By Ed Avis
Are you looking for a great way to show off your store and the skills of your employees while bringing in a few extra dollars? Then follow the lead of Christy Greenwood and Rob Fitz – they teach workshops in their costume shops. The events please customers, get their cash registers ringing, and raise the profile of the stores in the community.
“A lot of times holding the workshops encourages people to shop in the store, and it sets our store apart from others,” says Greenwood, owner of Theatre Garage in Edmonton, Alberta. “We really strive for people to know the expertise we have here, and hosting workshops is a huge part of that.”
What to teach?
There are dozens of skills that a typical costume shop owner could teach to the public, ranging from sewing to make-up to cos-play design.
One of the most popular workshops that Rob Fitz, owner of The Magic Parlor in Salem, Massachusetts, hosts is on makeup. That totally makes sense because Fitz is a veteran makeup artist for films.
“We do makeup workshops at the shop because we have all this makeup and it’s fairly expensive, really good stuff,” Fitz says. “I was like, You know what? If I show people how to use this stuff and make it look as good as if you’re on a movie set, I think I’d have more customers and people would say, ‘Oh, hell yeah, I’ll buy that. I want to make my costume even better.’”
Greenwood also hosts makeup classes in her store. Her special effects makeup workshops are particularly popular, she says. She was even able to host the makeup classes during COVID – virtually, of course – because teaching make-up application remotely is not as difficult as teaching sewing or costume design.
Both Fitz and Greenwood also teach other skills. Fitz says that a local guy who is an expert on fabricating armor and props from foam taught a course on that topic, and a friend of his who is a face painter offered a workshop on that skill.
Greenwood taps her network of local theater technicians to teach a variety of classes beyond makeup, ranging from wardrobe management to audio skills.
“We can hold workshops on just about anything we do in the theater, other than acting,” she says.
The Mechanics of a Workshop
Besides the issue of what skills to teach and who will teach them, costume store owners considering hosting workshops need to think about timing, costs and other details.
Greenwood caps her in-store workshops at 10 people to keep them at a manageable size. She hosts a couple of workshops per month, which is down from a couple each week before COVID. The classes are not “master” level classes, she says, because they’re designed for the general public, but they are of high enough quality that attendees can learn serious skills. She says that most students like her workshops so much that they enroll in four or five of them.
Fitz’s workshops also have been fairly small, up to 10 people per class. Some of his workshops are single topic – how to create a faux gash on your face, for example – and others are multi-session courses spread over several weeks. He has rented a space above his store to comfortably accommodate the class, but he recently acquired the storefront beside his and will soon begin holding classes in that space.
Both Greenwood and Fitz charge fees for their classes.
“You always have to do a little charging,” Fitz says. “I demonstrate something to the class, and then give them materials and have them do it. So if they paid $100, they’d get the spatula and the materials and a little bit of makeup to use in the class and to take home. That way you’re automatically selling a whole bunch of stuff and you’re making a little bit for the knowledge you’re sharing.”
Greenwood has the same philosophy. “At the beginning the workshops were more about getting people into the store and displaying the skill set we have, so we didn’t charge, but now we charge for all of them. I pay my instructors quite well, because really a major product of the workshops is the high quality instruction.”
Advantages of Workshops
The cash that comes from workshop fees is welcome revenue, of course, but there are other benefits.
For example, attendees sometimes are inspired to purchase more products after the class ends.
“We’re going to do the classes in our new space, and when they’re looking around, they’re going to see all this shiny nice stuff,” Fitz says. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, you know what? I think I need some of that, too.’”
Another key benefit of holding workshops is that it builds the reputation of the store in the community and develops stronger relationships with customers. “Big box” stores like Walmart or Target are not teaching workshops on how to dress like a zombie or how to create a cosplay look, nor are Halloween pop-ups like Spirt Halloween. The chances that someone becomes a regular customer of your store are much higher when they already know your store as the site of fun workshops.
And finally, workshops are a great way to demonstrate that your store has staff who are highly accomplished in key skills. Who wouldn’t want to buy theatrical makeup, for example, from a store owned by someone like Fitz, who has regularly done makeup for movies?
“What’s interesting is that nowadays, people are a lot more sophisticated with their costumes and makeup than they were 40 years ago, they go all out,” Fitz explains. “I look at Instagram, and some of these people are really good their little thing they do, and I figured, why not take that and bring them to the next level?”