 By Michael Armstrong Should you sell your prints framed or unframed? A few years ago, I was confronted with the wonderful problem of having several people determined to buy one of my artworks during an opening night celebration. I had the dilemma of having to disappoint everyone except the eventual owner of the artwork. First world problem I know , but that was the moment I started to explore the creation of prints. Prints now constitute almost half my cash flow and are an integral component to my art business. I’ll save discussion for the process of print creation for another day. Today’s blog post is discussing the pros and cons of framing my prints for sale. For many years I sold my prints unframed. Sealed and protected in plastic with a card backing to prevent damage from bending or folding in the post. They were neatly and professionally packaged but I still had concerns that I was missing out on sales; especially face to face sales from visitors to my studio. The quality of my prints is exceptional, the price reasonable so I wondered where the final resistance was coming from. As an artist I’m familiar with the process of framing and I often buy unframed artworks, prints and photographs from young artists when I travel. I like the idea of framing these works myself and I’m not intimidated at all about the process. I wondered if my view was perhaps biased when people exclaimed how much they liked a print but still hesitated at the purchase. Is this wavering a hesitation at the prospect of framing? The unknown costs? The unknown process? It was in response to this uncertainty that I decided to frame some of my prints. I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to have a range of my prints dressed up in a nice frame ready to hang on a wall. The decision made, I investigated options to proceed. I’ve often been disappointed with the quality of framing, for that reason I started manufacturing my own frames from raw materials. I even machined my own timber. The resulting frames were beautiful, and I felt a perfect match for my original works. The amount of labour and materials was extensive and added $300 to the cost of an original artwork but given the price of an original work I felt the investment was reasonable. $300 is not reasonable for a print though. The Frame Depot produce a range pre-made frames that found I could buy in bulk for a reasonable price (https://framedepot.com.au ). They had comparable designs to my handmade hardwood frames without the labour and materials cost. I had previously purchased a mat cutter for framing my original works and found the process straight forward and cost effective. I purchase my mat and foam materials for framing from Foam Boards Australia (https://www.foamboards.com.au). This combination, including my labour costs, allowed me to produce a range of framed prints for the reasonable price range of $120 - $140 depending on print sizes (A4-A3). This is exceedingly good value and the resulting prints in my opinion look fabulous. The thought now of presenting my prints to customers in any other format seems ridiculous and the argument redundant. I continue to offer unframed prints for sale for those that would like the pleasure or discount from framing them themselves. I have adjusted the way I display my prints, moving away from displays of plastic wrapped prints to framed, hung and lit prints to display them at their best. If you’re interested in learning more about framing, the following YouTube video shows you how I go about framing my prints with the materials described above. The artwork in this video is Michel, a painting I completed from life in 2005 and only recently was able to borrow back from its owner to have a scan completed for print production. I’ve elaborated on the process of measuring up a mat for cutting below.
Measuring Up: To further understand the detailed steps for measuring up the viewing window for an artwork to fit a frame please follow the following steps:
If you’re interested in supporting this blog please consider buying a Mike Armstrong print which can be found at his online shop: https://traderspace.io/en/spaces/mike-armstrong-art Author: Mike Armstrong
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 The creation of the internet promised to change the art market forever, seemingly crushing the monopoly that the traditional bricks and mortar galleries had as the gate keepers between artists and their audience. As gate keepers the galleries curated the ‘art world’, influenced trends, engaged with the media and promoted their pool of artists to their list of collectors. For this service galleries charged a 35-55% commission on all art sales, as well as charging the artist for the cost advertising, an opening night event and the transportation costs of shipping their art to the gallery for the show. For the first time in the history of the world, artists are not geographically constrained. Social media and the internet allow artists to interact and market themselves to audiences in a truly global art market. More people can be exposed to an individual artists art than any other time in history. It’s quite staggering to think, but more people across the globe may have seen an emerging artists art through social medial than all the people who saw Rembrandts work while he was alive. Over the last decade several websites have taken advantage of this technological advancement and claim to help artists reach potential audiences and achieve sales. Sites like Saatchi Art, Etsy and new Australian offering, Bluethumb. They claim to provide an easy means for artists to market and sell their work; but a closer look at their business model reveals this service comes at a steep cost. Etsy Etsy is a US e-commerce website focused on handmade and vintage items including art. It was launched in 2005 and represents one of the first and highly successful artistically focused sites on the web. Etsy charges its creators a small fee for every item listed within their inventory, roughly twenty cents an item every few months. They will also take a 5% transaction fee on every sale. This sounds significantly better than the 35-55% commission of old but with this introductory fee structure artists won’t get access to the wide array of tools Etsy has to enhance and boost sales. For that you need to pay $10 USD per month to get an upgraded account. They also offer a range of other enhancements like inhouse advertising to boost your items internal site profile, or an offsite advertising campaign. These come with additional charges like the 15% ad fee charged for offsite advertising. There are also in-person selling fees, payment processing fees, and even a Pattern fees of $15 per month if you want a pre-built shop template. Saatchi Art Saatchi Art, originally Saatchi online, was started in 2006 as an online expansion of the Saatchi Art galleries and quickly grew to showcase the work of over 100,000 artists from 100 countries. Saatchi charges a flat 35% commission on original artwork sales but they get even greedier when it comes to Limited Edition prints. They take a whopping 50% commission on these prints and the cost of producing them is taken out of the artist share. BlueThumb BlueThumb has expended rapidly in Australia over the last 12 months, providing an Australian flavoured shopfront for local artists. They charge a flat 30% commission plus a $30 shipping fee, but they will coordinate the pick-up and transportation of your artwork. BlueThumb have placed some restrictions on the type of work they will deal with. They only accept original, signed artworks or limited-edition prints. Sales Tax Depending on the location of the buyer and/or seller sales tax may be required to be added to the overall cost of the artwork. This should be factored into any calculations you make for your own artwork costs. Comparison The easiest way to compare these sites is to compare the final price of a single artwork sold on each of them. Using an original painting worth $500 to the artist, covering materials and labour, and excluding sales taxes. On Saatchi, to achieve $500 profit the artist would have to charge $675 plus postage. On BlueThumb the artist would have to charge $680 but at least this price would include postage. On Etsy the artist would have to charge approximately $526 plus postage and any monthly Enhancement ($10), or Pattern Fees ($15) or advertising (15%) $626…. These prices aren’t too dissimilar to what artists were getting charged by galleries in commissions prior to the advent of the internet; but unlike galleries, these online providers don’t have a network of collectors they’re promoting your work to. They aren’t managing your prices, exposing you to new collectors, curators, the media or sourcing reviews and articles in art periodicals, journals and books. These sites charge a premium for their service, but essentially what they do is host and display stock and provide a payment portal; pocketing a 35% commission for these services. These sites are quick to point out within their user guides that the artist needs to drive traffic to their page to generate sales. They provide advice on how to use social media and advertising campaigns to generate interest; but what their sites don’t inherently do is drive traffic to an artist’s art; not when 100,000 artists are all competing for attention. Every sale generated on one of these sites will be the result of the efforts of the artist. Either through their financial investment in advertising campaigns or their efforts of self-promotion through their social media accounts. Traderspace (www.traderspace.io) A new offering on the web, Traderspace, went live late last year offering an alternative option for creators. Traderspace is built on the idea that the seller deserves to reap the benefits of their hard work. They charge a small monthly fee for the use of an individual ‘traderspace’, and the profits of every sale are 100% the artists. Do you want to list your products in a foreign currency? You can sell anywhere in the world in any currency. Do you want to offer services like a portrait commission or a photo shoot instead of stock items? It will help the artist do that through their listing and point of sale services. Do you want to offer the option to pay cash on pick-up? It has that option at the check-out if you want to include it. It will even let you sell items or services in exchange for crypto currency if you like dealing in crypto. This post is not being paid for or sponsored in any way to promote Traderspace. I was just so impressed with what they were trying to do, and as a fellow artist I could immediately see the merits of their system for my use case. They hadn’t built their platform specifically for creators but to me it was a perfect fit for the industry. I’m sick of organisations taking a cut of my profits and not seeing anything in return. I got to meet one of the developers during the beta testing phase of the application and agreed to have a play and offer suggestions. Every option I asked for to help me set up my own traderspace on the site the developer said yes to, and they’re now in the live version. He even agreed to remove the monthly fees so that way if you already had an online store like Etsy or Saatchi you could come and try Traderspace, and it wouldn’t cost you anything, no monthly fees, no commissions, no risk. The team at Traderspace believe in their product so much they were willing to put their money where their mouth is. You can check out the Traderspace I created for myself at https://traderspace.io/en/spaces/mike-armstrong-artYou’ll be able to have a look at the layout of my store and if you’re interested in giving it a go you can sign up for a trial while the site is completely free. Eventually the monthly fees for your traderspace will be reintroduced to cover the cost of the service. My traderspace was costing less than $10 per month, but with the introduction of an in-application social gold that is awarded for sales and reviews of my traderspace and importantly can be used to pay your monthly fees. This was further reducing my monthly expenses to nothing on some months. Author: Mike Armstrong In addition to being an artist Michael Armstrong is also a martial artist and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) Black Belt and instructor at Redback BJJ Canberra Australia. Like art, martial arts has been a key component in his life since he was a child and has led to the achievement of several black belts, Senior Unarmed Combat Instructor in the Australian Army, and the coach of thousands of students over a three decade instructing career. Michael was recently invited to be interviewed on a Podcast called Behind the Black Belt and spoke at length about his art and martial arts journey. If you're interested in a behind the curtain look at my upbringing, family and the key moments that led him on his journey, please check out the podcast on all the major distribution applications or via YouTube on the link below. In the interview Michael discussed the following topics:
If you are interested in following up or interviewing Michael for your own podcast or blog please contact him through the CONTACT tab on this website |
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