Week
2B: Business Research
CopperTide
1. www,coppertide.net
2. CopperTide is Annie Grimes Williams of
Winston-Salem, NC. Annie is a metalsmith
and enamelist who designs and sells jewelry from her website, at the regional craft
shows that she travels to, and in jewelry stores and galleries around the
country. She even sells through
Art-O-Mat machines, repurposed cigarette machines used to distribute the work
of over 300 artists all over the U.S. and worldwide. She also teaches metalsmithing and enameling.
3.
The
artist’s web page has links to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, but they are inconspicuously
located at the very bottom of the web page in a faint pale color. There is a Facebook page and shop which
duplicates the merchandise on her web page. This artist knows how to use
Facebook to her advantage. She posts
almost every day and most posts include her artwork; her last post was three
days ago. She populates the events,
photos, and video sections with interesting material. She has over 1000 likes and 1000
followers.
The Coppertide Instagram page is
utilized even more than Facebook. There
are over 4000 followers and over 3000 posts, The images from what she’s posted
on Facebook are also posted on Instagram on the same day. She even has a link to linktree.
The Pinterest page is under the
artist’s name and not the business. It
is more a personal domain. There are
only 582 followers. It seems very well
organized; there are sixty-six boards. There are almost 9000 pins, the last
being made 16 hours ago.
4. This artist expertly uses the Internet to market
her business. Many businesses and even
artists just have a web site and an online store and sometimes utilize social
media as an advertising tool. Annie has
integrated every aspect of her presence on the Internet. Everything works together to gently drive
business her way. It is most interesting
in this case because the most modern of tools are being so well wielded to
promote ancient methods of artistic expression.
Metalsmithing and enameling both predate the Christian era.
Nicole
Barr
1. www.nicolebarr.com
2. Nicole
Barr is the name of an international wholesale enameled jewelry manufacturer and
distributor that’s been around almost forty years, yet I had never heard of
them. In addition to the lines they
carry, they have thirty years’ experience as an Original Designs Manufacturer
(ODM). They have around 28 employees
with revenue of $5 million.
Enamel has been our passion since we began as a small jewelry
company in 1982. -from web site
Their jewelry is all silver and
gold, and is only available through fine jewelry stores. They specialize in plique-á-jour enameling
which looks like itty bitty stained glass pieces.
3. Nicole
Barr is engaged with six social media platforms with links at the bottom of
every web page. They also have links to
Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest shown prominently on every product page. They usually post at least every three or
four days on Facebook, sometimes more frequently. The posts are beautifully photographed. Some of them are videos. The last post was right
before Labor Day weekend. There are 509
likes and they have 630 followers. The
page was created in 2013. There are
links on in the Facebook About section to the other five social media platforms
that they work with.
Nicole Barr has a Twitter account
but they don’t use it as much as Facebook.
There hasn’t been a Tweet since August 10th. They have 365 total Tweets and 54
followers. This account was also opened
in 2013, a few months before the Facebook account. The Tweets also appear as Facebook posts.
There is a Nicole Barr Pinterest
account and an associated one called Enamel Jewelry. The main account has 91 followers and 7300
monthly views. The Created
section has a large number of individual images of enameled jewelry The Saved section had 381 pins over nine
boards with the last one pinned four weeks ago.
The second Pinterest account has 86 followers and consists of only Created
pins, not Saved, and there are many pins. The images are the same ones used in Facebook
posts and Tweets.
Nicole Barr Jewelry has an Instagram
account with 465 followers and 219 posts.
They are the images used in the posts on other platforms. The last post was the same as the last Facebook
post, done right before Labor Day.
However, the posting here is pretty sporadic like with Twitter.
Their YouTube account has 482 subscribers
with 35 videos. The last few were posted
about five months ago. They are some of
the same videos that are on the web site.
The jewelry company has a LinkedIn
presence and one employee on LinkedIn.
There are 240 followers, four videos, and the last post was five months
ago.
4. Nicole Barr Jewelry doesn’t really use social
media outside of Facebook and Instagram too frequently. However, their customers are mostly retail
jewelry establishments and designers having custom production runs. As a B2B entity, there may not be such a need
to engage with the public.
Ricky
Frank
1. www.rickyfrank.com
2. Ricky Frank is a master enamellist with over 40
years of experience who specializes in cloisonné. He not only sells enameled jewelry but he teaches. He’s developed hundreds of short videos
grouped into modules that are offered as part of the two online courses he
offers or as part of a monthly subscription service. There are forums on his web site to post and discuss
enameling tied into the classes and subscription service. He also sells his wife’s fabric and
multi-media art and a few enameling supplies on his web site.
3. Ricky
uses Facebook and Instagram, although it isn’t clear at first because he doesn’t
use the usual symbols to direct you there.
At the bottom of his web pages, there are a few links under the heading Find
me on Social Media. He has three Facebook pages, Ricky Frank Enamels, Ricky
Frank Workshops, and his personal page.
The first one is his artist page and he has 1700 likes and over 1900
followers. He has what seems like a
never-ending supply of stunning photos of his work but hasn’t posted many of
his videos. He was posting pretty
regularly, almost every day, through last Spring. Unfortunately, he had quadruple bypass
surgery apparently just in time, and has slowed down all his business
activities some.
His second
Facebook page is his education page.
There are over 1100 likes and over 1200 followers. He has all the same photos that are on the
other page but only one video. Like the other
page, he was posting almost every day until this Spring. His personal page is more like a friends and
family page, the way most people use Facebook.
He has 1875 friends and the photo section is short compared to the other
pages with only a few pictures of people.
His posts are a mix of business and personal and were done pretty
regularly until last Spring.
Ricky’s Instagram
page is a little odd as it seems to be published in Portuguese; fortunately, my
browser translates. This page Is not as
well utilized as his Facebook pages.
There are only 72 posts although he does have around 1250
followers. The posts aren’t all of his
work either; some are nature scenes, mostly water. His posting here died off last Spring like on
his other social media pages.
4. Ricky’s
web site is comprehensive, with his three different stores and all the training
materials and forums, but he also uses social media some. I don’t get the feeling that it ties into his
business all that much, though. One of the best things about the social media sites
is that you can see his earlier work, done before what he is now selling. But his web site is his best promotion
vehicle.
Sandra
McEwen
2. Sandra
McEwen is an enamel artist who specializes in cloisonné and champlevé. She
makes some really complex beautiful creations as well as some whimsical
ones. All her work is on fine silver. She also teaches enameling techniques in
person and on Vimeo videos. She is influenced
by gorgeous jewelry of the past while giving it a modern twist. She also sells kits on Etsy for students to
teach themselves.
3. Sandra
has the icons for Twitter, Pinterest, and Vimeo on her web page. From what I read about her and after seeing her
photos, she strikes me as a real sweet down-to-earth person who wouldn’t bother
with Twitter. My visit to her page
supports that . . . she’s only done 16 Tweets and only has 27 followers. Her Tweets are about her work and actually
started way back in 2008, but her last one was sent in May of 2019.
It wouldn’t surprise
me if her Pinterest is bereft of boards, but to my pleasant surprise, it’s
not. She’s organized her Created
section differently so that I just see a big display or album of nicely photographed
pieces of enameled jewelry, my kind of eye candy. She has 1700 followers and 91,600 views per
month! If I switch to her Saved section,
there are 198 pins saved on six boards. And
it turns out that that account is only one of Sandra’s Pinterest Accounts, Sandra
McEwen Enamel Jewelry. She also has one
titled Sandra McEwen Cloisonne Jewelry with 1550 followers and around 100 Created
pins.
Ms. McEwan has
a Vimeo channel for her enameling tutorial videos to which one can subscribe
for $8.95 monthly. They have been posted
to Facebook 380 times and there are 1127 comments. There are 2 days and 22 hours of videos
spread over 100 episodes. The channel
has 364 followers.
Examining the videos
shows that she uses Dropbox to store free templates and she has an Etsy store where
she sells kits and supplies. It is not
referred to on her web page so you kind have to find her on Etsy on your
own. The Etsy store has 602 sales and
has a 5-star rating with 106 reviews. She
sells her work and enamel supply kits that pair with some of her videos.
Sandra’s on
Facebook too but I had to search for her as there were no indications anywhere
that she had a Facebook presence. Since
it is mostly personal, that makes sense.
But satisfied students and customers do post appreciation. She
has 1361 friends, 358 followers, and hasn’t posted since July.
4. Sandra
McEwan has a lot on her web page, Pinterest, and Vimeo. Her participation in other social media is
spotty, anemic at best. Her web presence
is set up to sell products and educational experiences. She really doesn’t seem to do any marketing
and there are definitely no tie-ins with marketing activity. She has nothing like the integrated setup or
system that Annie from Coppertide utilizes so well. It seems like she periodically engages in
social media and then goes a while not using it at all.
Debbie Sheezel
2. Debbie
Sheezel has been an Australian enamellist for forty-five years. She was awarded
the Saul Bell Design Award in 2019 along with the Australian Jewellery Designer
Award and has won multiple other international awards and prizes. She makes sophisticated unusual one-off
pieces in the form of jewelry, boxes, bowls, and plates as well as a lot of
commission work. Debbie created a mural
for the Brisbane International Airport entrance to the arrivals hall that is 54
feet long and nine feet tall; it took two years to create.
3. The
are icons on Debbie Sheezel’s web site for Facebook and Instagram. She joined Facebook in 2010 but it doesn’t
appear to be used for business. The
account has a lot of privacy options applied so some things can’t even be seen. She doesn’t post much and her last posts are
year old ones thanking people for sending birthday wishes.
Her
Instagram account is active and open for business. She’s only made 183 posts yet she has almost
2300 followers. That may be due to the
beauty of the images posted, most of which are of her work. She doesn’t post very often, the last two having
been made at the beginning of August.
4. Debbie
Sheezel’s web site doesn’t have much to it; there’s a small gallery, an about
section, and some blog entries in a poorly formatted blog. There doesn’t appear to be any marketing or
even a store. Her Instagram account is
like a larger gallery but isn’t oriented toward marketing either. The woman must be so good and so famous that
she doesn’t need to market.
Reflections
The companies that I researched
ranged from a metal and enamel artist and teacher with a completely integrated presentation
and marketing setup using social media to its best advantage to an international
high-end enamel jewelry wholesaler and distributor who seem to use social media
mostly to display their beautiful work.
There doesn’t seem to be a marketing campaign going on but since they
retail to other businesses, B2B, they may use other advertising methods such as
trade publications that I am unfamiliar with. The
other three enamellists’ businesses have the advantage that the artists who
front them have varying degrees of fame in enamel circles. That gives them an
edge when it comes to publicizing and marketing their work.
However, enameling, the art of fusing glass
to metal, is relatively invisible in the art world. The only exhibit of enameling I’ve ever seen was
at the Getty. It seems to get lumped in
with metalsmithing. This means that the
people who are interested in enameling and enamel jewelry will be specifically
searching for it; it is unlikely people will stumble across enameling on social
media by chance.
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