Business realism

If a tire-kicker like me will buy a snowblower online, it’s time to retire my arguments against internet stores.

Breaking Storm, by Carol L. Douglas

This is the week when I hole up with my fellow painter Bobbi Heath and talk about our business plans for the coming year. The question I’m asking myself has been niggling at my planning for at least three years: do I want to invest significant resources into setting up online marketing? Or a bricks-and-mortar gallery in my Rockport studio?

My arguments for not doing so have been:

• It takes a lot of time to set up an e-commerce-enabled website;
• People won’t buy expensive things sight unseen;
• All painting sales are relational;
• Conflict with my current gallery representation;
• I’d rather be painting.

Cape Elizabeth Cliffs, by Carol L. Douglas

Ten days ago, I was lying in bed whining about an upcoming winter storm. We’ve always shoveled snow rather than hire a plowman. But I’ll be sixty years old next month. While snow never gets old, I sure am. “Let’s buy a snowblower,” I said to my husband.

I pulled out my cell phone and texted my gearhead son-in-law to ask what brands he thought were most reliable. “My uncle has an Ariens,” he said. That was enough for me. Said uncle always buys quality equipment.

Fifteen minutes later I’d charged an $1100 snowblower on my credit card on an online site attached to a bricks-and-mortar store nearby. it was in our garage, ready to use, by dinnertime.

That’s anecdotal, but my own metrics tell the same story. In 2018, my family placed 115 orders on Amazon alone. The total value was nearly $10,000.

Parrsboro Sunrise, by Carol L. Douglas

If frugal, older, careful tire-kickers like me are doing that much business online, that can only mean our arguments against selling art on the internet are out of date. This year, I go into this planning session not with a generalized idea, but with a firm goal.

The problem will be implementing something so far outside my skill set. There are only two ways to do this. The first is to pay someone to do it for me, and the second is to suck it up and learn how myself.

Dry Wash, by Carol L. Douglas

Then there’s the question of the brick-and-mortar gallery. I spent yesterday morning looking at spaces where there are galleries, spaces where I know there will be galleries, and comparing the shopping districts of area tourist towns. I walked away thinking there may be marginally better retail spaces than the one I already own, but none with such great advantages that they’re worth the extra cost.

Note: before you can start specifically planning a retail business, you need a basic strategic plan. If you don’t understand your customers, the work you like to do, your strengths and your weaknesses, you’re more likely to fail.

A strategic plan for the artist

Planning isn’t the artist’s strongest skill. Here’s a step-by-step model you can use.

Winter lambing, by Carol L. Douglas. When I stray from my narrow focus, it's for my own purposes and intentional.

My husband’s work is incremental. His current project has a three-year timeline. The members of his team have a clear idea of the end product. Each person disciplines him- or herself to finishing their bits each week. Planning has to be part of their process, or the end result would be chaos.

Artists work alone and usually finish a piece in a few hours, days or weeks. Then we move on to the next piece. Our planning is limited, and many of us resist it. “I’m a free spirit,” we tell ourselves.

Yesterday’s post touched a chord. I messaged with artists from Mobile to Maine about how to write a strategic plan.

Apple tree swing, by Carol L. Douglas. One of my goals is to limit how many plein air events I do.

Here are the steps:

• Find yourself someone smarter than you to work with. Lots of artists have business backgrounds; I don’t. Ask that person questions. Ask gallerists for advice. And don’t forget your spouse. After you, she/he is the biggest stakeholder in your process.
• Identify what you want to make and sell. In my case, that’s landscape paintings, workshops, and a weekly class.
• Identify marketing channels, including cost-free publicity. Social media marketing is so fluid that what works today will certainly not be effective five years down the road, so be prepared to revisit this question regularly.
• Julie Richard suggests that you do a SWOT analysis. I didn’t, but I think it’s a good idea. That means you identify your:
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats to success



My Acadia workshop is important to me both personally and professionally.

• Many artists work other jobs to support themselves (including child care and homemaking). They need to figure out how many hours a week they can honestly give their art careers. Other artists are at retirement age or have retired spouses. You’ll be frustrated if you don’t face the limitation of time honestly.

• Who are your target clients? Bobbi Heath and I drew up profiles of our clients based on our sales experience. We each realized we have two separate client bases, one for teaching and one for painting.
• What are your objectives? Be realistic. When I first did this exercise with Jane Bartlett many ago, I said I wanted to be earning $10,000 a year. (Money was a lot cheaper back then.) That seemed modest compared to what I was earning as a designer. I failed to make a fundamental calculation. At the price points I’d set for my work, I couldn’t possibly produce enough paintings to hit that goal. I was selling well enough, but still coming up broke.
  
  The answer to that, by the way, was not to raise my prices to an unrealistic level. It was just to ride through those years. Knowing they were coming would have helped my financial planning, though.
   
• From your objectives, set some concrete goals. Commit to them. Most of my working week is spent working toward them. They keep me focused.
• How are you going to make those goals a reality? By setting some action items. These may include:
• A calendar of show applications with the dates firmly inked into your personal calendar;
• An advertising schedule;
• A work schedule as in, “I’m going to finish six large studio paintings by May.”
• A budget—I realize that you’d like this budget to be zero, but that’s not practical. It costs money to make art and it costs money to advertise.
• Write it down. It doesn’t need to be complicated; my current one is barely a page long.
• Create accountability. I use Bobbi Heath’s system for managing multiple projects, but you might need an accountability partner. Make a system and use it.
• Go back and look at the plan on a regular basis.

Give yourself room to be flexible. My watercolor workshop on the American Eagle is a new thing.

Does this mean you can’t be flexible? No. If you see an opportunity, grab it—as long as it doesn’t take you totally off track. if it does, ask yourself if your current plan is really your best plan, or does it need revision?