Good design vs Cheap.

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Not your average framer
Posts: 11014
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Good design vs Cheap.

Post by Not your average framer »

We've all seen it before recessions come and go and people switch from buying decent quality stuff to cheaper stuff, but fortunately it's generally not everyone that switches to buying cheap. There are usually some of those who can still afford to buy some of the nicer stuff, which is just as well for us picture framers, but maybe we need to be more on the ball this time to stay ahead of the game. So, what makes the essential difference as things get tighter. Not everyone is going to have the same approach, but for a lot of us we may need to get more out of less. I think that it's reasonable to assume that at least some customers will be tightening their budgets, but there is still going to be a market for custom framing and maybe there are some areas, where we can sharpen up our acts to still pick up the business from those who won't be spending as much as they once spent of top end of the market stuff, but stll want something special.

Maybe part of the answer might be more of an emphasis on design. Assuming that to meet the customers budgetary limitations, we can be a little bit more careful on how much is spent on mouldings, but still make the overall job look really classy, by what else we can add to the mix. Sometimes a basic frame can be embelished by adding slips, or liners in the form of smaller frames, perhap adding decorative mounts, or even deep bevelled mounts. Just to be clear, I am not actually talking about hand finished frames, you can even do this with normal factory finished mouldings, you are adding something of the designer look to just raise the look of the frame to a higher level. Simple, but approprite added embelishment, which works well at an appropriate cost level can protect you necessary profit requirements, but also to enable your customer to get more out of their available budget and hopefully you still get the sale.

There usually ways and means of creating deep bevel mount stips by sticking two scrap stips of mountboard together and wrapping them, or even paint the cut bevelled edge with paint. I'm not really in to the now a bit dated look of 5mm deep bevel acents, as they were once called. I much prefer a double thickness of 1.4mm conservation mountboard where two normal mountboards have been stuck together and the a full depth bevell has been cut. It's only me personal preference but I like to paint my deep bevels with a 50/50 mix of chalky emulsion paint and a similar colour acrylic paint. Equally speced miltiple v-grrove also look great, but don't usually mean adding extra material costs, to do them. While we all are still keeping adequately busy, there is not much point in making any changes from what we are already doing, but if things start to slow down then itmight be a good time to start looking at how we get a bit more out of a shrinking market. I hope that this at least will be something useful to be looking at.

Has anyone else got any useful recession busting ideas to share?
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
Not your average framer
Posts: 11014
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Re: Good design vs Cheap.

Post by Not your average framer »

How many of us know the Rose and Hollis moulding A228? It used to be 39 pence per foot plus VAT and it probably a little bit more by now. It's not actually all that difficult for those of us with the necessary facilities to save a bit of money by cutting it in half to use to as two separate lengths as matching frame slips if we want to. But even if we don't it paints and looks very nice with a suitable colour of chalky emusion paint for a cheap match pot and a bit of goldfinger disolved in white spirit dried with a hot air gun. For almost nothing we have added some extra interest to a nicely finished, but still plain main moulding and it looks much nicer for very little added cost. It's not rocet science and absolutely anyone can usually do quite a reasonable job of painting with chalky emulsion paint.

I usually like to cheat a bit and slice up a cheap obeche moulding with nicely shaped moulded sections included as part of the moulding design. It is very common to be able to cut as least a few really nice profled slip sections from one such low cost bare wood obeche moulding and other left over bit become useful spacers. Not everyone is equiped to do this, so it's not very practical for everybody, hoever it may be helpful to some. The existing sight edge lip on the main moulding provides a very useful alignment feature for getting the added slip to be possitioned straight and level. Added design and presentation may just be a useful opportunity to secure that sale and at the same time to add some extra added value andprofit to the deal. In time I am hoping to take some photos to show what I mean.

For me shaped slip are almost something, or nothing. You can pay money fora slip, or it's already there as part of some of your sctaps and left overs, in which case it's very cheap indeed. As I already buy plenty of older style mouldings, slicing some bits up to use some already profiled pieces is not a big deal and what gets left over will still get used for something lse. Silver always goes well with black, so a fairly presentable flat black factory finished moulding with an added toned down silver slip will usually create a bit of a designer style moulding at a lower than usual cost. Take care though, a poor qualiy finish on the black moulding is likely to spoil the effect completely, so it still need to look decent quality. Little obeche woodgrain flecks showing through the black paint, don't look very great at all.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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