What Happened Next

One of the first steps in choosing sites and partners for the Heritage Trails publication was to develop selection criteria. Anderson says it is very important to adhere strictly to the criteria. Why? “Making exceptions creates confusion and hard feelings and may compromise the focus of the publication,” explains Anderson. HandMade has developed a laundry list of requirements that must be met by sites that want to be included in the book. These criteria have evolved over the course of the program in response to issues that cropped up during the formative stages.

Trail planners should consider these questions: Is the site well marked, safe, and easily accessible? Do the proprietors maintain regular hours? Important for shops and galleries, yes. But even more so when a visitor has just journeyed down two miles of winding gravel road to find an esoteric artist’s studio. Is their business—whether it is a working studio, retail shop, gallery, restaurant, or bed-and-breakfast—in sync with the economic and cultural interests of the community? In the case of HandMade in America, shops and galleries must feature American-made crafts with an emphasis on those from Western North Carolina. Restaurants must feature indigenous mountain foods as part of their standard menu. A blanket requirement for all sites is that they be high in quality, whatever their wares.

Once participants are selected, it is essential to train them. These are not professional tour conductors. They often have no idea how to handle tourists and are not equipped to meet the challenges that visitors present. It can be as simple as pointing out how to display merchandise or the guidebook itself. Each site keeps a percentage of book sales. “It would behoove them to market it. But they just don’t even think of it unless you tell them,” explains Anderson, who says they just didn’t realize or anticipate the need to train proprietors in basic tourism hospitality. “The craftspeople are independent people who work mostly in isolation. They need to be taught how to market themselves.” If visitors are uncomfortable in a site they won’t come back and bad word-of-mouth can spread even more quickly than good.

Tying into the need to train new regional ambassadors is the need to teach them about adding value to their destination, by adding activities or food, demonstrating their craft, or interpreting the meaning of the items they make. Visitors are there not just to spend their money; they want to learn. They want to get the whole experience, not see only a finished product. This taking business training to the craftspeople, helping them think like businesspeople, is what Anderson calls HandMade’s “ incubator without walls” concept.

HandMade is training its crafts and heritage site owners to think entrepreneurially, to forge unexpected partnerships, to keep things interesting and attractive to visitors. At Elk Herd Farm, where antlers are harvested for medicinal uses, the owner has paired with a Christmas tree farm to form promotional weekends where kids can have their pictures taken with Santa’s reindeers, go on sleigh rides, and drink hot cider on their visit to cut their own holiday tree. During warmer months, scattered bed-and-breakfast inns in the countryside partner with craftspeople and market crafts weekends called “Come Get Your Hands Dirty and Carry it Home Under Your Arm.”

These are just a few of the 525 sites—including artists’ studios and shops, crafts-related historic sites, inns, restaurants, and events—along seven self-guided driving trails, ranging from 100 to 215 miles in length, that take visitors through mountain roads to visit public and private sites that celebrate western North Carolina crafts heritage.

Timeline

• 1993 - HandMade in America founded

• 1994-95 - Inventory of craftspeople; planning and development of trails

• 1996 - The Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina published

• 1998 - Second edition of guidebook

• 2000-01 - Development of Heritage Music Trails, Cherokee Heritage Trails, and Garden and Countryside trail

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