Dear friends, We dont normally share long-winded proposals and ideas on our Facebook page, but this is a special circumstance that requires more than a few silly sentences. Something that our staff does at Lowe Mill to make sure we continue to grow and progress is set benchmarks for improvement, usually incrementing those benchmarks in periods of years. One very important benchmark that we set years ago was to reach a point where Lowe Mill was a well-known and well-loved name to just about everyone living in Huntsville. Very recently that specific goal was met, clearly indicated every week by the hundreds of people who visit the Mill even on days when we have no major events, free stuff, or insane marketing gimmicks. In just the past two years our number of fans on Facebook has increased by ten thousand. Outside of the virtual world, the number of locals on the street who say Whats Lowe Mill? when someone mentions our facility is in steep decline and quickly becoming a minority. We couldnt be more ecstatic about that! Another critical benchmark for our organization is financial sustainability (No, this is not about to turn into a charity plea. Keep reading!). Contrary to what most people would assume, Lowe Mill is an LLC and not a tax-exempt non-profit. We love this status because it allows us to focus on making art full-time rather than dealing with politics and red tape, but it does have monetary drawbacks. Lowe Mill does not qualify for state or federal funding (that we know of), and few people wish to donate large amounts of money to organizations that dont qualify for tax deductions. For us the trade-off of charitable convenience for operational freedom is still worth it, and weve been able to grow Lowe Mill as a business with a lot of success. Still, Lowe Mills continued existence ultimately depends on a sustainable source of income to keep our doors open. The primary source of that income is rent. Artists and businesses lease space here, and the money they make from their sales and services goes towards paying for those spaces. 3rd parties also rent our event spaces for classes, shows, and whatever else. Although making some kind of profit eventually would be great, our ultimate goal is simply to break even. Sustainability. Currently rent alone is not usually enough for Lowe Mill to break even. There are many months where our utility expenses, payroll, and maintenance costs exceed our income. This is by design though, so please dont freak out! You see, places like Lowe Mill just dont ever happen. Giant open-to-the-public cultural centers that have hundreds of artists and thousands of events in a refurbished, historically-maintained building just dont exist as private businesses. THEY. JUST. DONT. What you are witnessing right here in Huntsville is incredibly unique, and we challenge you to find any other place in the world that is doing what Huntsville is doing, on the scale Huntsville is doing it. Because what we are doing here is so new and so unique, our approach has to be different from that of most other businesses, non-profits, and organizations. Put simply, we offer retail space to renters at a cost much more affordable than most real estate, giving artists a chance to start their business in an environment they can afford. The hope is that as those artists and small businesses grow and thrive in this incubator-like environment they will eventually have a viable enough income to continue renting here as studio leases incrementally approach a sustainable price over the years. Simply giving people affordable rent isnt enough to help artists and small businesses thrive though. Real estate is only as valuable as its location, and the job of Lowe Mills staff is to make sure this location has as much value as possible by bringing in traffic and potential shoppers. Our staff organizes events so that you will have a reason to visit, we market those events so that you will want to visit, and we do everything in our power to make sure you have a good time while you are here. We also market our artists work so that potential collectors can discover them even if they dont visit Lowe Mill at all. In short, the more people who know about and visit Lowe Mill, and the more art buyers who discover our artists, the closer Lowe Mill will get to achieving sustainability. This brings us to the ultimate reason for this tl;dr status update. Its our benchmark for the year 2014… This year our goal is for Lowe Mill to become more than just a favorite local hotspot; This year we want Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment to become a regional,national, and worldwide DESTINATION. Sure, lots of you guys tell your out-of-town guests that You have GOT to go to this awesome place called Lowe Mill. Thats awesome of you, and we appreciate it more than words can express! But how much more awesome would it be if people knew about Lowe Mill *before* they visited Huntsville? How awesome would it be if people came to Huntsville specifically *because* they heard about Lowe Mill? In Valley Planets recent Best of the Valley poll Lowe Mill came in just a few points behind the Space and Rocket Center as Huntsvilles favorite local attraction. Its absolutely thrilling that our creative arts facility is becoming such a well known entity in a city that has always been known as the Rocket City. We would never want to compete with our amazing Space and Rocket Center, but we feel like the two go hand-in-hand as excellent reasons for people to travel to HSV. Theres no good reason that people from all over the world arent seeing Lowe Mill pop up in their magazines, social media feeds, and travel guides RIGHT NOW. The question is, why are we telling YOU all this? We are telling you because we think you can help! We want to reach out to a larger audience of non-Huntsvillians who care about arts and culture, but we need to accomplish this on a shoestring budget that does not pay for advertising. This means good old-fashioned word of mouth and networking. Of course you can tell your friends about Lowe Mill and get them to like our FB page, sign up for our newsletter, etc, but at this stage we are looking for something bigger than an increase in fans. At this stage we need CONNECTIONS. What are the non-local publications that would do stories about Lowe Mill, and can you connect us with them? What are the state or regional organizations that promote attractions like Lowe Mill, and can you connect us with them? What are the travel resources that would recommend Lowe Mill, and can you connect us with them? What are the non-local television or news/doc entities that would cover Lowe Mill, and can you connect us with them? What are the non-local blogs or websites that would be thrilled to feature Lowe Mill, and can you connect us with them? These connections could relate to Lowe Mill in general, a specific event that we host, or a specific studio located here. The main key is that we need actual CONNECTIONS so that we are not just cold-calling hundreds of organizations who might ignore us. If you have a connection that would help us reach this goal, please let us know! If you dont personally have this connection, but you know people who do, please share this message with those friends. Instead of posting anyones contact info in the comments, just send us an email: [email protected] Thanks for reading, friends. And thanks for all of your support over these amazingly fun years.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 05:16:07 +0000
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