CRAFTS : Artist Mann Stays on Top by Keeping Eye on Bottom Line

To jewelry designer Thomas Mann, it’s black and white.

“Unless you decide you’re going to do the business as well as you do the craft, you will not succeed,” he says.

Any crafter who prefers a root canal to cost analysis won’t like those words. But they reflect the attitude that’s made Mann one of the nation’s most successful craft artists.

Some 150 outlets sell his jewelry. He designs about that many new pieces each year--sculpture and furniture as well as jewelry--and he runs a $1-million business that he built from scratch.

Mann shares his business acumen in “Design for Survival” workshops held around the country but has none planned on the West Coast this year. So, on a recent trip to New Orleans, his home base, I asked him to discuss the workshop’s key concepts.

Mann’s trademark “techno-romantic” style of pins, earrings and necklaces meld modern industrial materials and romantic imagery.

Using found and fabricated elements, he juxtaposes electronic components, bits of colorful Lucite and model-train tracks with hearts and arrows, miniature toys and turn-of-the-century French postcard cutouts.

He’s been selling his work for 22 years, with hired assistants helping produce it from the start, he said. But he suddenly became aware nearly a decade ago that to realize his artistic potential, he’d have to get his business “seriously organized.”

Part of the solution was to expand his work force so he could be free to continually create new designs. At the time he had about six employees.

Today, he employs 21 people to reproduce his designs and help run his business. They work in two studios, Mann’s Gallery I/O and a shop, all in a building outside of New Orleans’ French Quarter.

“I call it the critical delegation point,” he explained during an interview in his office above the gallery. “It’s that point where you realize (you’re making an item) that’s good, that’s producing income for you, but you’re bored with it, so you just move on, and you throw away this enormous resource simply because you haven’t been willing to ‘delegate.’

“Everything I’m doing right now is about delegating responsibility to other people, sharing the whole deal with them, in order for me to be able to continue on” creatively.

Mann’s workshop follows his own formula for success. It all boils down, he said, to “targeting your market.”

Many crafters prefer to be inspired strictly by the Muses. But he suggests that those who design with sales in mind have better odds.

For instance, a jeweler may want to use a complicated technique to make a pair of earrings he or she wants to sell for $100. But that technique may be too labor-intensive to bring enough profit.

The jeweler must find a more cost-effective way to produce similar earrings, Mann said.

“That’s where your ability and your intuition and your skill and everything as a designer comes in to say, ‘OK, I want to make earrings that will sell for $100 and I want them to look this way. How do I have to make them in order to make money at that price?’

“I believe that (a design) can carry your personality,” he said. But “if you want to utilize your talent to have a career in crafts, there are necessarily certain compromises, though I don’t use the word compromises. What I call that is the professional attunement of your talent to the marketplace. That is as much of a creative challenge as doing the one-of-a-kind stuff. You’re designing (a) product for a market that can provide the economic wherewithal you need to do your one-of-a-kind work.”

Of course, rather than adapting a design, a crafter may find a gallery willing to pay top price, Mann said.

“That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Are we selling at the mall, or are we selling (at an exclusive gallery)? And if we are selling at (an exclusive gallery), are we selling enough to generate the money we need . . . or can we make even more money by (adapting the product) to appeal to the general public” and thus generate more sales?

Mann, 45, whose mother had never heard of the German author when she named her son, attributes his career-long effort to combine business and art to an “innate entrepreneurial attitude toward life.”

Growing up in Allentown, Pa., he charged other kids to get into magic shows he staged. Later, while in high school, he was influenced by the “enormous financial and commercial success” of a local silversmith, he said. By the time he was 18, he had opened his own jewelry store.

Recently, he opened a solo exhibit of his full-scale sculpture in New Orleans. He’s had several such shows over the past five years (he hopes within the next decade to be as well known for his sculpture as for his jewelry), but this was the first at his own gallery.

The works in “Food for Thought,” a departure from techno-romantic, dealt with world hunger. They went for up to $4,800. However, most of his jewelry is priced between $50 and $200, reflecting his distaste for elitism.

Designing work for an upscale gallery, he said, “is exactly the same thing in my mind as designing for The Limited” clothing store chain.

Still, finding the right niche takes a lot of window shopping.

“You have to go into these stores and see who’s doing what at what prices, and how it’s being presented,” he said.

Today, he quickly cases any jewelry joint.

“I can just talk with the owner or salesperson and know whether they could get behind my work or not. That’s probably one of the most important factors--whether they will support it--because it won’t sell unless they (aggressively) sell it.”

Helping galleries promote the work, by providing photographs and other publicity materials, has greatly boosted his sales, Mann said.

“A lot of artists starting out miss that; they don’t know they have to make an investment on that side of things.”

Ultimately, however, success depends largely on something that’s not easily taught, he said.

“You have to learn all of this stuff, and then you have to learn to trust your intuition. That’s really what it’s all about. That’s the bottom line in this business.”

For information about Thomas Mann’s “Design for Survival” workshops, call (504) 581-2113. In Orange County, Mann’s jewelry is sold at Garrett White Gallery, 664 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach; LA Eyeworks, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa; and Discoveries, 17350 17th St., E, Tustin.