How to get first into Art Products Business
Starting
When you are new in any business and you don`t know where to start there are some things you may do at first:
Write down your answers to these few questions:
1- In which art products sector are you in? Painting canvas or objects // or sculpting with bronze, marble, ceramics or by welding iron or even sculpting by concrete casting, soap casting ?
2-Lets imagine that I am a daydreamer artist, I am working seriously and regularly and producing at the end of the month an acceptable amount of artworks. These personal qualities are very important! Being talented is never enough in any kind of business, you must be a hardworker, give yourself with heart and brain to your artwork.
3-Never get imprisoned / focused into one single idea or just one kind of artwork. From the beginning of middle age until the end of 17th century companies were able to produce just one single product entirely the same style and way. Because at these times people was in lack of many things. There was no real rivalry, competition between retailers. Whatever you do was sold. Today every market and even the art market is a nightmare of rivalry/concurrence/competition. You must be able to change on the right time, you must have different style running in the market in the same time. You must observe, listen and see what are the changes in the market.
4-Who are your customers? put apart your neighbours, your classroom friends you need some customers that you never knew but who will buy your products. Imagine that you sell antique cars: your customers should have upper mid or upper high income. Ask yourself how will you contact these customers? fairs, advertisement shows, media. Media can be expensive or not according your art object: if you sell classic cars, some advertisement in classic cars magazine may be interesting and not expensive. But if you are a starter, produce about 20 handmade glass sculptures a month maybe advertising in a magazine may not be a great idea, but this has exceptions. Imagine your products may attract great attention from the clients, so making advertisement in a magazine can make you get rapidly a great income. You can know this by making first test advertisements. Because magazine advertisements are expensive, just use social media advertisements first. See how much it gets viewed? How many people asked questions? And how many and how big orders you got by this simple advertisement?
Also if social media advertisement works fine, why spending more in classical advertisement media? If you plan to expand your business, you can go this way.
5- Planning:
When you think/dream about business do not put some limits to yourself. Instead of it, do planning. You want to be big like Rockefeller? You can do it by making planning. Here is how you do it: Ask yourself what will you plan to do in 6 months time, and in 1 year time, in 2 years, in 5 years and in 10 years.
Here is an example:
in 6 months: I would like to start to show up in the greatest fairs of my country according my budget
in 1 year: My shop must be known in my city, I will make advertisement during the whole year. At the end of the year, I may go to a restaurant far away of my shop 7 different days. There I will choose any random total 7 people (one person each day) who may be dressed, talk like people who may be my customer. During the talk I will ask him if she/he heard about my shop. If yes, this first year milestone is reached up. If not I must try harder the next 6 months.
In 2 years I must expand my shop like having second type of products in the shop. Lets imagine I am selling oil on canvas paintings, so I will add bronze sculptures.
Also this second year I will start e-commerce with my own website. I will hire employee(s) especially to deal with it.
In 5 years my shop selling area should be bigger. I can start to use other shops as my retailers or open affiliate/branch office.
In 7 years time I will open my retail branch office shop in other countries
In 10 years I will have a coffee with Mr Rockefeller at his house 🙂
Never put in front of you any limits, instead just do planning! And remember the plan is your path to follow, but time and things change. You can not stop these changes to happen. You must comply, accomodate yourself with these changes. And so the plan will always change. So at the end you may not be drinking coffee with Mt Rockefeller but with your best valuable wife/husband at a chic Paris restaurant with your great school friend? I am sure in Mr Rockefeller`s life the most important people are not Mr Zuckerberg or Mr. Bill Gates but his family and his great friends. When you will get success you will see this.
So now, think about of he real now that you are in, and start by making the first step by taking a paper and a pen and writing down these. You must know this: a business opens first its door when you write down this in paper.
Do not hesitate to ask questions in social media if you get stuck. If your friends have lack of knowledge any stranger can help you in Quora.com or in Facebook.com groups, Linkedin.com groups or many other social platforms.
Beware to thiefs, cheaters etc. Ask for help in social media against these. There are many people who can help you.
If you are stuck and don`t know who can help you, ask me! I will try to help you as much as I can.
You can contact me using my facebook official group:
Or you can contact me using my instagram group:
Few more ideas, cheap but important things:
Create your own Business Card
Let me tell you some stories about business card:
When I was at university at Grenoble France, I was discussing with homeless people and trying to help them to get out of their situation. Humanity is something that you should keep all time in yourself, you get stronger if you think about poor and homeless people.
So it was on 1995 maybe, a homeless at the tramway station near my home, was selling cartoon magazine that he was drawing it all by himself. I was all the time buying his cartoons and reading them. He was really talented. This guy was homeless but trying to get a better life. So his business card was his cartoons. I was also telling him some ways to expand his business and tring to give him ideas. When you walk at the street do not always pass by these homeless people. Some of them will change your life. They are not zero in life but a big plus, and so help them speak to them! I think he made it, because after a while I could not see him.
Also another homeless James Bowen, has made it with his street cat that he named as Bob. His cat was his business card. The cat was in worse situation than Mr James Bowen, and James decided to help it. As I said all homeless are more than a big plus in our life. Helping a cat made him having success worldwide. I really loved his books. And also I love pets.
Think about it: does your business card have to be a boring one that your potential customers throw it away when they are home? Or should you be someone who stays in their mind? I am for the second one! People like to remember things and people inspiring their lives and throw away all the borung things. As we live in Covid19 things will change in near future.
But some classical things doesn`t change: be reachable. For it you may give something to your potential clients, where your contact information is written on it. What has changed is that now contacting way can be facebook group, instagram group, whatsapp number (makes you internationally reachable) and email (classic and destined to die next to whatsapp messaging).
As E-commerce and cargo have changed all business rules, now writing your adress is not always letting people trust you. Instead making your name known as trustable is more important.
Creating your own web site:
There are actually many service providers about web site hosting and creation. For a new starter it is better to first start with the cheapest solutions.
Classical website required webhosting services with website design etc. These were really expensive. Now with the new business rules, instagram or pinterest can become your webhost to sell your things. So creating a website became something from 500 usd to zero usd. This is business changer, and yet many hosting services didn`t realised this.
If you can afford a website hosting cost, then the next cheapest solution is to create your website using wordpress which is free. Even if wordpressrequires extra money for additional services , you may never need them or buy them when your business get bigger.
But always wait, observe, listen and see what is going around you before spending any money. Always the best is to start with free services and spend afterwards. Because remember: it is always easy to spend and always hard to earn money. Wait and observe, then when you will know what will be your objective with your site. So this will allow you to spend a certain amount of money for creation of a great site and for paying its hosting fees.
Distributing your business cards
Your business card is like your ID card, it gives detail about your personnality and your joy and your seriousness in your work.
Don`t stress out too much on how your business card will be. Simple stupid is the best way. Don`t spend too much money on first design, but think this way: you will change many times your logo, your style and any other thing. so each time you will spend money for them. You will change you logo because your ideas will get clearer in your mind, or because the time passes away and requires you to adapt to the new era. I highly recommend you to use some free softwares to create your logo, on android or iphone you can find reliable free logo creation applications too. You can either use the one you create or you can use them to give a path to a designer.
Still do not stress for creating the perfect logo, whatever you do, the first attempt is never a great super success. Many big companies have changed their logo many times.
here is a copy strategy for designing a logo:
You can make it in the way you want. But its way should be in coordination with your objective. You want to sell or just to have fun? Remember some artworks like street arts are fun and each graffiti maker have his own logo name.
Art is a business where fun and business goes together. But if you insist more on the business side you will be like a supermarket owner of Art works. This is not wrong, some artists will not like you while some others will like you. Your choice is never a mistake, it is always just a path to follow.
But how?
My way about has allways been , do first then think after, so I`ll advise you the same think. Create your card, then call your friends and ask them to say you something about your card. But be prepared for tough critics. YOU MUST LISTEN and not interrompt until the end, and accept the criticism, commentaries, fault findings. Remember that people in front of you are not your partners but maybe a potential client. So their view are views of other. Do not be defensive, let them invade and conquer, you`ll discover many things.
Changes
Also don`t hesitate to change your card after all the feedback . Changes are good for your career. Anyway the fact you participate in this group isn`t it a small change in your life…
