October 2- 8, 2003

naked city

Slash and Earn

Into the ring: Joanne Sherrow works on a piece from her line of jewelry.

Want to be a designer? You can do it without quitting your day job.

by Caroline Tiger

Joanne Sherrow is a slasher-- a textile designer/jewelry designer. By day the 29-year-old commutes from her home in Northeast Philadelphia to her gig as a textile designer at Charming Shoppes. By night (cue sinister music here), she holes up in her soldering studio and puts in up to 20 hours per week designing and making the jewelry she sells online at www.funkyjewels.com and in local boutiques, including Open House and Hip-E-Chick. Sherrow attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for textile design, but her jewelry skills are mostly self-taught. After being inspired by a college roommate to begin basic stuff like weaving seed beads, Sherrow took some metalsmithing classes to learn lost-wax casting, soldering and sawing. "In the beginning, the jewelry-making was just for fun," she says. "I would give them out as gifts." Then she joined the Traveling Wares collective, a group of Philadelphia craftspeople who sell their work in bars during the holidays.

In March 2001, Sherrow officially launched Funky Jewels, mostly with the help of friends -- a friend who designed the logo, business cards and website; another friend who helped her formulate a business plan; a sister who helps out with the public relations. And though she admits to being crazed as a result of her busy schedule, this slasher is happy living a double life. In school, her textile and jewelry design would play off of one another. She incorporated the knitting techniques she learned at FIT into her jewelry, creating knit-wire bracelets and necklaces out of both coded copper and fine silver wire, often weaving in stones. Nowadays, the jewelry she makes is of a much different aesthetic than the prints she designs for the misses who shop at Fashion Bug, but that suits her fine. "I like the variety," she says. "It keeps me balanced."

Another Philadelphia slasher, Alicia Freile, a 29-year-old book designer/handbag designer, is lucky enough to derive inspiration from her day job at Running Press Book Publishers. "Sometimes a color combination I'm using in a book design will stay with me," says Freile. "And I'll work it into a bag." Her new line of alphabet bags features a cursive font she discovered working on a book project. Freile launched her sideline company, Gauchita (meaning "little cowgirl" in Spanish), in September 2002. Purse-making had been a hobby for Freile prior to the launch. Her first sale consisted of seven purses for her sister-in-law's wedding attendants. "People kept stopping the girls on the street," she says, "and I realized I'd have to come up with a name for myself." Since "gauchito," a favorite word of hers since she'd seen it in a Disney movie as a child, was already taken, she settled for the feminine variation. She still sells the wedding bag -- the dot bag, decorated with rows of embroidered French knots -- on her website,

www.gauchita.com.

Technology has allowed sideliners such as Sherrow and Freile to easily expand their hobbies into businesses. Freile’s website went up for free, as an extension of her web designer husband’s site. Even if you have to pay to host a site, the cost is minimal compared to the potential profits. Immediately after Sherrow appears at a craft show, she’ll get 150 hits on her site. And though Freile hasn’t placed any of her handbags in local boutiques, a shop in Utah recently placed an order based solely on seeing www.gauchita.com. Once online, a crafter can link to other crafters’ sites and so on and so on to create a shopping network for a built-in audience interested in one-of-a-kind DIY products. Getcrafty.com, the mothership of all crafting websites, gets about 175,000 unique visitors per month, according to Tsia Carson, editor in chief of the site and an adjunct professor in the interactive media department at the University of the Arts. Getcrafty’s content pages highlight users’ work -- including hand-crocheted skulls, and T-shirts made from underwear -- and the message boards act as a community for people who want to learn new crafts or who need advice about adding a slash to their title. There are threads on how to write a business plan or how to create a logo. "But I think the word ’business’ is used pretty loosely," Carson says. "Some people sell their crafts. Others actually run craft businesses. On our boards, it’s mostly the former."

Word of mouth is the other major publicity tactic used by sideliners, especially those whose businesses are not yet online. Shana Feight, a 28-year-old legal recruiter in Center City, launched a jewelry design business called The Stone in spring 2002 with her friend, Mary Lisa DellaPorta. She sells some of her large, chunky pieces at craft shows, including the Chestnut Hill Fall for the Arts Festival art show coming up on Oct. 12, but mostly sells her work through word of mouth and referrals. She tried to bring some pieces into her legal job to sell to her co-workers, but it turns out she wasn’t allowed to promote her alternative lifestyle at work. She says, "They won’t let me mix the two."

Tips for opening a sideline business:

Branding: Give your business a name, and name all of your products, too. This will help you keep track of each one in your business logs, and will also allow customers to ask for their favorite designs by name.

Buy supplies cheap: Buy fabric on Fabric Row and incorporate flea-market and Goodwill finds into your designs. Check the paper on the weekend for estate-sale announcements.

Pricing: Record how much the supplies cost for each piece you’re selling, and the amount of time you’ve put into it. Research similar works made by other people and how much they cost. Come up with a figure that seems right based on all of these factors. Of course, raise the price accordingly once you appear in Vogue and become a must-have for fashionistas everywhere.

Packaging and shipping: Make it slick and professional. Include a business card; consider printing up professional-looking return-address labels.

Go online: Launch a website, and borrow or buy a scanner or digital camera to post your offerings. Once you have a website, put your URL on a business card and give it to anyone who asks. Some crafting websites: Getcrafty.com, Bust.com (click on Girl Wide Web), Churchofcraft.org and Renegadecraft.com.

Get into bricks-and-mortar stores: Some places in Philly carry work by local artisans, like Open House, The Crooked Frame and Sodafine. Walk around to see which boutiques share your aesthetic and ask to talk to the manager or owner. Bring professional photographs of your work, and/or wear some on your person.