Episode 28: Betsy Bush: Hello from the Land of the Nutcrackers
The Latest Version host Betsy Bush talks with interviewer Nancy Steiner about her years selling German nutcrackers and other Christmas decorations in the early years of the internet. As a German speaking American who traveled to the former East Germany in the mid-1990’s, Betsy recognized that these genuine handmade wooden crafts were not readily available yet in the U.S., nor were the folk art origins behind the nutcracker figure and many other ornaments well known. Betsy founded her home-based business, Drosselmeier’s Handcrafted Treasures from the Land of the Nutcrackers, in 1998.
Topics include:
A trip to the former East German state of Saxony, discovering the Village of Seiffen, the center of the toy-making cottage industry in a region called the Erzgebirge.
Starting a home-based business in the early days of the internet.
Telling a real German nutcracker from the imposters. The meaning of the nutcracker and smoker figures in the folk art tradition.
Having a gift business in the awkward space between bricks and mortar and the internet.
The surprising history of the Nutcracker ballet and American Christmas traditions.
What to consider if you go into a holiday-based business. Using journalism skills to get PR
Resources:
YouTube: The Latest Version Christmas Episode
YouTube: “Discover Seiffen: Germany’s Christmas Village”
YouTube: Martha Stewart Living: Betsy Bush with her nutcracker collection
An excellent article on Seiffen in the Ore Mountains by Ann Mah for the New York Times Travel Section with photographs and maps: Dreaming of an Artisanal Christmas by Ann Mah, NYT 12/18/19
An excellent book about the Nutcracker ballet: Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World by Jennifer Fisher (2004)
Transcript:
Betsy Bush (01:02):
Every podcast needs a Christmas episode. Don't you think? So as I end my first year as a podcaster, I thought you might want to hear a story about an earlier version of mine. When I was selling nutcrackers and Christmas crafts from Germany in the very early years of the internet, it, I had some success. I was on Martha Stewart. I got stories placed in national magazines, like country living and better homes and gardens. And then after seven years, I closed the business. Helping to tell my story is Nancy Steiner. She's a former network television news producer, sir, who worked with Katie Couric on the today show among many others. Nancy is now an executive coach who you'll hear from on an upcoming episode, but today we're flipping the script and Nancy is interviewing me. Hi, Nancy, and welcome to The latest version. Hi
Nancy Steiner (02:01):
Betsy. I'm so happy you're joining us this morning, right?
Betsy Bush (02:05):
So, you know, usually I'm on the side of the microphone where I'm asking the questions, but I am thrilled to be on the interviewee side with someone who has your background and experience and interest in all my little people here. And I wanna say to people who are listening to the podcast, please go to our YouTube channel where you can see all of my nutcrackers and the other little, uh, Christmas decorations I have set up here. Um, if you wanna take a look and, so Nancy please, fire away.
Nancy Steiner (02:47):
Well, Betsy, Not everyone is as lucky as I am to meet somebody who has a passion for nutcrackers. This is a rare and wonderful thing. Oh my God. And yet, and yet maybe it's not so rare because so many people across the globe love nutcrackers so much. Yes. How did this come To pass?
Betsy Bush (03:08):
It really started when, um, I, I had lived in Germany and people who have listened to an earlier version of me talking about going to Germany a few years out of college to, uh, work at Deutsche Welle, Radio Deutsche Welle in Cologne know that I speak German. And in the mid nineties, not too long after the wall had come down between east and west Germany, my husband and I, he speaks German too, uh, took a trip to the parts of we could not visit before. One of which was the Dresden area in the state of Saxony. And I knew that in the area outside of Dresden, there was a place called the Erzgebirge, where they made these incredibly charming little Christmas decoration and little flying angels and neck crackers and things like that. And we happened to drive into this area and it was, it was just overwhelming. It was so charming. And so unbelievable. It's this Christmas craft, uh, industry or, you know, cottage industry is centered around a village called siphon S E I F F E N, with this unique octagonal shaped church, um, and of surrounding it are all these little houses that are both residential houses, but also, uh, workshops. And in these workshops are families who have been creating nutcrackers and smokers and all these other little, uh, beautiful Christmas things. They've been doing this for generations, at least in many cases, 150 200 years. That is amazing. 200. It's amazing. Yes. Yeah. And, and for, um, for an American, it was like stumbling onto, you know, Santa's workshop <laugh> it was, and, and it seemed so genuine because you know, a lot of our Christmas traditions here in the United States are not from England. They're from Germany. The Santa Claus figure, as we know, is from, is German. And the Christmas tree, you know, prince Albert from Germany is credited with bringing it to Victorian England and, and all of that. So tan and BA yes, the tannin Baum. So, um, and I thought, oh my gosh, if people knew what was here and that you get the original Nutcracker made in the original Nutcracker workshop, you know, people would go crazy. Um, and what gave me the advantage was that this was the former east Germany where people didn't speak English. They were still relatively isolated and they weren't good at communicating the story of what they had. It's a very deep folk art tradition. So I really just dived into the, the history, a tradition. And I got the idea it's like, I haven't seen these in stores. Of course I knew about the Nutcracker ballet as everyone else does, but I thought this is an opportunity to bring something to the United States that would really, uh, resonate with people. And, uh, so I kind of set up a little business. I called it Drosselmeiers: Handcrafted Treasures from the land of the Nutcrackers. And, uh, this was like I said, mid-nineties. And it was really the dawn of the internet age. And I found someone who wanted to learn how to set up a, a commerce commerce website. And, and so we got that going. Um, it really felt like we were building a house out of like planks of wood, even like kind of, you know, uh, a cabin of some sort, there were no easy off the shelf, uh, programs, or you could just build a website. It seems very primitive.
Nancy Steiner (07:18):
Now, why did you decide to actually turn this into a business when there were already so many other places to buy nutcrackers in this country?
Betsy Bush (07:25):
I was home with a toddler and I was really looking for something home based and I thought I could do this. And I think a lot of people have started businesses on the internet thinking, great. I can stay at home with my little one and when they're sleeping, I can, you know, work on the website or, or whatever. It looked like. Something, uh, that I could do uniquely. Um, yes, there were nutcrackers out there, but I did not see a lot of this particular kind of Nutcracker.
Nancy Steiner (07:58):
And, and how, how can you tell, let's just pause for a second. There are a couple of things I wanna get to, I wanna talk about the challenges of it being an early internet business person, but I also want you to tell us straight away, how can you tell the real thing, the real, real Nutcracker from the imposter?
Betsy Bush (08:16):
Well, this is a ner nut cracker. This is, um, from the Fuechtner workshop that is, uh, credited to be the first Nutcracker workshop, which is to say people were always using, you know, these things are turned on a LA they're not carved, uh, with a knife or anything they're turned on a latheErz um, using in the early days water power. I'd like to think, well, first of all, I would look at the bottom to see what is on the bottom. Um, if it says you made in Germany, Erzgebirge is the other term you should look for, uh, E R Z means, ore, you know, precious metal ore, gebirge ieans mountains. GE B I R G E, Erzgebirge is the region that you want to buy your Nutcracker from. And, uh, the Fuechtner nutcrackers will actually crack a nut that's because this whole piece is one, this is one solid piece of wood. A lot of nutcrackers are made where the head is separate. So if you, if you levered up against the head, the head might, you know, pop off, uh, and who wants that. So when I look at some of the ones that, uh, come from China, I sometimes see something that is not as broad. I don't, I see legs that are skinnier that actually have maybe a space between them. There's something about the face. This is a wonderful face. There's something about the face that is that lack something. Maybe the eyes are maybe too far apart, or they're yeah. Painted on the surface. They're not carved in, they're not indented. And then you have these two little button eyes, and then sometimes the mustache is painted on, but here, this is actually a raised mustache and this cute nose. So, and this is rabbit fur,. Yeah. And this is all hand painted. I'm also posting on my YouTube channel, the 30 minute video film that I produced in 2001.
Nancy Steiner (10:30):
That's a wonderful little film. I've I love that film.
Betsy Bush (10:32):
Thank you so much. You know, the funny thing about that was, um, it was released in 2001 and I had German friends who were filmmakers, who did the filming for me. They'd gone down to the Erzgebirge the Christmas before and got a lot of, uh, Christmas, um, street scenes and things like that. It had snowed the night before, and it's, it's really just magical the footage they got. And then I went over the next spring and, uh, got interviews with the, with the crafters.
Nancy Steiner (11:06):
So tell me, you've also got things there called smokers.
Betsy Bush (11:09):
The smokers are these cute little standing figures where the, almost always a man as a pipe in his hand. And what you do is you take the midsection off and there's a little platform for an incense cone. If you light the cone and replace the body, the smoke from the incense comes out of the mouth and he looks like he's smoking a pipe. And the contrast between the Nutcracker and the smoker is the, the Nutcracker represents the authority figure, uh, the king, the prince, the Forester. This is an interesting figure in the life of the Erzgebirglers. The Forester was the enforcer on the estates, um, that surround, or the Kings lands that surround the, these little villages that enforced the anti-poaching laws. And of course the Erzgebirglers would always wanna go and like hunt game and things like that to eat. And the Forster was always there. Um, punishing anyone. They caught taking game off the, uh, estate property of the king or the landowner. And so their way of getting back at these figures of authority was to turn them into funny nutcrackers with the big jaw and making them crack nuts and stuff like that, bossing them around for once. The idea of the smoker though, is completely different. The smoker is represents the little people of the village. You'll often find, uh, peddlers, uh, postmen, um, people who, you know, spend of time on their feet. And this is the idea of giving them a moment of rest and leisure and giving them a pipe to smoke. And in the post, uh, unification years, these have turned into an interesting subset where you find a lot of different, um, professions represented doctors, firemen bakers, a huge variety of, um, of smokers are available. And it's a lot of fun to see what they come up with. They're very inventive and you have these charming little tiny, this is a, what I'm holding now is a, um, a Toy Peddler who has this tray on a, whatever you call this leather ties. And the little tray is filled with teeny tiny little figures, presumably toys for sale.
Nancy Steiner (13:47):
That's so adorable, isn't that sweet. And are these thriving now?
Betsy Bush (13:51):
I've been out of it for 15 years now. It still out there, it has not been an easy road for any of them. And I think they've needed to find ways to scale up while still keeping the charm and the handcrafted qualities. I think it's been a little overwhelming for them. I think there's some of lowest paid workers in Germany, but they're much higher paid when you think of what people, the people who are manufacturing in China are paid
Nancy Steiner (14:25):
As far as your business was, is concerned or was concerned. Do you think the internet helped you or hurt you or A little bit of both?
Betsy Bush (14:32):
It was an interesting time of transition. You know, I was doing this before Facebook was out and if I had been around when Facebook was around, believe it or not, <laugh> I think Facebook started in 2005. Is that about right? And I don't know if anybody is doing it. I think when I closed the business, I kind of did not wanna look back. So I kind of closed the door on that. I did some really wonderful trips. I'd go over every year and I'd, I'd actually visit these workshops. And I took some wonderful pictures of these craftsmen create their craft and the workshops were just, so you, you really felt like you were, you'd walked into something, you know, you'd gone back in time, 150 years. It was really remarkable, but it was hard to get that out to people and you and I immediately, when Facebook came out, I'm like, oh, this is what I needed when I was doing the Nutcracker thing. I think the best way to sell these things is you need to tell the story and you need to have that contact with the customer and explain just what I told you about, you know, this is the little guy who, um, you know, gets a chance to smoke with his pipe and this, the original Nutcracker from the Fuechtner workshop, look at these beautiful hand painted details that gets lost on the internet. And that's, what's lost when those high end gift shops where you had someone invested in telling the story to potential customers that that's, what's lost in that. And then it becomes strictly a thing of price and you lose the charm and the, the story that comes with it, the story that your customer could tell the person they're giving the present to this is what they told me in the store that, right? But on the other hand, I had customers all over the country. I found out nutcrackers were something that people were giving their sons, their boys. Um, and they were, uh, I had, I had customers who were buying different nutcrackers for their sons every year. So they would have like this big collection, you know, when they went off and started their own family, they would have like, you know, 10 nutcrackers to, to, to decorate with. And I thought that was interesting.
Nancy Steiner (16:55):
Why there are no women nutcrackers?
Betsy Bush (16:57):
There are no women nutcrackers because this is a satirical figure that is not supposed to be, um, it's it's they would never do a female Nutcracker because you would never, you know, give this to a woman, right? This, this kind of, this bite thing. This is, this is how they envision their women. And, and I think this is really lovely, this, wow, this angel, this, I love her. I'm holding this, this, uh, figure who has a, a black coat and white pants and this kind of tall conical called green cap. This is the parade uniform of the miners, the minors, uh, who had worked in the silver war mines, uh, from the middle ages through to the 18th and 19th century. And, um, they had this wonderful, uh, tradition of, of parading through the streets at certain occasion, with these fancy uniforms. And they created a female figure the angel as a compliment to the miner. And what you'll find on, uh, at Christmas time in the Serga is they'll put in the window, a miner figure for every boy in the family and an angel for every girl. Well,
Nancy Steiner (18:21):
I'd rather have an angel after me and than a miner.
Betsy Bush (18:24):
Yeah. <laugh> and, and, and this, and this becomes, now you're getting into the very deep folk art tradition that has nothing to do with the commercial prospects of the nutcrackers. The nutcrackers really are a more commercial. It was something they could create that they could sell these. Let me ask you something that's
Nancy Steiner (18:44):
Yeah. When the ballet yeah. Was created mm-hmm <affirmative> did sale suddenly sore. What Was the effect?
Betsy Bush (18:52):
The Nutcracker started more with the book, the Nutcracker, and there were actually a couple of Nutcracker books. One of the stories involves, um, a, a little boy who is very sick and on Christmas Eve, he goes to sleep and he dreams of all the toys that he'll, he'll, you know, all the, kind of this dream of toys and king nutcrackers there kind of as the master of ceremonies. And when he awakes he's better and he has all these toys around him because it's Christmas morning, um, the Erzgebirge folks were already making all the other little toys, but they weren't making a Nutcracker yet. So that's when Mr. Fuechtner made the first Nutcracker to sell that's the commercial part of the Nutcracker story. And then these other things they made, they were already making for themselves. The ballet is interesting. And I've studied this a little there's, um, the Nutcracker ballet was not performed in this country until after world war II.
Nancy Steiner (20:00):
Um, really? Yes. That's so surprising.
Betsy Bush (20:03):
Yes. Well, um, it, it was brought to this country by, I wanna say, um, of the great Russian ballet masters, um, who, who started staging it and in this kind of postwar era, when you had all these suburbanites sending their kids to dancing school, suddenly this became the thing. And of course we all know the music is absolutely charming. It's accessible, it's something, everybody. And with the development of the Nutcracker, as a holiday tradition, the Nutcracker figurine comes along with it. Um, the Nutcracker industry in east Germany is very complicated in the postwar era because it was east Germany was a communist state. All the private workshops were, um, taken over by the state. People did not have rights to their own designs even to their own goods because everything, this is, this was communism after all. Yeah, of course. And so it was only when the wall came down and unification happened in 1990 that these families were able to reclaim this heritage of theirs and, um, invest in their own designs and their own workshops. Otherwise, everything went out under a common label, which some people might find on old nutcrackers. It was called Expertic E X, P E R T I C Expertic. And you might see that, um, you know, German democratic Republic, uh, GDR was, would be the initials you might see. So, uh, if you're a Nutcracker collector, you might wanna look for those.
Nancy Steiner (21:51):
So you, of all people would be the best judge on what is the most wonderful, beautiful Nutcracker on the planet.
Betsy Bush (21:58):
I'm pretty opinionated on this. And I wanna show you this. Um, this is a Fuechtner Nutcracker from the, the Fuechtner Nutcracker family has been making these making nutcrackers for 150 years. I saw a photograph of a Nutcracker that was not red or blue, or, you know, brightly colored. It was this beautiful ivory, uh, jacket with, um, little, and I, uh, asked them to recreate this Nutcracker for me exclusively and for Country Living Magazine. And here we have country living magazine made exclusively for in 2001 oh a magazine. And, and it signed by, and, and I think we had 250 made. So if you have one of these, hang on to it, what I love about this is it has, it's very subtle. I love this kind of cornflower, blue detail, instead of the bright blue little red detail, but the, a gold and the corn flour blue, I think it has a subtlety that you don't see in, um, your average Nutcracker. And I think it's very special.
Nancy Steiner (23:22):
Wonderful. I think it looks wonderful too.
Betsy Bush (23:26):
Yeah. Thanks. So that's, that's one of my favorites.
Nancy Steiner (23:29):
Is there, there anything else about the Nutcracker world that you'd like to share with us?
Betsy Bush (23:35):
I, I think it's a very special one that has been undervalued and not really well understood.
Nancy Steiner (23:43):
Why do you think that is?
Betsy Bush (23:44):
I think like a lot of things, particularly in the past 20 years, I think Christmas has just become more and more stuff and <laugh> more and more, you know, I hate to say junk, but I look at a lot of this and it's like this, isn't going to, you know, people buy stuff and will maybe get rid of it next year and do something new. I think what you've got here is something that, uh, will always be, um, treasured and, and part of a family tradition. And to think that it's really, um, made with care and made in an atmosphere or it part of a larger folk art tradition. Um, the, there really aren't many of anymore. And, and yet it's been hard to communicate this kind of, um, this it's, it's a quiet, subtle story. And sometimes that gets lost in the translation. <laugh>
Nancy Steiner (24:43):
What do you call those, um, wonderful, uh, things that were the candles go around and around.
Betsy Bush (24:50):
Oh, okay. They call those pyramids and I'm sorry, I don't have one because they're, they're wonderful. They're they look like, you know, wedding cakes or something, you know, with the different levels and the propellers on top and the heat of the candles. Right. Turns the propellers. And again, if you go love those. Yes. They're wonderful. Um, uh, you know, one, one thing about all of these crafts is they are wood. They are delicate. They may not <laugh>, you know, they, they, you can't treat them. Um, you have to treat them 'em with, with great care to, uh, you know, if they're going to last forever, if that's one thing I found out, you know, shipping things, you know, the, uh, the need to really, you know, pack things well and unpacking things, packing them up. When I take them to gift fairs or things like to sell, I'd have to unpack things and set them up. And then things that didn't sell had to get re repacked and, and, uh, it's, it's, um, a lot, it's a lot, it was a lot to do. It was a lot to take care of.
Nancy Steiner (26:01):
So at the end of each of your podcast, Betsy, you always ask people for three pieces of advice, and I'd like to trade places today and ask you some
Betsy Bush (26:10):
Advice. Well, I would say, um, if you're gonna do a holiday business, um, understand what you're getting into because, um, you know, I thought it would be fun to have a holiday business that maybe my kids could help me with. And, you know, we'd have fun unpacking things. And Ooh, look at this and mommy, oh, this is so cute. And the kids were really not into it as it turned out <laugh>, and there's so much the, the pressure to get things, um, packed and out the door to go to say the, the gift fairs that, you know, the junior league gift fairs or the, this or that gift fair would take me away from my family on weekends when I wanted to be out with them doing fun things. And I did not take that into account as well. Um, and I knew that I was, uh, ready to close down when I was thinking to myself, sometime in mid in mid-December, you know, down in the basement packing orders. I was thinking, I can't wait till this is over. Mm. And that's not the way you should be thinking about, you know, this most wonderful time of the year. I'd be down in the basement packing orders. And my family would be upstairs having fun or doing whatever. And it's like, I wanna be there too. And another thing I would say is, um, this is a very complicated business, um, you know, importing things from another, uh, taking the exchange rate into account, um, you know, setting all of that up. I didn't have any kind of experience of this sort before. And we were also in this, um, in between time, you know, do I send out a catalog? Do I just put sh hang out my shingle on the internet, hope people find me. That was a really, um, and, and I think people are still not sure. Right. I, I'm still getting a lot of catalogs, um, yes. From, from businesses who then want me to go and order on the website. So, um, I think we still haven't figured this out. I think we're still in two places, we're still in the analog, you know, hard copy catalog world, but we're also on the internet. Yeah. And so that turned out to be a very expensive thing. And then I found myself really, um, at the mercy of exchange rates, there was at one point when the Euro, which, uh, Germany headed up, uh, was, was really the biggest partner in the whole, uh, conversion from, you know, individual national currencies. So they went from a Deutschmark to a Euro and for a year or so, it was one Euro to $1. After a couple of years, it was one Euro to a dollar 30. All of a sudden my merchandise became 30% more expensive. Wow. And, and I got to a point where I really had to think, okay, I'm not losing money, but I'm not making anything. Right. And, and you really have to decide, is this worth it with everything else? Mm-hmm, <affirmative> I, I, you know, I started the business when I wanted to be home with my kids. <laugh> by this time my kids were, you know, at school and they were active and I wanted to be out in the community. I didn't wanna be stuck at home anymore. Right. Of course. Yeah. So that was in a lot of ways, it was like a natural time to close down. I happened to get a job in the community, which was great. And, um, you know, it, then Drosselmeiers became one of these. Okay. I did that. <laugh> and I still have, I still have old stock in my <laugh> in my basement. Uh, which, uh, you know, it's a nice source for, you know, someone needs a present, someone needs something special for, for Christmas. I still have that. Um,
Nancy Steiner (30:18):
Good to know.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. See, so, so that's, um, I don't know if that's two or if that's three pieces of advice, you know, well,
Nancy Steiner (30:27):
It's all good advice.
Betsy Bush (30:29):
Oh, thanks. It, it was a, a wonderful experience. I'm glad I did it. I certainly got to know wonderful people in Germany. Um, and, um, I, I got to use skills that I had, uh, honed as a reporter when I did my own, my own PR I, I got myself, um, into, you know, big magazines. I got myself onto Martha Stewart. Um, amazing. Yeah. Amazing. But, but the, the interesting thing was, none of those were game changers for me. And, and I would find myself in early January to starting from ground zero again. And it's like, okay. Yeah. And it just felt like I'm not getting anywhere. Mm. And, and that's
Nancy Steiner (31:19):
Maybe, maybe Kenny Rogers is right. You got an know when to fold them.
Betsy Bush (31:24):
That's right. That's right. And, and, and there is this, this mindset out there, which is, you know, no, when to quit. Exactly. No, when to quit and don't, um, you know, that goes up against the never, never, never, never give up.
Nancy Steiner (31:38):
No, but I think that That's actually really important. I think that it's very important for people to, to have a reality check and to know if this isn't bringing me joy, if it's not fulfilling the goals that I had in mind, it's very important to know when to walk away. And I, I think that's absolutely as important as having sticktuitiveness.
Betsy Bush (32:02):
I think that's right. And, and, um, again, I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I could, um, you know, walk away feeling good. And, um, it's something I'll always, uh, that will always be a part of my life. So. Wonderful. Yeah. Nancy. Well, thank you, Betsy. I appreciate this so much. This was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed
Nancy Steiner (32:25):
It too. Loved it. Of course. And Merry, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.
Betsy Bush (32:30):
Thank you so much. Hey everyone, I've got something to tell you. The latest version is moving to every two weeks. Why? Think about Lucy and Ethel and the chocolate conveyor belt. You really can have too much of a good thing. This will give you lots of time to stay current with each episode and give me time to find the very best guests to talk to and watch for updates on our new newsletter. If you're a fan of the show, please rate, review, and subscribe on apple podcast and check out our website. You can listen to episodes there and read more about me and my guests. I'm Betsy Bush. And this is my latest version.