Suggested suppliers non trade

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Woodypk
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Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

Hi guys,

Could anyone recommend a supplier for the necessaries such as mount board, undermount, glass, backing etc?

I did a search on the forum and found a few recommendations for Wessex Pictures but their website states that are trade suppliers only.

As a novice in the business as well as framing world, do you need to have a registered business to open a trade account with companies such as Wessex?

Cheers,
Tom
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Justintime »

You could try ukframingsupplies.net
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by pramsay13 »

Wessex, along with Centrado, Lion etc. are trade suppliers.
They may sell to you if your order is large enough.
If just a small amount it might make more sense to contact a local picture framer and ask them if you can buy a few things.
If your nearest picture framer is worried about competition you could go a bit further afield.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Gesso&Bole »

Trade suppliers have minimum orders and pack sizes will be aimed at the trade. Most businesses start small, so that in itself isn’t an issue but if you are planning to frame as a hobby not a business then there are some eBay sellers that will supply small quantities or try your local framers.

I will happily supply you I am based in Nottingham
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Woodypk
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

Thanks for the replies.

It would be wonderful if I'd be able to run this as a small business from home, and that is eventually my goal. I have always wanted to run a small business and I have two other family members who do the same (very unrelated to framing). Like you say, Gesso, at the moment, I am only able to place orders in small quantities as anything else wouldn't make financial sense.

Gesso, I'm about 40 minutes from the centre of Nottingham and have family and friends who live there, so I really appreciate your offer and will keep that in mind.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by prospero »

How far are you from Lincoln? I'm about 10 miles east. You are always welcome to any odds and sods. :D

I've also got a shed full of moulding waiting to be re-purposed. :lol:
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Not your average framer »

When I first got started D & J simons were very helpful and I opened an account with then with no difficulty. Whever that same would apply in the current times is difficult to say. Also some framing suppliers have trade counters and maybe they will be happy to sell to you at their trade counter. I don't know about this, but it might be worth asking the question. I started off having bought up the stock of a couple of businesses that had closed down and when a rep cheacked me out, I looked like I was already trading, because I had plenty of stock. I can't remember whether this was before, or after I had started renting a shop. so I don't know if a was still trading from home, or not.

I did not find that working from home was much good for me and it was not until I got myself a shop, that the business started to get a worthwhile number of customers. There are plenty of members of this forum, who are operating from home and know much more about running a business from home than I ever did, so I am not the best person to advise about that. Ever when I first rented my shop, I did not really know what I was doing and struggled for the first 6 mounths any then things at last picked up for Christmas and then during the January, I had a heart attack.

I was a very rough ride and I gradually got known and the business slowly struggled into life. I had a lot of older stock I had bought from the two older shops that had closed down and started hand finishing them to suit what customers wanted. Eventually my wife got worried about my health and said that I needed a holiday to recover my health a bit, but we did not have the money to have a holiday. However I did have access to some money for relevant training via the job centre, so I went to get trained in hand finishing with Pete Bingham up in Sheffield. It was not much of a holiday but Pete taught me so much, particularly about pricing and after that I had a much better idea of what I was doing and things got a bit better.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by prospero »

To be 'in business' you don't need to jump through a lot of hoops if you're a one man band.
Have a chat with the HMRC and tell them you are operating as a sole trader.
You might have to agree on a few things such as the proportion of shared domestic/business resources.
Keep accounts of your business incomings/outgoings.
Submit a self assessment tax return. Very easy nowadays as you can do it online.
Get some cards printed.

Sorted. :clap:

The 'Trade' thing tends to be not so rigid nowadays. Suppliers are less snotty about it. You don't really need
credit accounts until you start buying big quantities.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Not your average framer »

I have just noticed the kind offer from Prosperro. I would strongly recommed that you have a chat with him. He like me does a lot of hand finished work and stacked moulding frames. Hand finishing and stacked moulding frames is how I got started and has since then been my main line of business. It has kept me alive through times which have been both good and bad and my wife and I have been through some really rough times, but we are still here after me going through a heart attack and a stroke.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

Thank you for your kind offer prospero, it is greatly appreciated. I drive down the A46 every day for work so pass Lincoln daily, so not too far away. Come the new year, I may take you up on that kind offer... if you haven't got fed up and had a clear out by then.

I've just registered an account with Lion to get me started as I won't be buying large quantities at a time. I'm sure in time, I will figure out when I need to be making the jump to bulk ordering so I can take advantages of the discounts. In all honesty, I don't expect to have the amount of business to make the lack of discounts that much of a big deal at this stage, but it's nice to keep your eyes open and look to the future.

Thanks all once again for the replies.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by prospero »

I use Lion mainly for sundries. You can soon make up a decent order. :lol:
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Tom,

When you get to talk to Prospero, It might be vary helpful to ask him to tell you a bit about hand finishing. It's not such a bad thing to be able to do as a helpful aspect to be future business. It certainly never did me any harm to be doing a bit of that, and I think that you will find that Prospero might well say the same.
Mark Lacey

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― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

Thanks Mark,

I will be sure to ask. Do you have any links or info you'd be able to share about hand finishing in the meantime so I can do some research in the meantime?

Cheers.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Not your average framer »

I'm not sure if there actually are any links to hand finishing, if there are I've never found any. There's probably most examples of hand finishing on the good the bad and the ugly, or the members only sections of this forum than most places. Those who are doing much in the way of hand finishing are quite a small and limited number of individuals, these days. It used to happen a lot more at one time, but there's not all that many of us doing it as there once was in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Also a lot of us are largely self taught as well. Not only that, but those of us still doing it are not always doing what is necessarily the exact same thing. I ran a course a few year back and there was 18 people came on the course. I'm not sure how many of them carried on pursuing it, but we are a fairly exclusive band.

We are not necessarily all doing it at the same level either. There is a bit of a difficulty in getting enough customers, who will pay for hand finished framing for some of us. When I got started, there never was much of a plan to develop this as a business, it just sort of happened over time in an almost random sort of way and I still largely just going with it. I've got a fairly good name for doing this sort of thing within the local area, but I've not got a lot of idea how customers find me. I'm a bit unusual, because I learnt much of the basics from buying, repairing and selling odd bits and pieces through various auction sale rooms. I knew which damaged items were worth buying and fixing to sell and I knew a few people in the trade who were kind enough to share some of what they knew with me.

For me it's been quite a long journey to get to where I am now and I feel like the opportunities and lessons that I've learnt along the way were largely meant to happen. They certainly were not planned by me. I've just been in the right place at the right time. As you can probably well imagine, like most of the others, I do this because it gives me a lot of satisfaction to be doing it.
Mark Lacey

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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

I'll be sure to check out the forum for some info, Mark.

Also, I agree with and applaud the fact that you've done what you've done because of the satisfaction you've got from it.

I've been told that the place I work is planned to shut at the end of next year and we're all being made redundant. This means that I have a year to decide what I really want to do and hope that I can find something that I want to do because It was "meant to be" and something I want to do because of the satisfaction it gives.

Time will tell... it gives me a year to pick your brains if nothing else...
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Not your average framer »

Are you going to invest in some stock of mouldings and other materials, also are you planning to operate from home and how are you expecting to get customers to come to you? There are various members of this forum, who will probably will have some advise to offer, but you will need to be able to define your goals a bit and keep those who are offering advise on the same page as where you are heading.

I would want to emphasize the need for flexibility is the range of uses, for such materials and equipment that you choose as you initial stock and equipment. Also, an awareness that it is necessary to minimise your costs relative to your potential sales prices. It is a definite possibility that customers will be being very careful how they spend their money during the recesion that we are all being told is coming and the value added compont of any sales income is going to be the important component. This mainly is the bit that you add yourself, by the work that you do!

I buy quite a lot of bare wood pine mouldings and the emphasis is on cheap and versatile. Pine is not always regarded as the best quality of all woods, but like everything else, it has a lot to do with how you are able to present it as a finished item. I live in a fairly rural part of the country and a lot of what I can sell in a rural area, is probably less easy to sell in bigger towns, or cities, so you do need to identify your market and your potential customers. In case you think that I did this when I got started, I did not!

I was not that clued up at that time and I was barely scrapping by while struggling with a steep learning curve at the same time. but I did have a lot of things in my favour, even though I did not realise it at the time. I had bought a lot of mouldings from a framer who was closing down and they were very up market, imported American catalogue Larson Juhl, very stylish and chunky mouldings. Unfortunately, I did not realise what I had got and let the go too cheaply and after a while they were gone, but customers kept coming to me for this style of moulding and finishes.

So I decided to concoct some moulding profiles that look a bit similar by combining other mouldings to create profile hhat looked a bit similar. At that time I did not know that this technique was knon as stacked moulding frames, but it was still bringing in the customers and I was able to give the customer what they wanted. but we were still basically still mainly scrapping by. Somewhere around this time I had a heart attack, was not very well for a long time.

My wife was very worried about me and decided that I needed a holiday, but we did not have any money to be able to afford to pay for a holiday, so I did the next best thing, I had been unemployed a while before all of this and had been a business case with the local job centre. The idea of this was that they would support me a bit, while I tried to start my own self employed business. During this time the sent me for retraining through an organisation call Dartington Tech who found me a training placement at Triton Galleries, working in there framing workshop and this is where I learnt to be a framer.

Dartington Tech sent out a revised CV and told me that lots of companies would be wanting to employ me. Well, no one was looking to employ me at all and the job centre gave me an ultimatum to sign off and start my own business. I had little choice about this a started my own business, which was not a great success, but I exchanged the job seekers allowance for the working tax credit and I was still scrapping by. Eventually I was in the right place at the right time and bought the necessarily equipment and stock from a framing shop which was closing down.

However while I was signing off from the job centre, the told me that I was entitled to a grant for relevent training to a maximum of £1,500 providing that I claimed it within two years and as I was still within at two year period, I arranged for one weeks residential training in Sheffield with Pete Bingham on hand finishind framing and related subjects. I learnt quite a lot from him especially with regard to pricing my work to make a proper living and the rest is history.

I have very largely survived for the last 16 years producing a large part of my output as hand finished and stacked moulding frames. It is probably worth noting that my ability to produce a good volume of work output has considerably reduce in this time, partly due to the effects of my heart attact and also in part due to a stroke in 2019 which has severely affected the right hand side of my body.

I am right handed, but I have had to learn to use my left hand to do many of the things that I once was able to do with my right hand. My right leg is very severely affected and I can barely walk. A lot of things that I did by hand are now aided by machine tools and power tools. I've had to learn to write again, speak again and to walk again. It's been a hard road, but I'm still here. It's a rare thing for human beings to just give up and I'm nothing particalarly special, but we all have that drive to keep going when bad things happen to us.

My main point about all this is that hand finished and stacked moulding framing has freed me from having to beat other framers price to secure enough business to keep me going. Hand finished and stacked moulding framing, if conducted as a specialized and niche market oriented business, has considerably more potential per item, for a worthwhile level of profit and access to well monyed top draw customers, if you can do it well. In short it is about making more money, from a much less demanding level of output. All I can say is it works very nicely for me!
Mark Lacey

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― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by jaybee173 »

For small orders like a roll of tape or some fixings your probably best using Ebay as you can get just about everything and with no minimum order or carriage charge - see the framing section here https://ebay.to/3rgAb0o for an idea of what is available.

You can also get moulding, mountboard and cut mounts here.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by prospero »

:D I get a lot of stuff from E-Bay. Dishcloths, yellow dusters, masking tape, cheapo disposable brushes. This is stuff
mainly connected to finishing. You have to watch out though as some is waaaaay overpriced.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Woodypk »

First of all, thank you for sharing that Mark.

And thanks for the link jaybee.

Mark, I'll be honest... I have no idea how to actually officially 'start'.

I have, up to now, only made and sold a handful of frames to people who weren't friends or family. And even those people where people who were friends of friends and found through word of mouth.

Up to now, I've been exclusively buying hardwood lumber in rough sawn board form. Although I'm not sure how viable of an option it is to run a business that way as I don't see many people doing it (maybe I've not looked hard enough), but I think I would enjoy doing it this way much more - hand picking boards for their figure and grain pattern and then processing them from boards to finished product satisfies the woodworker in me.

All this work takes time and cost of course.

My initial thought was to enter a Niche market making modern, "designer" frames. As a 20 something year old, in my opinion and through the research i have carried out with my peers, framing and it's associations are seen as somewhat of an "old-fashioned" art.

This is not meant to be any sort of offence towards anyone who is interested in framing by the people I have spoken to, but I think it's probably because art in its traditional form is less of a big deal to the "instagram generation" than it has been to past generations.

My idea, good or never going to work, was to provide a "designer", modern product for those who may have no interest in framing or frames in general. From my research, I've found that if you can make something "cool" and desirable to a select few, the rest who also want to sale on those sorts of up-market boats - think keeping up with the Joneses - will tend to follow.

I'm not saying it was my idea to start a new trend and get everyone under 25 interested in frames and framing, but something more along the lines of attracting some people who may not have been so interested before because they had some preconceived idea that what we here are interested in is outdated or whatever... I guess that's the whole point in having an idea. There's nothing to say its a good one, or that it will work that way. There may well be a good reason why this isn't the way framers work now a days.
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Re: Suggested suppliers non trade

Post by Rainbow »

Part of being in business is backing your hunches and taking a risk. If you do it, your might fail, but there again, you might succeed. If you don't do it, you'll always regret it. Just because it hasn't been done before, doesn't mean to say that there isn't a market for it. This year I've been doing something that no other framer in my area does and in spite of Covid, I've so far had a better year than last year. If I'd gone by what other framers are doing, I would never have done it. Something different might work for you too.

Do what you can to give yourself the best chance of succeeding. Get testimonials from those people that you've done work for. Set up a funky web site and put your work and testimonials on there. Get involved in whatever social media sites are flavour of the month. Once the Covid restrictions are eased, see if you can take some wall space in the places where your target customers frequent, eg find some artists whose work you think will suit your frames and see if together you can persuade the bar-owner or whoever to hang your joint work on the walls - offer the bar-owner commission, make sure you put a business card on the pictures etc. It's great that you've got a year to see if you can get this to work, although bear in mind that your current employer might have to shorten that timescale.
This means that I have a year to decide what I really want to do and hope that I can find something that I want to do because It was "meant to be" and something I want to do because of the satisfaction it gives.
As the saying goes, get a job you love and you'll never have to do a day's work in your life. Good luck, and I hope it works out for you :)
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