Craft Platforms: Case studies 蓝顶研木社-Blue Wood Studio

Blue Wood– an immersive woodwork experiencing studio

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Offering wood products and course experiencing for customer
  • Using table saw and laser cutting machine to improve their efficiency
  • Promoting products through social media including WeChat and Tik Tok.
  • Having WeChat group chats including more than 800 followers
  • 蓝顶研木社主要为客户提供木制品和体验课程服务
  • 在制作产品时,工作室会使用台锯和激光切割机来提高效率
  • 蓝顶研木社主要通过微信和抖音等社交媒体渠道来推广产品。
  • 微信群是与顾客交流的重要渠道之一,工作室的微信群聊有近800名手工艺爱好者

 

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Figure 1: Blue Wood’s store and wood crafts

Blue Wood is a woodworking experience studio in No. 66 Yinjiachong Creative Community, Changsha, and was named the third place in the Changsha Maker Competition. Zhou Li is the founder and designer of Blue Wood, and the whole team has four full-time employees from different art design majors such as graphic, architecture, and industrial design. The wood studio will use some digital equipment and software to assist the production of wood products. It mainly provides customers with handicraft course experience services, including woodworking experience, wood art exhibition sales, and combined courses with leather goods, weaving, and floral art.

Blue Wood regularly cooperates with Changsha Library and Hunan Library to carry out weekend offline activities. It also cooperates with local universities in Changsha to organize events to expand its popularity. Besides, Blue Wood is trying to promote its works through social media such as WeChat, Tiktok, to attract Handicraft lovers and develop long-term fans.

蓝顶研木社是位于长沙殷家冲创意社区66号的木工体验工作室,并在长沙市《创-战记》星城创客大赛中获得第三名。周力是蓝顶研木社的创始人和设计师,整个团队有四名正式员工,分别来自平面,建筑和工设等不同的设计专业。工作室主要为客户提供手工艺品课程体验服务,包括木工体验,木制艺术展览销售以及皮革制品,编织和花卉艺术的组合课程。此外,工作室会使用一些数字设备和软件来协助完成产品的生产。

蓝顶研木社定期会与长沙图书馆和湖南图书馆合作,开展周末线下活动。工作室还与长沙本地高校合作组织活动,以扩大其知名度。此外,蓝顶研木社会通过微信、抖音等社交媒体推广其作品,以吸引木作爱好者并培养长期粉丝。

DIGITAL ‘TOUCH POINTS’

Use of Digital equipment

The Blue Wood has table saws, laser cutting machines, CNC machines and etc.. The SAWSTOP PCS52 table saw the studio equipped was imported from America, which is famous for its professional and precision. The equipment provides a safety system to ensure safe operation of user. When user starting the machine, human body and wood (different resistance) are identified through micro-current detection, and it will automatically brake when it encounters the human body.

蓝顶研木社拥有台锯,激光切割机,数控机床等设备。 SAWSTOP PCS5型号的台锯是从美国进口的,该品牌以其专业度和精准度而知名。数字化体现在设备配备安全防护系统,以确保用户安全接触。当用户启动机器时,设备通过微电流检测可以识别出人体和木材(不同的电阻)的区别,当遇到人体时它会自动停止。

Figure 2: Table saw machines of Blue Wood

Use of Social Media

Blue Wood has opened accounts on major social media, like WeChat, Tik Tok. Those social media platform is efficient for them to communicate with customers. The WeChat subscription will regularly send the articles of recent events and excellent woodworks to their followers. Besides, the founder of Blue Wood has two WeChat groups, including more than 800 woodcrafts lover. It enables the studio to get the feedback and advice of the customers directly, and they can sell the products through that platform. In group chats, the wood product auctions are organized every Sunday night, each time they will select three teachers’ works; the price of the product is always at a discount. Such events trigger the curiosity of customers and attract them to buy the products.

Besides, Blue Woods will also promote its events through other media channels. Because the studio will regularly organize events with the library in Changsha, it can indirectly publicize its studio through Changsha library’s website and WeChat subscription. The Library subscription posts inform, such as activity notice, activity registration, and activity summary every week. Many crafts lovers can find the studio by WeChat articles and webpages.

蓝顶研木社已在微信,抖音等主流社交媒体平台上开设了账号。这些社交媒体平台对他们与客户进行交流非常有帮助。微信公众号将定期向粉丝推送近期活动和精美木作产品的文章。此外,蓝顶研木社的创始人有两个微信群,其中包括800多个木作爱好者。微信群让工作室能够直接快速的获得客户的反馈和建议,并且他们可以通过微信群直接销售产品。在群聊中每个星期天晚上工作室都定期组织木作品拍卖,每次他们都会挑选三位老师的作品,产品多为降价出售。这些组织的活动引发了很多人的好奇,并吸引了他们购买产品。

此外,蓝顶研木社还将通过其他媒体渠道宣传其活动。由于工作室会定期与长沙图书馆组织活动,因此他们可以通过长沙图书馆的网站和微信公众号来间接宣传其工作室。图书馆公众号每周都会推送活动通知,活动报名和活动介绍等信息。许多手工艺爱好者可以通过微信推文和官方网页看到蓝顶研木社。

Figure 3: Blue Wood’s WeChat subscription screenshot

Another media platform Blue Wood engaged is Tik Tok, which is a short-video sharing platform. Blue Wood has accumulated a certain number of followers on Tik Tok. The Operator of the account will share the works and daily life of Blue Wood for people interested in woodworks. Also, they make tutorials videos for students to learn. Although they have not actively sought the media to promote, there are many sensitive media interested in crafts come to cooperate with them. Recently, the store has made a promotional video in cooperation with Hunan Mitochondrial Culture Communication Company, which will also help them release the video across the social media channel.

蓝顶研木社入驻的另一个社交媒体平台是抖音,是中国最近很火的短视频分享平台。 蓝顶研木社在抖音上已经积累了一定数量的粉丝。该帐户的运营者会分享蓝顶研木社的作品和日常生活在平台上面。此外,他们还制作了教学视频供学生学习。尽管他们还没有积极寻求媒体进行推广,但是有许多对手工艺品感兴趣的敏感媒体开始与他们合作。 最近,该商店与湖南线粒体文化传播公司合力制作了宣传视频,公司也将帮助他们在社交媒体平台上发布视频。

Figure 4: Blue Wood’s Tik Tok home page screenshot

Use of digital software

The digital software currently used by Blue Wood includes Auto CAD, Sketch up, and Photoshop. The staff will draw a sketch in Auto CAD first and then transfer CAD file into the laser cutting machine for cutting. Photoshop is mainly used to process some photos and pictures.

蓝顶研木社目前使用的数字软件包括Auto CAD,Sketch up和Photoshop。工作人员首先在Auto CAD中绘制尺寸图,然后将CAD文件传输到激光切割机中进行切割操作。 Photoshop主要用于处理一些照片和图片。

The digital platforms involved in Blue Wood ’s making and marketing

The challenges of applying digital platforms in Blue Wood:

There are some potential challenges when applying digital platforms in Blue Wood. The challenges for using digital technology and social media are summarised below:

The challenges of using social media Blue Wood:

  1. The team lacks resources, channels, and time for media operating

The current challenge is that the media resources and channels the studio have is limited, it is difficult for them to promote their products well, and the founders don’t have enough time to invest in social media operations. Recently, they have also tried to find new channels through friends, such as Taobao, crowdfunding, and eBay.

  1. It’s hard for them to manage accounts of different media platforms.

Although Blue Wood has settled on multiple online social media platforms, it’s difficult for employees to operate various social media accounts. For example, they have Taobao’s online store but have not yet started operations. Because different platform requires different contents, like WeChat subscription is for sharing articles and TikTok is for sharing videos. The team is hard to spare the time operating multi-platform accounts.

  1. Blue Wood is understaffed and lacks media operating professionals

Most of the staffs of the Blue Wood are engaged in handicrafts, requiring professionals who are good at media operating, and the founder is responsible for all online operations and also manages the entire wood studio offline, which is overworked for him. It is challenging to balance the time between them; sometimes, they have to reduce their work on media operating for offline businesses.

1.团队缺乏资源,渠道和时间来运营媒体平台

当前的挑战是工作室的媒体资源和渠道有限,他们难以很好地宣传自己的产品,并且创始人没有足够的时间投入社交媒体运营。最近,他们会尝试通过朋友找到一些新的渠道,例如淘宝,众筹和eBay。

2.团队很难同时运营好多社交媒体平台的帐号

尽管Blue Wood已加入了多个在线社交媒体平台,但员工很难同时运营好多个社交媒体平台的帐户。他们目前有淘宝店,但暂时未开始运营。由于不同的平台需要产出不同的内容,例如微信公众号是分享推文,而抖音是分享短视频。团队很难有足够的时间和精力同时运营多平台账号。

  1. Blue Wood人手不足,缺乏媒体运营专业人员

Blue Wood的大多数员工都从事手工艺品,工作室缺乏擅长媒体运营的专业人员,并且创始人负责所有在线运营,还线下管理整个Wood Studio,这对他来说工作量过大了。平衡线上和线下两者的时间安排具有挑战性。他们不得不减少对线上的运营工作以维持线下工作室的良好运转。

ABOUT IP

Blue Woods also pay attention to the protection of their intellectual property products. Some Blue Wood’s products have registered on the book of patent office. The Conch speakers designed by Zhou Li have applied for utility patent, which was made by wood and used the superposition effect of spiral cavity.  

蓝顶研木社还十分重视对产品知识产权的保护。 Blue Wood的某些产品已在专利局的上注册。 由周力设计的海螺扬声器已申请了实用新型专利,该专利由木材制成,并利用了螺旋腔的叠加效果。

Figure 6: The photos of conch speaker deisgned by Zhou Li

MORE DETAIL

The studio mainly provides handicraft course service, which is divided into three levels, including advanced, intermediate, and elementary courses. The elementary course provides for children. The intermediate course is suitable for adults and offers an opportunity to experience handicraft first-hand. The advanced course is a systematic learning course, which teaches you how to make wood products safely and efficiently.

With a membership system, Blue Wood members will be provided with systematic, comprehensive, and professional training.

该工作室主要提供的是手工艺课程服务,分为高中低三档课程,初级课程提供给小朋友,试错的过程;中级课程适用于成年人,提供一个切身体验手工艺的机会;进阶课程为系统学习课程,教会你如何安全高效地制作木制品。

通过会员制,蓝顶研木社的会员可以享受到专业化的针对性训练服务。

SUMMARY

Blue Wood is a woodcraft experiencing studio for handicraft lovers in Changsha, founded by Zhou Li in 2017. The studio has four formal employees who major in art design. The founder, Zhou Li is a designer with six years’ experience in woodcrafts making. The studio mainly provides different levels of handicraft course service, which attracted woodcraft lovers. In the production process, they will use digital equipment and software to assist them makes the wood products. Moreover, the studio will participate in the competition held by the government to expend its popularity; they also regularly cooperated with the local institute like libraries and colleges to invite craft lovers to join in their activities.

Social media is an important channel for them to promote their studio. Blue Wood has settled on several social media platforms such as WeChat and Tik Tok. The media platforms provide opportunities for them to introduce their products and communicate with customers conveniently. Because they cooperated with other institutes, many craft lovers know the information about Blue Wood by the channel of library and college. Recently, Blue Wood has cooperated with a media company to help them make and release the promotional video.

蓝顶研木社是长沙一家面向手工艺爱好者的木工体验工作室,由周力于2017年成立。该工作室有四名正式员工,主要都来自艺术设计背景。创始人周力是一位有6年木作经验的设计师。该工作室主要提供不同级别的手工艺课程服务,吸引了很多的木作爱好者。在生产过程中,他们会使用数字设备和软件来协助他们生产木制品。此外,该工作室还将参加竞赛以扩大其知名度;他们还定期与图书馆和大学等当地机构合作,邀请手工艺爱好者参加他们的活动。

社交媒体是他们推广工作室的重要渠道。蓝顶研木社目前已经入驻了多个社交媒体平台,包括微信和抖音。社交媒体平台为他们提供了介绍产品并与顾客线上直接沟通的机会。由于他们经常与高校和图书馆等其他机构合作,许多手工艺爱好者会通过图书馆和高校的渠道了解有关蓝顶研木社的信息。最近,蓝顶研木社与一家长沙本地的媒体公司合作,帮助他们制作和发布宣传视频。

CONTACT

Please visit the following site to know more about Blue Wood

WeChat:蓝顶研木社

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hrpO7cpGrJI2thidb1wWxQ

Tik Tok:867202044

https://v.douyin.com/4s1SQ5/

 

Contact Us

Craftplatforms.org has been produced by the project research team at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and Hunan University, China.

Contact E-mail: contact@craftplatforms.org

For more information or to speak to the craft research team, please contact:

Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns

n.bryan-kinns@qmul.ac.uk

School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Queen Mary University of London
London E1 4NS

Prof. Hao Tan

htan@hnu.edu.cn

School of Design, Hunan University
Yuelu Mountain, Changsha