The Future of the Business

I spent the majority of this year focusing on the future of the business. I think web design is becoming less and less lucrative for a solo web designer. Bigger websites are still necessary but there are teams of web designers that are better suited for the job. Plenty of businesses still need good quality websites but I have found more business owners attempting to make the site themselves. Most of the time it is obviously not made by a professional but they did not have to spend lots of money either. I have still been making websites but I have noticed the trend shifting.

So I came back home in December to spend some time with my family and attempt to further the business. Say Google came out with something tomorrow that made web designers obsolete; what would I do to make money? If I was going to start from scratch with my current skill set, equipment, client base, etc.; what would I do? What do I do better than the competition or what unique services do I offer? What do I enjoy doing? In a perfect world I can find something I enjoy doing while being able to travel.

So, my parents and I spent a great deal of time thinking through these questions. My parents have been key to the plan from the get go. Taking care of invoicing, banking, website updates while I am offshore are all things that are key to help keep this strange business going. Fine art printing became a big part of the business about five years ago. We initially got into printing just for the sake of our own photos. It was too expensive to get everything printed from another business, so we purchased a printer so that we could print whatever we wanted. So we started figuring out color management and how to best portray our photographs. Dad and I have always enjoyed the printing process, especially large prints. I remember I set up a booth at a Bridal Expo in New Bern and had a large 40×60 portrait I took of my sister, a 33×84” trade show banner I made along with several other canvas prints. There were around 50 booths and 30 of them were photographers. I ended booking one wedding but landed four photographers that needed a place for large format prints. The market was completely saturated with photographers but there was a definite need for large format printing. So it began.

A year or so later, I was approached by a good friend out on Ocracoke, Katy Mitchell. Her mom is a wonderful artist who lives on Ocracoke Island. She had a terrible time trying to find anyone to digitize her artwork and accurately represent the colors. She asked if I wanted to give it a try. Conveniently, I had almost all of the equipment I needed to digitize the artwork. Our 44” Canon printer was the perfect printer, with archival quality inks. I read up on the subject and gave it a go. In retrospect, my first effort was horrific. But they were better than the last person she hired. She committed to getting 20 pieces digitized and I spent the rest of the summer perfecting the process. I burned a lot of materials and brain cells trying to figure out how to get the colors just right. (Ha, that’s funny choice of phrase upon rereading. Kitty just had a beach bonfire Burning Woman event out on the island where she burned any artwork that didn’t sell at the auction).

There are many challenges to digitizing artwork but the trickiest is the color management. Basically, you have to use a controlled light source with a known color temperature. Your camera interprets colors but you have to tell it exactly which colors are what. This is a camera calibration file that we make custom each time we digitize. Then you have to make sure your monitor displays the colors properly. Then each printer prints the colors in a different way and each paper accepts ink differently. So you have to profile each paper to make sure the colors come out just right. The goal is to print a reprint of a piece of artwork, hold it up next to the original and have the colors and exposure look perfect. Luckily, it is much more of a scientific process than a creative one which appeals to my analytic science and Chemistry background.

So, fast forward to all those talks my parents and I had this winter and spring. What would we do with the business if we were going to refocus today? We decided fine art printing and art reproduction are the two things we do best. I have the process of digitizing artwork down and am very good at it. And it seems like there aren’t many businesses out there that do it well, at least not in this area. We can print out of our home office and print studio and offer lower prices than shops that have a downtown storefront and massive overhead. So we spent a lot of time thinking about what artists need, what services we can provide and at what cost, and how to best approach this group. We found consistent issues that most artists seem to face. Artists, as much as any business, need a website to promote themselves. Most cannot afford to pay a web designer for a custom site. Most are on the verge of taking their passion to the next level and making it a profitable business. Finding someone to digitize artwork well is challenging. Even if you find a business you like, you have to either bring your artwork to the business or ship your artwork. Shipping artwork is expensive and you run the risk of damaging your original piece. Ocracoke is an example of why this doesn’t work. The island can only be accessed by boat and it takes hours to get to any size city that would have a print shop. Galleries are the primary outlet for artists to find clients. This works well for reaching clients but the artist ends up paying 30-50% to the gallery when a painting sells. This makes it difficult to make a profit.

So. With all of these challenges in mind, here’s what we came up with:

First off, we needed to find a system to digitize artwork onsite. My old method was to retrieve the artwork from the artist, digitize it at our studio, print a test swatch on canvas to ensure the colors match the original and return the artwork to the artist. After years of practice, I finally have the confidence to go onsite to the artist and digitize there without having to travel with the artwork. This means I only have to make one trip and do not run the risk of damaging the artwork (which we never did but it is still stressful). We found a great solution for being able to digitize from anywhere and accomplish this step. Check.

Next, we needed to provide a way for artists to sell these prints. We were not trying to just sign up artists, get their money to digitize the artwork and not have them make any money. We needed to provide resources for them to sell their artwork. The more they sell, the more we are printing. So we decided to offer e-commerce sites to our artists for no extra charge with no ongoing fees. Once we digitize at least ten images from an artist, we create an e-commerce site to showcase their work online. Free website. Check out www.kittymitchell.com for an example of this. Most artists only need a brief biography page and their storefront. So, a website provides a place for artists to make money online without paying 30-50% in gallery fees. They can push traffic to their website using free social media, gallery showings, advertising, etc. If someone places an order online, we will create the print and ship it directly to the client. Print-on-demand service. Then we subtract our printing fees and send the rest to the artist. All the artist needs to do is create new artwork and we take care of the rest. This also alleviates the old method of printing where artists had to order a large number of prints in a batch and then find a place to store them. As well as take care of all of the hassle of shipping. There are a few services out there that provide this kind of service but they charge annual fees and an up front design cost. We include the website with the cost of digitizing the artwork, which is already lower than any other business we have found.

Once we have an artist online showcasing their artwork, we want to provide the resources to help promote the artwork. We can print greeting cards with the artist’s information and website on the back. These can be used as promotional giveaways or as an inexpensive product to sell and help promote the art. We also help set up Facebook and Instagram accounts that link back to the website. Our goal moving forward is to provide template flyers and posts that artists can use on their social media accounts to advertise new artwork, gallery shows, coupons, etc.

So. Moving forward we are looking to reach out and find new artists to work with. I think we have a fantastic model that nearly every artist needs. Our target area to start with is the entirety of North Carolina. We already have artists out on Ocracoke and are committed to driving that far. Our location in Winston-Salem is an ideal spot for the center of the state. We are looking to travel to the artist and digitize onsite.

We have spent a good portion of the year working through our pricing sheet and trying to be fair and competitive. We have acquired all of the new equipment needed for all of the services we offer. My parents just moved into a new house and we are currently finishing off close to 700 square feet of attic space that we are calling the Workspace for the print shop. This will be the first time in the history of the business that we have had this much dedicated space to work with. We just built a new 4×8’ table where all of the prints will be finished. Very exciting times.

So we have an ongoing Referral Program offer. If you refer an artist to us that ends up getting artwork digitized by us, you get a free 11×14 canvas gallery wrap of your choice from my store: www.sailawaywebdesign.com/shop. (The fine print is that they need to commit to having ten pieces digitized by us. We recommend this to all artists because we need to have at least ten to have enough to put up on the website.) If you know anyone that might be interested, feel free to have them call or email me.

We are very excited for The Future of the Business and look forward to the next few years to see where it takes us.

You know what…I’m going to put another offer out there. I don’t actually know if anyone is reading my blog posts or not. (Actually, that’s not true. I have Google Analytics and know exactly how many people are reading my posts…) So, if anyone actually made it to the bottom of this blog post, I’ll send you an 8×10 photo print of your choice from my shop: www.sailawaywebdesign.com/shop. Here is a coupon that will expire next week for one free print per blog reader: marathonreader. Enter this in and get your free print! I’ll put a limit of, I don’t know, say 20 coupons, so the first 20 readers to cash in get the free print. Thanks for reading!