Chapter 7 | Paying the Bills
Chapter 7 | How We Paid the Bills
Maybe it was Nick Zungoli’s positive attitude or the unending praise from team members saying ‘I bet you could sell those.’, that made me even think I’d have a chance at making it as an ‘artist’. Let’s face it ‘artists’ aren’t typically known for making a go of it. There are of course many who had, but they were, statistically speaking…outlying events. That means rare. So rare that in the numbers game we’d toss out the event from our measurements. That meant, effectively, that there never really were any successful artists, from a mathematical standpoint. Talk about the left and right sides of my brain at odds with one another!
During one of those team-building events we’d host, I remember someone saying that art festivals might be a good place to start. You’ve been to one of these things I’m sure. Rows and rows of artists would display their works for sale. And kettle corn was always in attendance.
In Colorado, where we were at the time, these events were just about everywhere and on every weekend during the non-snow months. I decided to give it a try and the first place I’d go was as close to home as I could – the Gilpin County Fair. I was favored with a Best of Show ribbon, but not a single sale. It was demoralizing. What had I done!? The savings were dwindling and zero sales, after expenses, was working in the wrong direction.
You’ve probably heard that saying, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound.’ They say in business that if you go all in and it doesn’t work, you should go in further if there is no other way to go. For us and our little family, there really was no other way to go.
The funky little town of Boulder had one of the best art festivals in the nation, at the time. I’d gotten in because of that Gilpin County Fair Best of Show ribbon. But they placed me in what I thought was a really bad spot. By ‘bad’ I mean the terms Outer Darkness don’t even describe how bad it was.
Our booth wasn’t anything like what the ‘professional’ artists set ups looked like. We were very low key (if you can envision an enviro-shade like you’d use in your backyard with redwood lattice as the side walls then you’d be visualizing ‘low key’) to say the least.
Again, it was a bust. That was until the last day of the show, when our first face to face collector decided to make a purchase. It was a smaller framed piece for $269, including tax. Its funny how one can go from complete desperation to completed exhilaration in the span of a few days.
We closed up, lighter by one piece and headed home with our first sale under our belt. Quietly I recall saying to LeeAnna “we’re on our way!”, and “someday I will have to give Nick a call and thank him.”
Chapter 7 | Expansion & Growth | Local
At University it was explained how observation paired against results help explain success or failure. While $269 certainly wasn’t something to write home about, it did put us in a position where we could witness how things were supposed to be done. And the set up we had was NOT the way forward.
Somewhere in these writings, surely, I’d mentioned that LeeAnna had always given me a wide berth when it came to getting done what needed to be gotten done. Including, more often than not, spending money to build. In this case we needed to up our game, significantly. So we bought a new display. It wasn’t cheap by any means, but it would make us look like we were successful artists, worthy of purchase. A new tent, new fancy walls and art hanging system, lights, didactics, stories for each image, even an artist statement. All gleaned from walking around the Boulder show and speaking with other, apparently successful, artists. They were all extremely kind and helpful and without their advice I’m not sure where we would have ended up.
The next local show was in Castle Rock, just a tiny jaunt down the road from Boulder. Do you remember that Chevy Suburban we used to caravan across the country? It turned into the show truck. Somehow we were able to get everything we needed either into it or on top of it. But this time we came prepared.
The results were not only unexpected but they were humbling to say the least.
Within a matter of hours…We Sold Out! No kidding, everything sold. The show sponsors were happy for us, but wanted to know how we planned to stay for the entire show. After some explaining they were kind enough to let us go home that night, we had nothing to show, nothing to sell, and no way of taking orders without having something to show. We didn’t do $269 dollars. We had done over ten thousand dollars in the course of just a few hours. To say it was crazy would have been an understatement. I’d yell “Only two left!” and I’d hear as fast as I could say it “We’ll take it!”, and then another “We’ll take the last one!” Bam, Bam. Sold Out! Let’s just say we were not eating hot dogs that night.
Maybe all those people, including Nick, were right. We had a chance. We’d done more in those few hours than it would have taken a month to make in the corporate world. People were literally throwing money at us telling me how great I was, and leaving with huge smiles on their faces. Shall we compare that to what it would have taken in the corporate setting to get such praise? Let’s see…there were no ‘how great you are’, nor loads of smiles and it would have taken an entire month of torture to earn that much. Yes, this was the way to go. Though vindication was still some ways off.
All I could think about on the drive back home were the words my grandmother had spoken to me when she learned I’d left that ‘great’ job…”What a waste of talent Rodney.” Ouch. Could be she was still right and this could be just an outlying event to be tossed to the side, only time would tell.
Chapter 7 | Expansion & Growth | Regional
After the Castle Rock event we decided to try and stretch our wings a little bit further, but still in Colorado.
Does anyone know the first rule of retail, no, well neither did we. It turns out though the first rule is ‘never run out.’ So LeeAnna and I learned quickly and set ourselves up to not sell pieces right off the wall. Instead we would take a hint from good old Mr. Ford who pioneered the assembly line production process. We would make pieces as we went along which ensured we’d never run out at a show again. We were committed to being able to provide works to anyone who wanted.
It turns out, while not a exciting as taking something home instantly, the idea was welcomed by almost everyone we sold to. This was a new concept to the art show artists and they poo poo’d on the idea telling us it would ‘never work’. Guess the jokes on them.
We had gone from doing $269 in a weekend, to over ten thousand in a few hours, to consistently doing over eighteen thousand a show. We were now doing better than established artists who had been out selling for decades. Our story was one of going from zero, to hero virtually overnight.
But we had exhausted the local and regional scene. We needed to expand.
For those of you who are looking to attempt this today, let me share with you a tidbit of information I wish I’d had back then…Greg Lawler’s – Art Fair Sourcebook. It isn’t free, but it became my go to guide on where to expand and where which shows across the country were likely to produce the best results for me.
With our new concept of ‘taking orders’ meant that we could go outside the State of Colorado for weeks at a time, from festival to festival. We needed to expand and we needed to take advantage of the short selling season.
Chapter 7 | Expansion & Growth | National
National shows, and there are some really really big ones out there, are in places we’ve all heard of before. The first one we expanded to was a very long one day drive away to Chicago where we walked away with our first fifty thousand dollar show and a best in category ribbon. Over the years I’d get more ribbons and awards than I knew what to do with.
There were areas of the country that out performed other areas of the country, but that was to be expected. There were also areas of the country that were significantly smaller than Chicago that produced better sales than Chicago. But Chicago will always hold a special place in my heart because of the outpouring of love and support that came from the people who live there during an especially need filled moment in the growth of our stilly tiny business. They paved the way for all our future success. This is not to say that another city wouldn’t have done the same, it is just that Chicago was were we went first.
Here are just a few of the most memorable places we visited and the wonderful times we had there.
The Sausalito Art Festival in California. If you are lucky enough to get in, as an artist, come prepared because this festival usually rocks back and forth with Coconut Grove for being the best Festival in the country. Beyond the sales though they treat the artists with superlative grace. Artists attending this show are more than a booth fee taken up by the promoters. While we have not been a part of the show circuit for longer than I can remember, I am hopeful the same goes on there today.
The aforementioned Coconut Grove, in Florida, art festival is renowned for it’s gracious patrons who come and support the arts like few ever do.
Not everything always went as desired. Once I’d been invited to visit the Boca Raton art festival. Now this is likely an outlying event so please take this in the, then, funny way it is intended. I am not what you’d call a delicate flower or snowflake as I spend a great deal of my time out in wilderness and usually alone – I like it that way. There are many social things that elude me, like fashion, small dogs that fit into tea cups, boats larger than most peoples homes, etc. I’m not against an open economy, or people getting what they earn nor spending it how they want. I’ve always believed the harder and smarter you work the more likely you will have ‘success’, but I would spend monies earned on things other than tiny dogs.
All of the top artists were there, lined up for blocks and blocks down the center of the main road, tents backed one to one another. All we needed were patrons, willing to purchase. In the block of artists I was in, and it was certainly a great location, we were not having much success. In fact none of us, twelve total, had sold a single thing that first day. That was something of an outlying event in and of itself. Scary memories of Boulder came flooding back.
The second day was, if it was possible, more packed with people than the day before. Sometimes people who look around the first day come back to make purchases the second day giving us all hope. This would not be the case.
The streets were filled with ‘pretty people’ self absorbed with themselves walking four across down the street. I’m sorry to say but I lost it.
Four of us artists were sitting in our chairs, knowing that no amount of talking or interacting with these folks would matter given our now years of experience behind us. It was fruitless. So we all decided to just sit and people watch. We’d sing the Ants Go Marching Four by Four Hurrah Hurrah just loud enough that we knew if anyone walking near us who might not be self absorbed would hear us. There was not a single reaction and frankly we were not all that quiet about it.
That was the straw that broke my camels back because when four perfectly manicured young, late twenties, ladies stopped right in front of us sitting artists, dressed to the nines and began a conversation as if we were not even there, I knew I was going to interject at some point. This went on for about ten minutes and no amount of trying to interject by my fellow artists, as was our job, into their conversation was going to be tolerated by these…I don’t even know what to call them. So I did the only thing I could think to do, fight fire with fire.
You may have noticed a slight bias concerning people with tea cup sized breeds of dogs. Yes, you’ve guessed it, all of these women had tiny, and by tiny I mean to say it appeared as if they were all in competition with one another to see who could have the smallest one. These teacup sized dogs poked their tiny noses out of their masters purses, all shaking to death likely afraid of the noise and commotion going on around them. They looked very frightened to me.
To this day I cannot believe what possessed me to say this, but I have to own it because I did…
“Ladies”, I said in a rather loud tone – it must have worked because they finally stopped talking and looked right at me, which is where ‘it’ came out…”You know that if we ever have a nuclear holocaust, those dogs don’t even constitute a full meal!”
Oh boy had I done it. My fellow artists sitting next to me burst into laughter most likely because they too had had enough. Needless to say the ladies didn’t think that was too funny and in a perfect New York huff, squealed and walked away.
None of us had a single sale it was a complete bust. Now you know that not everything came out smelling like roses all the time.