Crafting a market | The Maine Highlands Guild helps artisans and craftspeople in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties find buyers for their goods

Everyone, it seemed, wanted baby bonnets. At the New York International Gift Fair in August, the angora bonnets knit by Joan Perkins and Cathy Oliver at their Lincoln-area rabbit farms attracted a lot of interest among gift shops and wholesalers. So many orders came in for the high-end baby shower gifts that they were discreetly relocated to discourage sales.

"We actually had to push their products to the back of the booth because they were getting so many orders they wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand," says Tracy Michaud Stutzman, executive director of the Maine Highlands Guild. A nonprofit economic and community development organization that promotes the arts, artisans, the creative economy and the cultural heritage of Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, the guild sponsored the booth in which the bonnets were located.

The success of the angora baby wear helped attract interest in the other wares located in the guild's booth, work by many of its 116 members. "The nice thing is that a wholesaler may be interested in one thing, and then they'll notice something else while they're standing there, and the products build off each other," says Stutzman, 29.

Guild members have been building off one another's success ˆ— and the good fortunes of the organization itself ˆ— since it was founded in Dover-Foxcroft in the summer of 2002. The organization represents companies large and small, from the likes of Moosehead Furniture, one of the region's larger and most recognizable businesses, to tiny, kitchen-table enterprises like the Original Bangor Brownie and Angel Kisses, the baby bonnet company. The small artisans and crafters benefit most from the guild's services, which include showing members' wares at gift shows across the country.

Access to markets is at the core of what the Guild offers members, but it's only one component of a three-pronged strategy that Stutzman thinks is good for small businesses, good for the economy and good for Maine. One of the other pieces is education, which the guild specializes in, offering a multitude of small-business workshops. The organization also partners with the Incubator Without Walls program to provide additional courses. And the last ˆ— and arguably most important ˆ— piece, according to Stutzman, is community. "Those three things are what the creative economy is all about," she says. "Sometimes in the business world community development gets left behind. But recognizing the business as well as the community and the art ˆ— that seems to answer a real need in our area."

The strategy worked for baby bonnet knitter and Angel Kisses owner Joan Perkins. "I love to knit, I know fiber and I know my products," says Perkins, who has been in business for about a year. "But I didn't have any experience in the business end of things. The guild has been a godsend for us ˆ— there is no way we could market without it."

Angel Kisses' story is fairly typical of guild members, according to Stutzman. The company hadn't figured out packaging or marketing when it came to a series of guild workshops. "We helped them with the type of box, the type of tissue, the labeling," she says. "They had these beautiful, high-end products but they weren't quite sure how to take it to the next level."

John Holden, director of business development for the Eastern Maine Development Corporation, which was involved with the guild from the beginning, thinks the organization's local focus is a large part of its success. "The idea of branding a region came out of the work we'd done in looking at the creative economy and cultural heritage. Thus came the name of the Maine Highlands and the tourism end of things," he says, referring to a roughly two-year-old effort to establish Penobscot and Piscataquis counties ˆ— dubbed the Maine Highlands ˆ— as a tourism destination. "And we figured if we're branding and marketing a region, we could tie that to the branding and marketing of locally made products."

From anthropology to marketing
For Tracy Michaud Stutzman, it all started because of an interest in anthropology. The Dover-Foxcroft native earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh; she and her designer husband, Sunny ˆ— a native of Sangerville ˆ— thought their Maine days were over. "We went to college expecting never to come back," she says.

But after living in the city of Pittsburgh for three years, they began to look at Maine and New England a little more fondly. Landing a job for a doctor of anthropology and an industrial designer might be tricky, they thought, except in an urban area. "We figured we could maybe find work in Boston or Portland," says Stutzman. And then came the
unlikeliest of phone calls. "The Piscataquis County Economic Development Council...
wanted to do some research in micro-enterprise and the role it plays in cultural development. They heard I was from the area and had a degree in cultural anthropology and asked if I'd be interested in the project," she says. "I've got colleagues who have to go to third-world countries to study this sort of thing."

At about the same time, in 1999, Dexter Shoe was looking for a designer willing to make the move to Dexter, Maine. Everything fell into place, and Stutzman and her husband moved back to Dover-Foxcroft. Stutzman got to work looking into the impact of micro-enterprise ˆ— tiny outfits that put the "small" in small business ˆ— and after a while issued a report that showed a rather astonishing conclusion: "Lo and behold," she says, "if you add up all of these micro-enterprises the economic impact is as great as if there were one big company here."

At the same time Stutzman also was working on an inventory of the area's cultural resources ˆ— museums, historical societies, libraries, and artists and studios. The end result was the publication of a directory and map ˆ— and again the summary was startling. "People were amazed at all the talent we have here," she says. The next logical step for the economic development planners was to spread the word about these findings, to educate the public on the number of artisans and crafters in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties and the way their presence added value to the community.

"This was at a time when there was a distinct lack of pride in the area," Stutzman notes. "Dexter Shoe had moved operations overseas, and [Piscataquis County] became the most impoverished county in Maine. Instead of wallowing in dejection we decided to get together and really promote what was going on that was good."

PCEDC and the Eastern Maine Development Corporation also asked themselves what they could be doing to encourage micro businesses, and the guild concept was born. But it was a concept only.

Meanwhile, the closure of Dexter in early 2002 made Stutzman and her husband rethink their options. Her projects were winding down, his job was evaporating and they considered moving someplace larger. But they weren't particularly thrilled with the idea of moving away once again. "We'd both gotten so involved in this community, and just re-fell in love with it, and all of this positive stuff was beginning to happen that we were involved with. We felt we just couldn't leave," she says.

Once the couple made the decision to stay, they found doors opened again. Stutzman's husband got a job as a designer at Moosehead Furniture, and, once again, the phone serendipitously rang for Tracy Michaud Stutzman. On the other end was Sharon Rosen of the Bangor-based Pentagoet Foundation. "She called me out of the blue," says Stutzman, "and said, "Do you still want to start this guild? Because we want to fund it.'"

Finding critical mass
Pentagoet (now defunct) had become aware of the guild from a presentation Stutzman had given to the Maine Arts Commission. "We were interested in economic development, especially in rural Maine," says Rosen, who is now a consultant to foundations and nonprofits with Portland-based Casco Passage. "I found the guild to be both a creative and a well-grounded approach. It seemed carefully conceived and smart, and I liked that it was rooted in the culture and history of the region."

With initial funding of $115,000 in place, the PCEDC contracted with Stutzman to begin to make the guild a reality. She assembled a steering committee of artisans and small-businesspeople. A board of directors followed, which included the CEO of Moosehead Furniture, an investment advisor, a lawyer and several people from the steering committee. In August of 2002, within a year of Stutzman receiving her call from Rosen, the Maine Highlands Guild incorporated as a nonprofit.

Stutzman and a small staff ˆ— one part-timer and the occasional contractor ˆ— set about recruiting members and putting together educational and outreach arms. They did programs in schools, demonstrating to kids that the potter down the road is actually earning a living and that the creative economy is an option for them when they're done with school. They hold special events, art openings, networking functions, mentoring sessions and innumerable business workshops on subjects such as marketing and packaging. The board meets regularly, squeezing themselves around one of the big dining room tables at the back of the Moosehead Factory Outlet Store on Main Street in Dover-Foxcroft.

The guild began to achieve critical mass in the spring of 2003, and arranged with Moosehead to have members showcase their wares at its outlet. The group attended its first trade show at about the same time, and membership is rising. Recently, the guild learned that it has the funding to create a second full-time staff position, via a $125,000 state grant to the guild and the Incubator Without Walls program.

The additional funding is welcome; as Stutzman says, the guild needs continued support from grantmakers for several years until it can one day become self-sustaining. (See "Getting noticed," p. 43.) Another challenge of running the guild, itself a small, albeit nonprofit, business, is that there is what Stutzman describes as a "shrinking" ˆ— and hard-to-find ˆ— market for locally made products. However, she adds, it's precisely the local flavor of guild members' products that makes them stand out. That's why she plans to continue seeking new members from across the region. "We're growing," Stutzman says, "but we know there's a lot more small-business owners in this area that are untapped."

When members feel they are ready to take their wares to the shows, they put them through the guild's jurying process, during which their work is judged on quality, packaging, pricing and marketability. If their products are not yet up to guild standards, they can get help from workshops and consultations. If they're ready, they get a place in the guild's booth at wholesale shows like the ones the group's attended in Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver and New York.

"The number one need we have identified [among members] is access to markets," says Stutzman. "It's hard for one person or one small business to come up with the $10,000 needed to go to a big wholesaler show." That was certainly true of Angel Kisses, the baby wear company. "We didn't have the money to go to these shows or run to the coast to market to shops," says Perkins.

Now that they have, through the guild, Perkins says Angel Kisses is ready to grow. "The New York show was a big smash for us," she says. "We had intended to go to the Boston show, but we had to call Tracy and tell her not to bring our stuff. We had so many orders from New York. Our rabbits can only produce so much angora a year."