I'm currently selling my work to a small museum located in a wealthy,
Midwestern city and am having such good results, I'd like to expand.
I'm looking for cities that have culture and money, but are too far
from really large metro areas where the competition would be too
stiff. I'd like to stay within a few hundred miles of St. Louis, MO,
as I'd like to personally check out potential clients. If you can
cull out the cities, I'll try to find cultural centers to explore. |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
07 Apr 2005 17:50 PDT
lynnsy-ga,
Nice to hear about your successes thus far...here's hoping for many more.
This link:
http://snipurl.com/dvwo
shows a map of the territory with about a 200 mile radius around St. Louis.
There are A LOT of cities here, in seen states. Before I see if I can
cull them somehow into a "wealthiest towns" list, I just wanted to
make sure you really want to start with such a broad territory to
consider.
Let me know what you think.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
07 Apr 2005 19:24 PDT
Make that "...in seven states..."
|
Clarification of Question by
lynnsy-ga
on
08 Apr 2005 08:04 PDT
I'm not sure how to answer. I don't really have a feel for how many
mid-size cities in the seven states will meet my criteria. In my
travels, I've only come across a handful (Columbia, MO; Quincy, IL;
Harrison, AR). Are there that many out there?
Just for clarification, I'm specifically looking to sell my stuff in
gift shops associated with cultural centers and museums.
Does any of this help?
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
08 Apr 2005 08:36 PDT
Hello again,
Thanks for getting back to me. It was very helpful to have that list
of cities you have found so far.
Please have a look at this link to information on Fremont Hills, MO:
http://www.idcide.com/citydata/mo/fremont-hills.htm
and let me know if this looks like your kind of place.
It was interesting to me that you mentioned Columbia, MO. The similar
link for that town is here:
http://www.idcide.com/citydata/mo/columbia.htm
The median household income in Columbia is listed here as $33,729.
While the same statistic for Fremont Hills is much higher -- $87,863.
I would consider Fremont Hills to be one of the wealthier communities
in Missouri, but I wouldn't have included Columbia on the list. Ditto
for Harrison, AR, where the income level -- $27,850 -- is even less
than Columbia:
http://www.idcide.com/citydata/ar/harrison.htm
Should I broaden my search, to make sure I include towns with
relatively modest average incomes? Or do you truly want to identify
the "wealthiest" towns, as the title of question states?
I don't mean to over-complicate the process here. I just want to make
sure that we get you exactly the information you need.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
08 Apr 2005 08:45 PDT
I didn't notice how small Fremont Hills was at first. Here's a larger
town to consider as well:
http://www.idcide.com/citydata/mo/dardenne-prairie.htm
Dardenne Prairie, MO
|
Clarification of Question by
lynnsy-ga
on
08 Apr 2005 13:30 PDT
Hmmm...this is harder than I thought (and I didn't want to do it
myself when I thought it was easier!)
I guess I'm looking for older, established, cultural centers where
there's money. Columbia, for example, is a mid-size university town
with three of the top wealthiest families in the country (Kronke and
two Waltons). Plus, it's far enough away from St. Louis and Kansas
City that they don't have easy access to a plethora of "boutique"
goods.
Fremont Hills is too small to have any museums, although there is
Branson, MO money moving in that direction (entertainers like Glen
Campbell and Andy Williams have homes near Table Rock Lake south of
Springfield). Dardene is basically a bedroom community of St. Louis
(the metro area extends 30-40 miles in each direction)so they have a
lot of shopping options.
Harrison has grown by leaps and bounds in the last two years. Huge
homes and housing tracts are popping up - again, I'm guessing Branson
entertainment money as well as Wal-Mart/Sam's/Walton money. I'm not
sure about museums with gift shops, but I know there's money to be had
down there.
The best example I can give you is Quincy, IL. There's lots of old
money (riverboat captains) and no large cities nearby to spend it in.
Does any of this help?
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
08 Apr 2005 15:31 PDT
Hmmm...this IS turning out to be more complicated than I thought it would be.
Let's try two things:
1. Have a look at this link of arty-y type places in Missouri (I can
readily do the same for Kansas, etc):
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=intitle%3Amuseum+OR+intitle%3Aart++-rock&btnG=Search&cat=gwd%2FTop%2FRegional%2FNorth_America%2FUnited_States%2FMissouri
Let me know if you see anything of interest there. It may make more
sense to focus directly on potential outlets for your wares, rather
than indirectly on the communities.
2. I'm going to unlock this question, to see if other researchers
might have some approaches I haven't thought of yet.
Let me know what you think of the Museums, etc list that I linked to
above, and bit by bit, we'll see if we can work this one out.
Cheers,
paf
|
Clarification of Question by
lynnsy-ga
on
09 Apr 2005 08:34 PDT
I think you're right about focusing on arty venues. The list was an
excellent source of outlets and I've bookmarked the ones I'm going to
approach. Are there any more? And yes, I'd love a similar list for
surrounding states.
Thanks, this is great!
|
