i can’t stand all these sales. here’s a sale.
free US shipping for the rest of 2023
Check out molliedonihe.com/shop for FREE U.S. SHIPPING through the end of 2023.
This time of year really highlights the tension I feel as an artist who sells my work for a living and also tries to be as socially conscious as possible along the way.
On the one hand, I can’t stand all the overconsumption around the holidays. So much of it is driven by heavy marketing, feelings of obligation, or desires to keep up with familial or cultural expectations. Not to mention all the extra waste we generate this time of year! I was going to include some statistics here, but as I looked through them, I got overwhelmed and sad, so I’ll leave you to Google “holiday consumerism stats” at your own risk.
On the other hand, this year has been really tough for a lot of small businesses. Market sales and online sales this fall were super low compared to previous years. This seemed to be a pretty consistent experience among lots of artists. Seeing countless social media posts from small businesses closing their doors this year is disheartening to say the least. And so there is this pressure (and also financial necessity) to try to compete with the bigger sellers and companies by promoting our own products so that we might be lucky enough to make it under someone’s tree.
This is kinda depressing, but I promise it’s not my intention to bum you out. It’s also not intended to shame anyone for not buying from small businesses—affordability is a very real limiting factor for most of us.
So why do I write about all this? I for one am interested in finding a path through the chaos of the holiday retail space that feels like one I actually want to walk down. What does it look like to carve a path that isn’t playing right into the holiday shopping craze yet also isn’t selling myself and my work short? How can I navigate this season with humanity, generosity, and grace?
I think it’s ultimately less about the “what” I do and more about the “how” I do it. Because if it was about the “what,” this would be a really convoluted and long winded way of saying I’m offering free shipping through the end of 2023 (which I am, btw).
But what is the more important “how?”
In other words, what is my posture toward selling my work this holiday season?
I share this to stay human and open with you since you are someone who has expressed an interest in my work (and perhaps, although I don’t want to assume, also care about me as a person). After all, I’m not a company. I’m just one girlie making art in my spare-bedroom-turned-home-studio because this work has hollered out to me louder and more persistently than anything else has. And I also share all this because I want to remind us both that it’s okay to resist the marketers’ call to buy and sell more, more, more.
Here are some things that feel key to me this year:
I’m not making or ordering a whole bunch of new inventory. In years past, I’ve felt an immense pressure to produce, produce, produce this time of year so that I have as many options as possible for potential buyers. And when I inevitably haven’t gotten my shit together enough to prepare all of this ahead of time, I have been not so nice to myself about it. I don’t have any desire to go down that road this year. No shade to anyone who ramps up their holiday production and puts in long hours cranking out a lot of work! I just personally haven’t seen the returns to justify the amount of stress that goes into this. It’s not for me. So I’m selling what I already have—which is some great stuff! So if there’s something you were hoping to see in my shop that isn’t there, I hope you’ll still consider looking for it or asking about it after the New Year.
I have a pretty short shipping window this year so I can prioritize spending time with my family. Holiday shipping from my shop will resume on December 4 and end on December 18. You can absolutely place orders before the 4th, but I’ll start shipping them out that day. Orders placed after December 17 will ship in the New Year. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m offering free standard US shipping through the end of 2023. (Very sorry to my international friends—international shipping has gotten really expensive, and I unfortunately can’t eat that cost. I’m going to revisit and resume international shipping in the New Year.)
I love being able to offer clergy stoles, and I’ve thought a lot about how to balance affordability for ministers and churches (many of whom are not rolling in dough) and still honoring my own time and energy with what I charge. I’ll most likely be raising my custom clergy stole pricing for 2024. The cost of materials has gone up, and with the time I’m putting into each project, I’m no longer able to pay myself a fair hourly rate. If you know you’re going to be interested in a custom stole in the New Year, go ahead and email me now and we can lock it in at the current price of $285 before it increases. I’m at capacity for orders before the end of the year, but would love to talk to you about 2024 stoles! Please know that I am also working on options for sliding scale pricing and doing more Pay What You Can stoles, so I’ll be counteracting the increasing custom pricing with some more affordable and flexible options.
Ultimately, that tension I talked about in the beginning of this email will most likely always be there to an extent. Holiday season or not, because I am selling my work within our capitalist society, there’s this ever-present pressure to market myself constantly, persuade buyers, increase revenue, decrease cost, grow my reach, blah blah blah.
I just hate the way all of that feels.
I really do believe there’s a way to create work that is meaningful, beautiful, and purposeful AND share that with people who value it in a way that doesn’t feel icky to me, while also helping support myself and my family financially. I know that might sound like a big reach. We’re so submersed in that former way of being, the latter may sound kinda delusional. But I really do believe in it. And it’s what keeps me going down this wild and wonderful path.
Thank you for being a part of this journey. I know being subscribed to some artist’s email list may sound like a little thing, but it’s actually huge. If you see something in here that may interest someone you know, please consider sharing it with a friend! And happy, happy holidays to y’all.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this!!! As a fellow artist, your authenticity here brought tears to my eyes. These struggles and the desire for balance resonate loudly! ❤️