanted to feel “off” and so I wasn’t motivated to work in the studio. However, my new job, as a school library assistant, was five days a week with five hour shifts starting around noon. I learned that if I wanted to get work done, I needed to get into the studio in the morning and be productive while I was there. This new schedule pushed me to really focus on time management, and I feel like it gave me the foundations to stay regimented when I switched to full-time art.

The final push that allowed me to become a full-time artist was selling at my first Renaissance Faire. I had been making pottery in the fantasy-niche for a few years, selling online and at weekend festivals and art shows, but a Renaissance Faire is a whole different beast. Faires are two months of food, rides, performances, and shops set in a mock-village built of permanent wooden buildings and stages. Fans travel hours to attend, and some even buy season passes. I knew this was where my target audience was spending their time, so I had to try being there too. Selling at the Renaissance Faire in 2019 doubled my annual income from 2018, and the faire made up a third of my total income for 2019. I knew I had found the market to finally make full-time art work for me. Every year I sell more and more at the Renaissance Faire, and I am focusing on making my studio time as efficient as possible to increase inventory and meet the faire-goers’ demands while optimizing profits.

Every artist’s journey is different, but to summarize the lessons from mine: Create a product you are passionate about, control your production space, focus on time management, and be easy for your target audience to find.

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?

Hi, my name is Stephanie Krist and I am the sole artist behind Fired Figments. Inspired by my lifelong love of dragons and fantasy, Fired Figments aims to bring a little magic to your everyday routine through whimsical pottery and sculpture.

I took my first ceramics class in high school and hated it up until the very last project – a bust sculpture. While the actual assignment was to recreate the likeness of a (human) celebrity or friend, I opted to sculpt a Tauntaun – a fictional creature from the Star Wars movies. I was in love with the final product and realized that clay was the medium that could bring the figments of my imagination to life – hence Fired Figments.

Fired Figments pottery and sculptures are made in my home studio near Ithaca, NY, and can be found online, at the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, NY, as well as some stores throughout New York state.

Every piece is handmade from start to finish. I wheel throw each and every piece of pottery. I pull mug handles one at a time, hand-sculpt and hand-carve details, and even sand smooth the bottom of every mug. Even as I push my studio practice more towards a “production” speed, it is so important to me to keep that human touch. I may be a business, but I will always be an artist first. Pottery pays the bills, but sculpture is my true passion. I am excited that as my business and efficiency grows, I have been able to make the time to experiment more with sculpture, and I am looking forward to incorporating sculpture more into my product offerings.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I shared my story of making the leap to full-time at the end of 2019, but we all know that the world wasn’t business-as-usual in 2020. I was able to make the leap because of the Renaissance Faire – a major public event – which was suddenly canceled for an indefinite amount of time. My plans definitely needed to pivot.

Not only had I left my part-time job, but we had just moved from the Rochester, NY area to a cabin in the woods near Ithaca, NY. Luckily, that meant I now had a home studio instead of a public studio where I could work without health worries. The next step was finding a way to sell my work. I already had a social media presence, but online sales were a low percentage of my sales in 2019 and earlier. In another stroke of luck, I learned about a Facebook group started by Renaissance Faire vendors, performers, and fans. It was called Faire Relief 2020 and the member numbers were growing every day. What was once 20,000 members was suddenly upwards of 50,000 and that ideal target market I had found at the Renaissance Faire was now online AND nationwide!

Working through 2020 was a crash course in life as a full-time artist. I had more time than ever to make pottery and I had an audience hungry for some happiness in the mail. Before, I had always sourced my shipping boxes and packaging from other local businesses – reusing the supplies to send out the few packages I sold online. I had left all those businesses in Rochester and needed a more efficient way to pack orders anyways, so I pivoted towards buying boxes in my most used sizes and created a shipping station in my studio. Now, I still try to reuse supplies when I can, but my packing efficiency definitely improved from those days of only online sales.

My business probably would not have been able to survive 2020 if it wasn’t for the support of the Renaissance Faire community. My profits more than quadrupled in 2020 from 2019 because of the new audience I found in that Facebook group. Now that the in-person Renaissance Faires have returned, online sales still make 30-40% of my sales.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I like to think that I have a pretty healthy following on social media. It’s not the biggest as far as vanity numbers go, but when I make the effort to post, I can generally expect the products I’m pushing to sell, and that’s the true goal of social media for a small business. I know I can be fairly long-winded in my responses, so I’m going to try and rapid-fire some highlights this time.

1 – Don’t be afraid to repost content. Your audience is always growing and even your past audience might not have caught it the first time around. Whenever I’m at a loss for a post, I reuse the same video of tracing my finger around a carved labyrinth on one of my mugs. I call them Mindfulness Mugs. The first three times I posted it on TikTok, it tapped out at around 10,000 views. On the fourth time I used it as a response to a comment and suddenly had over 350,000 views and 100 orders for Mindfulness Mugs.

2 – Post about what is available NOW. Those 100 orders for Mindfulness Mugs? Those were all pre-orders and took over months of my life. But I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot and get orders in before the internet forgot Mindfulness Mugs existed. I posted that video on a whim. It had never performed so well before, so I wasn’t prepared for the reaction. Lots of businesses are great at using social media to build hype for an upcoming release, but if you’re working at a more personal scale, make sure you have the inventory to support your marketing.

3 – Curate the kind of account you’d want to follow. In college we learned to take clean photos of our art with white backgrounds. These are the kind of photos you need for applying to galleries and art shows, but not the kind that will pull the interest of the typical Instagram user. For years I used white background pictures because they were the easiest to take and I was using them for product listings anyways, but when I switched to more “lifestyle” photos with my pottery integrated into everyday life, the engagement was wildly different. And, yes, it’s still true that photos with your face will get more likes than your product alone. Remind people who they are supporting with their purchase!

4 – Last but not least, don’t count entirely on social media. I’m sure you’ve read it in every blog and heard it in every business podcast, but you don’t truly own your social media audience. When that platform changes its algorithm – again, or becomes off trend, how will you reach your audience? Build an email list from your social media and in-person events. Give people an incentive to join if needed. The more places people are reading your messaging, the better.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.firedfigments.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/firedfigments
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/FiredFigments
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@firedfigments