About Workingswell, Motivations and Intentions

Hello, my name is John Quinn, I'm a self-employed Craftsperson with an innovative system for making vases from natural stone and I'm the Founder of Workingswell.com.

The primary objective when starting this site was to benefit designing craftspeople, like myself, who have designed and developed innovative functional art products. The central idea behind Workingswell is that the designing craftspeople offer licenses to use their designs along with item specific production information and training. It provides potential income for craftspeople from their intellectual property without trying to go the mass manufacturing route. Workingswell offers a structured but flexible negotiating process leading to a contractual release of trade secrets and other intellectual property. It's about passing along designs and methods to assist aspiring maker-sellers in a manner that rewards the success of combining innovation and experience. 

License agreements developed using Workingswell's negotiating system are regional in nature. This enables the artisan craftspeople to potentially sell their information and training a number of times which of course allows a lower asking price and encourages the locally centered marketing that works best for functional art items.

My personal motivator was recognizing the damage being inflicted on the planet by international mass production and transportation, and realizing that I too contributed to the damage by using imported stone and then shipping my vases around the continent and beyond. I wanted to find a way to lessen the environmental impact of my own work and hopefully effect the big picture too. It was with some delight that I realized that turning to local materials and training others to use materials that are local to them made much more sense than guarding my trade secrets in an attempt to maintain a global monopoly.

One positive sign spanning both the environmental and economical fronts is the growing movement to redevelop economies that function locally. What started with locavores espousing the health benefits of food from farmer's markets is evolving into a much broader public understanding that price does not necessarily reflect true cost when environmental and social costs of globalization inspired mass production are factored in. 

It's my hope that Workingswell.com can play a part by encouraging development of small scale, sustainable businesses that can flourish locally. Small scale manufacturing directed towards local sales almost inevitably impacts less on the environment than international, industrial scale production. What's more, Workingswell contributors must provide an honest assessment of the potential environmental impact and health hazards associated with of the opportunity they are offering. The site will encourage the most environmentally sound self-employment opportunities with prominent visibility. 

Crafting handmade items for sale out of raw materials can be a rewarding route to self-employment. However few self employed craftspeople would describe the development of their businesses as being simple or easy. The truth is that leaning the techniques of a craft at an art school or technical college can give a student little more than naive enthusiasm when a host of abilities are needed to employ those techniques in successful self employment. Generally these additional skills have to be learnt the hard way, without help and on the job. Workingswell's craftsperson contributors may provide mentor style, consultative support on such things as sales techniques and advertising as well as practical training in manufacture and a license to use designs, innovative methods and trade secrets. 

Ideas for the site developed over many years observing my fellow Artisans and their work at local craft fairs and farmer's markets. I saw how people struggle to develop an idea into a successful product. Partially realized items, mistakes in display, lack of payment options and silly pricing are all too often the earmark of inexperienced Marketeers. Many people give up after a year or two as they realize the extent of what they need to do and decide that their sales do not merit the effort. Sometimes, the sad thing is that the essence of the idea was fine, it's just that the person involved was ill prepared for the work. It was a learn on the job situation and, without help, they could not learn fast enough. Guidance and some proven items to compliment their own ideas may have given them the time to succeed.

Of course I also saw successes, the folks who I hope will be Contributors to Workingswell. They evolved into smooth operators. They learnt from mistakes, they observed the response to their wares and honed their product lines and sales strategy accordingly, most importantly they not only learnt how to sell their items, they also perfected a production system that allowed them enough stock to sell steadily throughout the busiest days when the real profits are made.

Naturally, without a method of benefiting from their intellectual property, these successful maker-sellers guard their process and protect their trade secrets, the last thing they want is similar stuff showing up a few booths down the market. Unfortunately, this means that unique skills and systems are commonly retired with their inventors and neither the designers or their families ever receive the lasting benefits they truly deserve.