Art/Prints Sales off the wall - how was it for you in 2006?

[kev@frames]

For us its been rubbish for sales of framed art/prints, but serious amounts of bespoke framing and ready made frame sales made up for it. And a noted enthusiasm from customers for some of the more expensive/profitable "Quality" bespoke frames.
I think that might vindicate our decision to drop almost all of our art/prints sales in favour of increasing the ready made frames in the shop.

Although a few collegues locally have also mentioned this trend, and i see a similar report in another post from Robo, I was just wondering if this was the direction things are going in? Nothing much in Picture Business on this trend, so we had thought it was fairly local, or something to do with the "minimalist" fashion in home decor.

Mrs P reckons it coincided locally with everyone taking up broadband when we got it. Certainly a lot of the prints we get nowadays for framing are in postal tubes and bought online.

Oh, and we are starting to see plenty of those "gallery wrap" frameless canvasses in for framing now, people seem to have had them on the walls a year or two, and now want them in "proper" frames


any thoughts?
Hows it been for you?

kev

[Roboframer]

My point, on the other topic, was that 'art' sales are down this Christmas because I have not had the time to frame stuff for the shop.

Normally we do great this time of year on our own framed pictures.

But throughout the year we don't sell a great deal of the stuff, although we do have our moments, also certain DeMontfort artists are practically dead certs.

I am our best selling artist! (Photos - local scenes - mostly of places you'll only normally see on horseback or mountain bike - and/or at times of day which are ungodly!)

I've toyed with the idea of getting rid of most our print browsers and replacing one whole wall of pictures with giftware in glass/etc cabinets, but not until we try pushing pictures on a website - next year's resolution!

I only have to move a browser to get a picture from the window and Mrs Robo trys to fill the gap with craft stuff!

[kev@frames]

it looks like you have the right strategy selling niche items that they dont find elsewhere.

sadly as i get older i have less and less patience with artists demanding to know why their picture hasn't sold, or why it is a certain spot in the window, or whining about VAT on the commission. Maybe its just a local issue, but I find them all to ready to sell privately (off-gallery) and sneak in to "remove" pictures allegedly because you have not sold it, but actually because someone saw it in the window, looked them up in the phone book and did a deal. So original art is pretty much gone from our shop.
Likewise prints from local artists, fed up of being undercut by artists selling direct.

as for prints, im planning mostly to stock items with which to show off the framing rather than sell in their own right.

we used to do huge amounts with the usual suspects - the art group etc, but there hasn't been too much new or exciting lately, so any prints we now buy are strictly for "window" purposes only, and Christmas.

I think ive just been worn down by years and years of jack vettriano and john miller lol. :shock

Good luck with the website, if I find some prints that I would like to sell I would certainly put them on the web. Thats the way to go. Our site accounts for a good slice of our regular turnover. It certainly makes up for the drop in off-the-wall picture sales.

kev