My wife, who works for a large retailer of craft supplies and home goods, recently attend a large crafting conference, Crafty Mart’s Midwest Craft Con. She doesn’t like to drive long distances on the highway, so she asked me to take her to Columbus. We get there for the first day’s festivities and I turn the corner in one of the Columbus Convention Center’s larger conference spaces and am gobsmacked when I see over 300 crafters and makers riveted as the evening’s keynote speaker talked about the trials and successes of launching her business.
The audience represents a segment of the new shared or flexible economy. They weren’t there to sell, but to learn how to build and run a small home-based or brick-and-mortar business.
There isn’t a special industry category for this burgeoning part of our GDP, but it is beginning to permeate our daily personal and work lives. It manifests as Uber, Airbnb, co-working spaces, incubators and makerspaces as well as outsourced services such as accounting, HR and contract manufacturing. For the people at this conference and those participating in this aspect of the market, flexibility is the goal in their lives, at home and work.
Solo-preneurs
The majority of these entrepreneurs will probably not rent large retail spaces, hire scads of people or make six-figure incomes from their business. They may fold up when they reach the next plateau in their lives. But they are having an impact on the economy. They are using their creative skills to make things — small crafts such as potholders, blankets, or coasters made from wood they obtained at one of the open makerspaces in our libraries or incubators. They’re buying goods and services, attending craft shows around the state and selling, selling, selling. They support each other, work collaboratively and help find suppliers and outlets.
Many do it because this kind of business provides the flexibility they need in their lives to care for their children or other family members, to supplement their incomes or provide a creative outlet. Some are retired, doing something completely different from their previous careers and supplementing their incomes.
There are roughly 28 million businesses in the U.S. Of those, 22 million have no full-time employees. Seventy eight percent of all business are solo-preneurs — one-person shows. At Art Fair in Ann Arbor Michigan, 10,000 people visit hundreds of makers, crafters and artists over three days to see and buy. The entire city is shut down for this event, and every street is lined with tents and booths.
Focus shift
The folks involved in the crafting/making world are local, they have talent and are problem solvers and risk takers. Could you use someone like that in your company or possibly as a contractor? There is a focus shift happening in our economy with how work and business are done. It may be a huge opportunity for you, but you need to see it and get involved to understand what’s happening and how your company might participate.
John Myers is helping the University of Mount Union build out its entrepreneurship program, connecting with manufacturing companies to provide R&D and to establish a patent and IP commercialization policy as well as managing its incubator.
