Archive - 18/12/2014

A friend of mine is an artist. She and her husband, another artist, operate a gallery where they sell their paintings and run art classes.

She asked me recently if I could help them look at new ways of doing things as finding new business was as hard as ever.

I don’t know much about how good quality art galleries work, except that artists value their work because of the effort and the pain of creativity put into their creations. An artist does not paint a painting in one or two weeks. Ask any artist and they will say that each painting took a lifetime, because it was a lifetime of experience and emotion that went into each painting.

So that means they sell high-end value goods.

However I do know that selling high-end works of art is nevertheless a retail business, and retail is hurting at the moment, whether it is a high-end store or the local $2 budget store. People are more careful with their money, they look for bargains, they haggle, and if they can, they buy online. At the same time, costs are rising – from shop rents to wages for staff, and, as the cost of the shopping basket rises, the owner has to make more profit to afford their own shopping basket.
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