My Thoughts on Selling Sculptures

Lollipop Lolita, OOAK polymer clay sculpture by Nicole West
Sold for $1056.44 AUD on eBay

Today I beg the question, what makes a polymer clay sculpture sell at a high price? I know a lot of people wonder this question all the time. It's so hard to predict how much a sculpture will sell for. Polymer clay sculptures are, quite honestly, a relatively new medium. You look at paintings, bronze sculptures and stone artworks, they've all been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Paintings from professional artists can sell anywhere from $200 - $55,000, give or take. Who decided this price? How did they decide this price?
From a business perspective, you can look at it like this:
Decided hourly rate x hours spent, + cost of materials and selling fees = Artwork price.

But I fear this equation doesn't really work. Why not? I see artists out there who work on a piece for over a month and get $70 for their auctioned sculpture. If they decided they don't want fate to predict their price, they put a reserve, or a higher asking price. But often, these works do not sell. What do you do? I find most artists are practically giving away their works at prices cheaper than it cost to make them for the purpose of getting exposure. Is this harmful?

It's rumoured that customers are stubborn creatures. While you're starting out, they may be buying your works for $50 a pop. However, with time, you hone your skills and your sculptures start to resemble the sculptures of the masters. Now you should be able to get thousands for your works! You eagerly watch your item in ebay waiting for that elusive final selling price. $350?? What? Why did it sell so cheap? Weeks of meticulous work has gone for a price cheaper than if you were walking dogs for a living. Many people think that if you've got the reputation of selling cheap, it actually devalues your work. So how do you sell when you're first starting out?

I know I've been hit with this problem. When I first started out I sold some sculptures to a lady for well under what it was costing me in time and materiels to make. I explained to her when I first sold them that the prices would go up when my sculptures become more popular and I'm better known. The prices that she was getting was promotional only. She agreed to these terms and bought the sculptures from me. A couple years down the track, my sculptures were in much higher demand and I started creeping up my prices closer to what I needed to be getting for them to cover costs. This lady had been reselling my sculptures at double what she paid me for them, which is what I recommended when I first started. However, when my prices went up, hers went up... still at double. It got to the point where she said that people wouldn't buy it at such a high price and told me I had to lower my prices. There was a problem with her logic...
If I sold her a sculpture for $350, then she would try to sell it at $700. If she lowered her prices and sold it at $500 instead, she would still be making $150 profit for every sculpture and they would keep selling weekly. This was the same profit that she was making when I started. If she had've lowered her prices, I would be getting what I needed and she would be getting the same profit and the sculptures would be selling just as fast as they used to. However she wanted me to lower my prices so she would get a larger profit.

I could've backed off, lowered my prices and continued to sell at charity prices. But shouldn't you reason like this... if she's that concerned about making such a huge profit, how long does she think I would be able to sell sculptures at those prices? She was so concerned about her own temporary profits that she wasn't looking after the artists' wellfare, who could possibly bring her regular profits for many years to come. If she wasn't going to help me keep my business running at a mutual benefit, I wasn't interested in lining her pockets. I stopped selling to her.
It wasn't long until I realised she was forgetting to hand out my certificates of authenticity, not mentioning my name at all and she had even changed the name of one of my sculptures. She even repeatedly broke my sculptures and got me to fix them free of charge. To continue selling with her would be detrimental to my career as an artist. I am thankful I didn't drop my prices for her.


Take a look at the wonderful work by Nicole West at the beginning of this post. She sold this recently for the price of $1056.44 AUD. Now that's nothing to be coughed at. However, how many hours did she spend making this piece? Goodness knows this amazing sculpture is worth closer to $2000. Look at the detail!

Nicole West has this amazing ability to make the eyes look very ethereal. The eyelashes are meticulously placed and you can even see her little teeth poking out from her luscious lips. Her hair is Tibetan Lamb Wool and goodness knows the paint job is amazing. Nicole also told me once that she sculpts the whole doll, and doesn't series bake. This is a huge feat as many cannot do this. Clearly there is great talent here, but how was the price decided? The auction started at $200; what made people decide to keep and stop bidding?

I wonder if the price is determined by the pure fact that Nicole West has a number of avid collectors. Or maybe it was determined by the level of detail that she puts into her sculptures. What about realism? Maybe the fact that her sculptures look very believable is a determining factor?

If these all decide whether or not a sculpture gets a high price, would that mean that any sculpture that follows those sorts of rules should expect to get the same price?

Take a look at this next sculpture...

The sculpture above is a one-of-a-kind polymer clay sculpture by Julie Mansergh, or as she's better known, "Fairies In The Attic" (FITA). It is a very different sculpture, but still has all of these supposed "deciding factors" of a high selling sculpture. Julie is well known, puts a huge amount of effort into getting incredible details (and she makes a point of photo-cataloguing all of the details) and is definitely known for the realism of her works. Some, if not all of her sculptures are practically perfect in anatomy and tend to look more like a photograph, instead of a small polymer clay sculpture. Her work really is outstanding.

However, here is the cruncher... this particular sculpture sold for only $769.31 AUD. Admittedly a lot of her sculptures do drag in very good prices, but why the difference between the two I'm comparing? The amount of talent needed to create such a stunning piece is surely worth more than the sales price? At least, would it not be closely comparable to the talent of Nicole? Why has one artist done better than the other when they both have extraordinary talent?

This leads into my next thought. The market. Both of these sculptures were sold in a period of time fairly close to each other. Is it possible that during this period of time, more people were looking for something cute, bouncing with character, yet still keeping sexy undertones? Perhaps the market wasn't there for a sculpture, more real to life, but somewhat more serious and sultry. So what happens there? How do you know what people are willing to pay big dollars for? What style of sculpture is the audience looking for? A lot of it must be hit and miss. Julie, no doubt, has sold sculptures just amazing as this one, and received double or more for it. A lot of it depends on your sculpture being seen by the right eyes. Not matter what the economy is doing, there's always someone out there who wants to buy your work. But putting in the effort to market your work to the most amount of people can be tricky. If you're looking at making a living of your sculptures, it would be easier to try and make a sculpture that would appeal to the largest market.

Recent trends show that customers of polymer clay sculptures are looking for sculptures of fantasy creatures, especially mermaids and fairies, pin-up females and occasionally babies. By looking at how sales are going, I find that anything that deters from these subjects tends to be a lot more difficult to sell at high prices. The polymer clay niche is relatively small in the arts world and hitting the market right is a difficult move. I find it easier selling sculptures when people can see the sculpture face to face before buying. I attribute this to the fact I've never been very talented with taking clear photos of my sculptures. Online, I have more difficulty, but when people see my work they seem like they can't get enough of my work.

It seems like there's a lot of little things that can improve your chances of being a successful OOAK art doll sculptor. However, there isn't really a winning formula. With everything I've observed, I can think of a few tips:

• Hit the market correctly, if fairies, babies and pretty women are selling, make that, but do it in a unique way. Think of something original, without being too risky and you find yourself a winner.
• Study anatomy. Even if your work is stylised, there are still anatomy principles to follow. Focus on making your sculptures believable. People can tell if your style is on purpose or because of a lack of knowledge. This will probably be your hardest challenge, but it is worth it. I still have a long way to go, but I found that the amount of improvement I've made so far with my sculpting has already made a huge difference to the sales prices.
• Look after your customers. If someone has just paid you for your sculpture, be professional in how you carry out the transaction. People buying from you appreciate art; they are special and need to be treated that way. The world needs more art collectors.
• Don't short-change yourself, it's really hard to break the ceiling price of your artworks after you've started. If your sculpture refuses to sell, maybe it needs some more work, or more than likely it's simply the market hasn't found your work yet. Invest in a nice glass cabinet and keep your works until they get the price you need. If you decide you don't want to hang onto it anymore and want to give it away, give it to someone special in your life. Letting it go to the public for next to nothing will only devalue your work, and they probably won't appreciate it as much as someone who knows and loves you will.
• Attention to detail. People LOVE detailed work. When someone can discover something new every time they look at your work, you know you have an outstanding product. I find even people who still haven't mastered anatomy will still get a higher price than people who's work is very simple. Detailing is candy for the eyes.
• Get known. Join forums, write a blog, write to magazines and talk to the community. I was having a chat once to a librarian about what I do and wound up giving her my business card. Not long after, I got a phone call from her asking me to do a large display in the front of the town library to which I agreed. That's a lot of exposure to my local market right there. She also told me that I would have an audience of at least 30 people if I did a seminar in the business room of the library about what I do. That's possible 100's of word-of-mouth exposure. All that from having a chat to a librarian.
• Research!! Keep watching the market and DON'T STOP. It gives you new ideas and lets you know which ideas aren't popular.
  

Obviously I don't have the last word on selling sculptures, but hopefully these thoughts my help you hone in your business skills.

What has been your experience on selling sculptures? Please leave a comment.


Just a note: I'm currently attempting to re-install my computer as its very sick. It's running terribly slowly which is making it difficult to backup. Sorry for any delays in communication, especially with emails as my outlook barely wants to open at the moment. Hopefully I can overhaul my poor laptop soon.