Chapter 8 | The Galleries

Chapter 8 | Our Galleries

Word had gotten out, we were doing exceptionally well on the art show ‘circuit’. To put it into perspective, not gloating nor bragging, during a four month summer show window we were bringing in over $700k in sales. That was unheard of at the time.

But it was an exhausting schedule and time away from home, my beloved and our children, was hard. Certainly there must be another, better, way to do this. There must be another way that would allow me to be home more often.

A friend and fellow artist, though his genre was satirical/satire oil & pastels on watercolor paper – two fins moving up to a judges bench in court sort of thing, had opened a gallery in Sausalito a couple years before. He was having wonderful success and during a conversation mentioned that a space had just come available in a ‘perfect’ spot. It use to be a Sun Glass Hut and was right next door to Starbucks. This seemed like just the right idea. Have another source of revenue which would help keep me home more with my family.

After speaking with the landlord and a positive reference from our friend, we were offered a five year lease. The Sausalito Art Festival had always been one of our best shows and with San Francisco so close it seemed like a no brainer. We signed the lease and began work on turning it into a gallery.

Perhaps you’ll remember me admitting to not being the dullest tool in the shed, but also not being the sharpest tool in the shed either. In hindsight what we should have done way back in Colorado, was to take a look at how the other, then, successful photographers were do ‘it’. But I didn’t. The statistician in me wanted, because the bird in the hand (art festivals) was doing far better I’d imagined than the bird in the bush (galleries), to know if my work was universally loved across the entire country. Like I said…in hindsight.

We opened and silently waited to see what would happen. We had no idea, but we had great hope. It turned out to be a great blessing. Sales were steady and good enough. And while there was some seasonal effect, it created a stable additional source of revenue.

To get away from the art show circuit completely though the gallery model would need to be examined closely and most likely expanded.

Chapter 8 | Pier39 & The Lik Tapes

Well Sausalito turned out to be a boon. We’d begun looking into other locations and nearby San Francisco looked like a good next step.

A year before opening the Sausalito gallery there were a turn of events I couldn’t have ever seen coming. Some good, some not so good. While attending the Sausalito Art Festival I had a photographer come into my display, it wasn’t at all uncommon and introduced himself fawning all over my work, this wasn’t uncommon either. What took me back was he had an entourage, like a bunch of fan-girling want-a-be’s with an Australian accent. He was pleasant enough but seemed a bit overly confident to me, cocky one might say. His name was Peter.

During the rest of the art festival season that year other photographers kept talking about this Aussie who had come to the US, opened a gallery at Pier39 and Monterey Bay. Supposedly he was doing MILLIONS in sales. Turns out we discovered later that wasn’t exactly true, but not unlike Phineas Taylor Barnum (aka PT Barnum) the famous American showman, the Aussie was putting on a great ‘show’. Within a month of opening the gallery in Monterey Bay he had closed it down. And a couple years later, running extremely thin margins his Pier39 gallery went away as well. Now there’s a story here and I’m about to tell it for the first time ever. And I have recordings to prove everything to be said here.

I do not care to get into a protractive he said ‘what’ conversation here. Many people love his work, love him (without really knowing him), and stand behind him one hundred percent. Good for him, I guess.

Believe it or not, we started off as friends. Until the day he tried to ruin me and my family by going back on his word. That’s right, you heard that correctly, he was not and probably is still not a good guy – but that is my personal opinion, which I think I am still allowed to have in this country.

Fast forward, one year from that initial meeting. Peter shows up at the Sausalito Art Festival. At that time I had little to go on about his character or how he conducted himself and decided to go say hello and welcome him. Apparently he was not well received by the other photographers, who felt his works were overly punchy with color, to the point of being unbelievable and his bravos style wasn’t liked one tiny bit either.

He was grateful that I’d come over to say hello. Apparently no one had. He claims because of jealousy. I knew the real reason, but kept it to myself. My thinking was we’d just opened the Sausalito gallery space and he had several in Australia and perhaps there was something I could learn about the gallery business model.

Frankly, at first, we hit it off well. Over the course of the next year we kept in touch. He’d call me asking where I was, “Alaska” or some other place and we’d talk about where we’d been what we were up to, business and how was our gallery was doing vs. his at Pier39. Honestly it was nice to have someone to pitch ideas off of. LeeAnna & I even had him over to spend a couple weeks at our house once. How did that happen you may ask…

During our conversations Pete and I would talk about business a lot, as he could hardly believe we were doing so well over in tiny little Sausalito, while his gallery in San Francisco wasn’t.

His story, the real one, is vastly different than what you see in tabloids today. But you know the rule about history, if you have enough money you can write your own.

My understanding of his business model, to that point, was to see what images sold well elsewhere (by that I mean by other people) and then work to ‘craft’ another like it, sell them cheap with all sorts of extra give away items (like another one for free, yeah). But this took a toll on his margins. He wanted to know how we were doing things.

Eventually he asked if he could come around for a visit. We were friends so I invited him to our home, we’d moved from Colorado years before, to Oregon. He stayed for two weeks, in hindsight I wasn’t acting like the sharpest tool in the shed, because I shared with him all the ways we were doing things. I even outlined how he could do things better to help ‘my friends’ business to survive. I’d ask questions like, are you doing your own darkroom work? (nope, he wasn’t), are you doing your own framing? (nope), are you doing your own shipping? (nope), have you changed your commission model for your sales staff as we’d discussed? (nope). It was frustrating, but I wanted to help him.

Another year goes by and our Sausalito gallery was doing gang busters. We’d actually begun looking for space in San Francisco based on the sales numbers Pete had been sharing with me, $1 - $1.2MM gross per year. He was running 2% to 4% margins according to him, which is why I was trying to help. Because those margins are not enough to stay in business long.

We met again during the next Sausalito Art Festival, got a bite to eat and discussed how each of us had been, how we were doing, about family…all the things friends do.

I’ll always remember him asking “how’s your poxy little gallery doing mate?”, turns out ‘poxy’ means ‘shi#’ in Australian spelled with a capital S. It wasn’t a nice thing, but the accent fooled me just as I’m sure it has for many many others over time.

“It’s going so well, we are looking to open a gallery in SF”, “how’s yours doing?”

He paused for a long time and said, “this is a secret so don’t tell anyone”, “but we’re meeting with Pier39 management after the show here to tell them we’re out.” What? You’re closing down your gallery where you are doing apx. $1.2MM/year? Well did you ever start doing your own darkroom work? (nope) Surely you started doing your own framing then? (nope) How about shipping, are you doing your own shipping? (nope) And the gallery staff is still being paid exceedingly more than the going wage? (yep). I didn’t know what to say. I knew that our business model was working great and that if we had $1.2MM in sales we’d be swimming in it. Well then I suppose I’ve got nothing more to add Pete. One cannot help someone who won’t be helped. The ol’ horse and water syndrome.

During the show Pete would come over to share numbers with me. “Mate, whata’ on?” “how are your sales Rodney?”, I’d lean in and tell him the morning total was at $18k, which I felt was pretty darn good, especially since I had the poster child of the show, Pete, just across from me near the entrance. “$18k, riiigggghhht”, “we’re on $20k” he told me with a HUGE grin on his face. ‘Hmmm $20k eh?’, I’d asked; ‘riiigggghhht’, he responded with the big grin again. So I leaned in and asked him, knowing full well what his margins were, “Pete out of that $20k, how much do you suppose you get to keep?” It took him a moment to contemplate I had just said, but the grin went away and was replaced with a grimace. He knew exactly what I was saying…you might have $20k to my $18k, but I keep more of mine than you ever will. He walked away, he didn’t look very happy now knowing he had been given a couple years to fix his business issues but hadn’t and because of that he was going to loose a gallery that he could have made a go of. I felt for him. It must have been a sobering and sad moment for him. But hey maybe $20k would make him feel better. Doubtful.

We kept the lines of conversation going throughout the art festival and before the end of it we had agreed that he would sell, with Pier39 approval of course, his gallery space to us for $250k, which he claimed was 50% on the dollar for the build out he’d done. One of my local collectors and our retail lawyer for the gallery in Sausalito wrote everything up and we both signed the papers before the end of the show. The following week after a little persuading with Pier39, they agreed to let him off the hook and allowed us to assume the lease. Pete was out, Rodney was in.

Or so we thought.

When Pete got back to Australia, some three months later, he fired his general and financial manager, quickly hired a new fellow who told him the same thing I’d been telling him for years. “You have to have your own darkroom, do your own framing, deal with shipping in-house and get those wages inline.” And based on the advice of the ‘new’ guy, Pete decided to renege on our deal. He stated that they were going to start doing their own darkroom work, framing, shipping…you get the idea. All the things he wasn’t willing to do before he was now going to get done.

Normally that might not have been such a big deal, but having so much time lapse between his declaration, the deadlines for the following years art festival schedule had lapsed and I had no way to make a living for that upcoming year. That wasn’t acceptable, nor would it be for anyone I’d think.

Pete and I had several conversations via phone, between Oregon and Australia, and I recorded every single one. Some were ‘private’ and some were with others in his employ, including the ‘new’ guy.

One day Pete would agree that he didn’t feel as if they could actually transition to an entirely new way of doing things and he’d relent and the ‘deal’ was back on. The next time we’d speak, he’d thought about it again and decided that the ‘deal’ was off. This cycle of on-again off-again was getting almost too much to bear. You see Pier39 had already agreed and had a lease assumption in place, but because of Pete’s actions they were not sure what to do. They certainly had had enough with Pete, especially given that Pete was in the rears on rent to the tune of almost $100k and they saw this as a way to get back all the money he owed them by taking it out of the money we were going to pay Pete. They wanted the deal to go through! As did we.

You are probably wondering why, with signed documents, would this even be an issue open for debate? While there were signed documents on both sides, Pete had left his copy meant for us, at the Pier39 gallery but had not yet turned them over to us. The gallery director had instructions NOT to release it to us or Pier39. This he used against us over and over.

In a moment of clarity and on one of those occasions where he said ‘the deal is on’, I had Pete contact his gallery director (who this poor guy was being pulled through hell) telling him to release the paperwork to us. The very next morning I flew down to San Francisco to collect the paperwork. The gallery director handed it over without issue as he had been instructed to by Pete. Finally we had the signed documents in hand.

This turns out to have been the best thing we could have done, because the following week Pete decides again ‘the deal is off’.

On one of the tape recordings I remember a part of the conversation where I told him that what he’d done would effectively ruin our business and leave our family without the ability to have an income. “Sorry Mate, Can’t be helped.” So Pete was telling me that no mater what his actions were going to do, ruin a friendship, starve us out, ruin us…he didn’t care. And I called him on that very point. “Yeah Mate, that’s just the way it’s going to be.” I thanked him for at least letting me know what kind of person I was really dealing with.

That was when I told him he couldn’t do that because we had the signed paperwork in our possession.

At that point he actually said “What papers?”, meaning he was going to have them destroyed, at least that is how I took it.

Little did he know that on the last ‘the deal is on’ I had flown to SF, got the paperwork and had it in hand. I told him he couldn’t destroy the paperwork because we had it. Oh was he furious. But the die was cast, he had been caught and there was no escape. He finally relented and eventually we took over the space. But our friendship was ruined and he ruined it. Since then, and in my opinion, he has done everything in his power to try and crush us, unsuccessfully I might ad. To this day we are his single biggest source of competition and thorn in his side.

I still have hope that ‘friends of first, are friends of last’ may still someday swing back around. But it’s a faint hope.

One thing I didn’t mention before was that Pete took the remainder of the funds we’d paid (minus what he owed in back rent payments) and opened his first gallery in Vegas which has turned out to be the best business decision he’s ever made because that maneuver has made all the difference for him. BTW his company, as of the time of this writing, now does all their own darkroom work, framing work and shipping. Hmmm I wonder where he got that bright idea.

Well it feels good to finally get this out in the open, though he has done other things since which are just as despicable in my opinion. Though that could be a story for another day perhaps. Not wanting to destroy what he has created, because it’s not really who I am, I have kept the tapes locked away these many years; but if forced I will release them Pete. So don’t even.

Finally, we were able to open our next Gallery on Pier39 in San Francisco. It exceeded his $1.2MM/year number, each year we were there.

Chapter 8 | Other Galleries

We not only opened the Pier39 gallery, which did amazingly well, we also opened a number of galleries across the US. The Happy Valley Oregon Studio came next.

Then came the Mall of America Gallery.

Followed up by a gallery in Park City.

By then the Pier39 lease came up for renewal (sort of) but a better space on Fisherman’s Wharf came up and we took it. The One Jefferson Gallery on Fisherman’s Wharf became the largest single artist gallery in the world. It was such an honor to have opened that gallery.

We also had galleries in Las Vegas and Miami Beach on Lincoln Road.

Miami Beach, FL

We’re done with galleries for a bit, maybe we’ll open another one someday but only if the right option presents itself. Time will tell. Given the years of experience I will say in general it’s not a pretty business. Some of the marketing tactics employed, insulating artists from what staff actually do, is not the kind of thing I really want to be a part of. I believe that when you die there is both an up and a down escalator…I’d like to be on the one going up.

The parts of it I will miss include meeting face to face with wonderful people, seeing joy unbounded come over folks, and working with some of the best team members a fellow could ever have hoped to work with. Unconditional love is infectious.

PS Today is my 60th birthday and our youngest & I are on a 68mile week long backpacking trip into The Winds! Can you think of a better way to spend your birthday!?