The Framers Forum

So BoJo has decided to lock us all down again during traditionally our busiest month of the year. This is the month that usually makes the rest of the year worthwhile. Doors will be closed for consultations but what ways are others finding to save Christmas, if its at all possible....

Collections and deliveries? Frame visualisations? FaceTime/Zoom consultations? I guess as an industry we need to adapt our working methods and anticipate that there will be further lockdowns. How can we work around the restrictions?

If as indicated we come out of this early December the three weeks prior to Christmas will likely be pretty frenzied!

I have not talked to my boss yet but I think we will be doing collections for orders taken in the last week or 2 and possibly might do phone or WhatsApp or similar consultations. I live pretty much where I work so I will be in workshop doing samples and cleaning/maintenance of workshop if we have no orders to do. My job is to make frames and run that specific workshop. First task tomorrow is to contact moulding suppliers and find out who will be open and deliveries etc. Terrible timing for the framing industry overall. I think the business (smallish family owned) I work for will be okay for the foreseeable future but my heart goes out to small independent art & craft orientated business at this time.

I thought that this was already on the cards, so it's not really much of a surprise. Customers are still wanting to bring in work to me and I've got a perspex screen to fit in to the doorway for the front doorway. Customers are not permitted inside the shop during lockdown, they are happy with this arrangement and so am I. So it's not much of a problem! I've bought a good stock of bare wood mouldings and I can produce most things without any problems. Can't you do something similar to keep you going?

The government is playing a trade off between saving the economy and keep the spread of the virus under control. It's largely a no win situation, we need to keep as much of the economy still work as possible, because the money that the economy generates needs to keep follow to fund the efforts to keep people being fed and staying alive. However, controlling the spread of the virus is necessary as well to save lots of lives. Unfortunately both of the requirements are to some extent mutually exclusive. So there's a really terrible balancing act.

Enabling our businesses to survive is going to come down to hard choices made by you and me. We are not going to get through this completely unscathed, our businesses will mostly be in survival mode in 2021. Many of our supplies will be not always available and we will be trying hard to turn as much of our waste and dead stock into saleable product as we can. Some customers will be limited to restricted budgets and we will need to offer more value for less money to win their business.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. I any recession there will be winners and losers. So needing to know how still win business from those who are financial challenged, we don't want to take our eye of the ball concerning winning business from those are still in a solid financial position. We all need to know how to produce and present product for both markets. Where the up market supplies become more difficult to obtain, we need to learn a few tricks and add the up market element by other means.

For some of us this may involve some degree of hand finishing, but others will add some slips, deep mount bevels and stuff like that. Adding value is going to be the name of the game. A large number of us are already doing a bit of this already, but maybe we need to work smarter and more efficiently as life gets a bit tougher. Some of us, who maybe carrying a bit too much financial baggage, may need to reduce some of the bagage. However those who are not already planning for the times ahead, are not going to be ready to take the right action in a coordinated and coherent manner as easily as those who already have a plan B.

I'm a bit fortunate in that most of my work is for trade customers (or semi-trade) so no lengthy 'consultations'
are normally needed. I try and avoid having people agonising for hours on end. None of the samples on my wall
are 'in stock'. Regular customers just drop the stuff off and I do the necessary. :lo Contact kept to a minimum.

I abandoned having a 'walk-in' shop many years ago and never been stuck for a job since.

Even now after having had a stroke and not having my shop sorted for opening and Covid operating requirements, I'm still getting people contacting me to ask when they can bring things in for me to frame them. I've not actually been looking for, or advertising for work, it just keeps happening. I'm not sure that this shutdown is going to be quite as bad as some people are expecting it to be.

I've got a backlog of 2 or 3 weeks work I reckon so I'll be clearing that and arranging payment on the phone, collections at the door. I've been working by appointment anyway so customers are getting used to calling me first. Got a few people dropping off work today and tomorrow to do as and when before Christmas. Hopefully that'll leave the decks clear for re-opening on 2nd December (if that happens) for what will no doubt be a mad three weeks in December!

I be getting sorted a bit more during the lockdown. Probably remaking a bench, or two, fitting some perspex screen and remaking some of my moulding racks. The challenge is to use as much as possible materials salvage from the original benches and moulding racks. I need to do a a reasonable number of customer jobs too. I won't be getting over excited about the shut down, it will come and go and I will largely watch it go by. There's always tomorrow and another day another dollar!

I've got a surface planer being delivered tomorrow, so something new to play with, as always every day is full of possibilities. It is different to a planer thicknesser and does not quite do the same job, but it turns rough sawn timber in to planed all round a the flick of a switch. I'm not expecting to be buying to many little oddments like slips, spacers, fillets and sub frames, when I can make them out of scraps and left overs. It's been said that if you've got a table saw, a planer and a band saw then you can usually make most things. Well, I'm guessing there should be a pillar drill there too. I have not yet got the pillar drill, but it's on the list.

Speed of getting things done will probably be an important issue for many of us in the new year and waiting for something quite simple that you need to be back in stock so you can get it sent to you might interfere with the work flow and so the idea for me is to make anything which is going to hold up a job, quickly, simply and easily. Disruption of the supply chain is going to disrupt other businesses further down the chain. I'm reckoning on having a good go at beating that problem, as part of keeping things running. Small businesses are good at flexibility and if you are a small business it's worth remembering this, as flexibility might be your friend in difficult times like this.