Meet Nancy Dillingham Marks

 

We recently connected with Nancy Dillingham Marks and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nancy , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

From my parents. Doing my best and giving it my all.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

After 35+ years in the corporate world, Nancy took a leap of faith and opened a glass art studio, Glass Arts Collective. Taking her business experience helped to create and design the business plan for a small business.

Nancy learned about fused glass through her Mom. Mom learned about fused glass at the assisted living facility she lived. Nancy wanted have something new to do with Mom and also fell in love with fused glass.

Even though there wasn’t a community in place, Nancy knew she was doing the right thing by creating an environment where folks can come, be creative, learn new things, and make new friends.

Art is such a great benefit for mental health. Working with fused glass is one of the easiest ways to work in glass and can create such a large variety of patterns, techniques, colors, and most are food safe.

Nancy finds sharing her passion is quite contagious. Her silly joke and puns help break the ice and assist in helping the clients to feel comfortable right from the start.

After initially opening, Nancy created an Open Studio program. For those folks who know the techniques they want to use, they can rent space and make what they want. In a short period of time, Nancy saw the number of pieces of art they were making and learned they didn’t have a place to sell their art. Nancy pivoted and enhanced the Open Studio membership and they are welcome to add their art to the studio’s Gift Shop as well!

The Glass Arts Collective’s Gift Shop is online and shipping throughout the United States. There are 13 different artists represented.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) Understanding cash flow and managing inventory.
2) Knowing who your ideal customer is. It’s easy to think everyone is your ideal client, but honestly that isn’t true.
3) The importance of customer service, flexibility, and your boundaries.

We want to believe everyone that walks in the door is our ideal client and we obviously see the beauty and value in our products. That isn’t the case. By recognizing this, you will not feel rejected by those that don’t buy, but rather just chuckle to yourself they weren’t my ideal client.

This is also very important when doing marketing. If you use marketing funds to sponsor something that supports folks that aren’t your ideal clients, your funds will run out quickly with no return on investment. You want to support everyone, but that’s a good way to go broke and be very frustrated.

Marketing is the hardest part of the job, as it isn’t like the movie Field of Dreams, build it and they will come. Your marketing needs to be strategic and you need to be patient.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

This was a challenge for me as it wasn’t a question I had ever had to consider.

The studio’s ideal client is someone with disposable income. They want to be part of a creative community that is positive and supportive of each other.

They do not require previous experience or a background in art.

The majority are women yet men really enjoy the same things.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Barbara (BJ) Fitzgerald, Abby Garner, Darlene Heusser, Pat Spears, Traci Katz, Patty Heinen, Carl Turnbull, Katie Pope, Shelby Wyllie, Stella Schloss

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