The Framers Forum

A thought provoking post on The Grumble by Rob Markoff.

That certainly is thought provoking. I was going to start a new topic on 'How has your year been so far' a few days ago, so if you do not mind John, I will continue it here.

We have already noticed a large 'downturn' in people buying ready framed art. Our 'picture wall' although small - 8 m long x 2.4 m high - contains some 30 - 35 framed art to suit all tastes. For the past 6 years it used to turn itself over at quite a pace. This year, I am lucky if I sell 2 pieces a week. The constant telephone calls from the print houses also tells its own story, they must be getting very worried too.

Thankfully, the bespoke work is keeping us going, yet there is no increase in workload from this time last year.
We have seen a big increase in the 'ready made' frames and mounts over the equivalent period last year.
We also sell needleart and again, whilst steady, there has been no increase in sales.

Up until the end of May, I was averaging the same per month as the previous two years. This month has been way below previous years. Yes, maybe the good weather/ world cup football and now Wimbledon is having an effect. The cost of living/holidays is also having a big effect.
Being a tourist area, people are concerned with their money. For the first time, I heard a comment the other day from a customer interest in a framed £69 local landscape print. "It is either a tankfull of diesel or the picture!". The need to travel and visit places whilst on holiday won the day.

So to sum up. Framed art - down. Bespoke framing - same. Ready mades - well up. Needleart - same.
In house costs of rent, rates, utilities, moulding etc. Up and increasing.
How is everybody else finding the framing market please?

I used to be able to predict quiet times - school holidays was always the killer for me. At the moment things have picked up and Im quite busy - begining of May was very quiet.

Print sales have picked up a bit - I change my strategy in the summer and my windows are full of mounted prints. Visitors will buy them mounted but dont seem so keen on framed prints - we get lots of overseas visitors to Tetbury - they dont want to carry the weight.
Its interesting to see the mix of visitors we get - It used to be Americans and they spent lots of money. Now it Koreans - Japanese etc- They dont seem to spend money, but they do take lots of pictures. The big change is the weekend visitor - we have loads of them and they like to spend. Most important group is still the locals some of whom must have little wall space left - or very large houses.

I no longer look at the comparison figures - was it better last summer - I dont care - the important figure is the end of year total and I have managed to increase that figure year on year - except the year that our dozy district council trebled car parking charges and completly cocked up the town.

I am not convinced by the theory that we are going to compete with digital screens - I think our demise will come from cheaper competition and over the top increases in rent -rates etc that will drive us out of the high street and into the obscurity of the industrial unit. ( not knocking you if thats where you trade - but its a different sort of customer from the high street framer). I have just signed a new five year lease - and I had to think hard about my ability to afford the increase - business will have to grow and my prices will rise.

Framed art sales - useless, we just have our 'moments' everything else up. Never had good art sales - not something people travel for really and we have little footfall or the right type of footfall in a village location - albeit a busy little place.

Not buying any more limited editions and dedicate far too much space to framed art - still, it looks nice and serves as useful props for framing - framing is KING which is fine as everything else evolved around it and we don't mind dropping bad sellers and love to diversify.

Framing is ballistic had a couple of slow weeks - slow for us anyway. But I took the afternoon off yesterday and my framer spent the whole time taking orders, I was the same practically all day today. Must have taken about 10 days worth of orders in a day and a half. Down to a 10 day turnaround time which is unheard of for me - 7 days is max, even at Christmas usually.

Yesterday people were almost 'panic buying' on the craft side.

I also do not worry about troughs and peaks, as nice as it would be to predict them.

Am looking to expand.

I don't take too much notice of these guru's who claim to be able to forecast future trends. I can't even guess what's likely to happen next week. All I know is that as soon as something becomes trendy, it's days are numbered.

This year everything is way down, except framing which is lower in volume of individual customers orders, but is nicely up on takings from framing due to some very nice high value orders. I have never been able to spot any meaningful pattern to this and I don't think there is one.

The suggestion that framed art is going to be replaced by stored digital images displayed on flat screens is just not credible, when you consider why people buy art or pay for framing. We are talking about treasured pictures, items or collectables being preserved to last into the future. Data on a hard disk lacks so much in comparison.
Cheers,
Mark

With regards to stored digital images, I spent most of my working life in the print and newspaper industry before switching to framing. About twenty five years ago we were being told that no-one would be buying newspapers anymore because people would be getting their information via teletext or computers. These so called guru's painted a very convincing black picture which concerned a great deal of people in the industry. The paper industry were also worried because it was predicted we would have the paperless office.
But, look at things today the news stands are full of new magazines, far more than any other time, and newspapers are still in circulation because what these so called guru's had overlooked was that it is far nicer to read a newspaper or magazine than it is to look at a computer screen.
As for the paperless office, the paper industry now sells more paper than ever, simply because when anyone wants to read something they find on the cumputer, they print the thing off on paper.
So lets hope the guru's who have come up with this bit of doom and gloom will end up the same way.
But, it has to be said they were right about the photo industry. Oh gawd!

imho people are still buying images, and buying frames, they just aren't buying them together in the same place. We are still framing as much if not more than ever, and a lot of the stuff we have for sale in the shop in any case, seems to be bought online then brought in for framing but sales off the wall are, to be frank, rubbish lately.

It is not practical any more to offer a massive range of prints and pictures. I guess it is ok if you specialise, and I'm wondering what to specialise in still!

Its a lot of hard work to compete with online prints sellers, and frankly when they will ofer you 30% comission on sales as an affiliate with a website, its madness to compete on price. I have been affiliated with a couple of the well known online resellers, one posters, one art prints for some time, and I find it very worthwhile.

Heres one we stumbled upon by accident:
I needed a replacement print in a hurry after one of my muppets damaged a print (I could use the term "employee" in the loosest sense of the word, but in this case Muppet fits) so I went online, searched artist and title, and came up with one of these sites, which I bought from. Great, no hassle, it was here in a few days, and saved an hour of trawling through catalogues, phoning suppliers, writing cheques, or talking to sales. You know the score ....

Just between you (members of the forum) and me, a lot of our local customers actually use our website, buy prints online from our affiliated links, (links to other sellers who pay commission on sales) -the generally bring them in in tubes brandishing the logos of artrepublic, allposters or easyart - then they bring the prints in to us for framing, and we have won both ways, as we have made a comission on the print sale, with no outlay at all, and if the customer is local we've most likely also got the framing job. And if we dont get the framing job, and they order the frame online, we'll get a commission from that. Win-win all round, I'd say.

I'd highly recommend some affiliates and I have put some on the website.
Without outright plugging any of them, here they are, well worth looking

These can save you, and your shop staff, a lot of time and trouble, simply by saying to shop customers who cant find what they want "have you looked on our web site?" and telling them that there are affiliated suppliers on there

http://www.frames.uk.com/art_affiliates__join_now.htm

If you have an art or framing web site, the allposters rotating ads are a great way of adding constantly changing content too, which doesn't hurt you one bit in the search engines I figure with the commissions paid, its another iron in the fire of the website, about 10 percent of our site visitors (around 300 a day) actually follow the links to the affiliates sites, so it does go to show that relevant links are pretty useful. And once they've moved off my site I might as well have a chance of a commission from a sale elsewhere after they have gone.