Artists Frame Service

I joined a new business group. Business groups are good – you get to see other people’s businesses, see how they operate, get input on your own business, see different perspectives.

I used to think, and most people probably do, the goal of business is to make money. If you are a stockholder, that’s generally true. If you work in the business, I have found that doesn’t quite cover it. As a business owner, it has taken me years to find out what my true goals are compared to what the most obvious ones are: growing the business and making money. I want and work toward three things.

The first thing I need is the company to be successful – which means making a profit. Too many businesses have failed despite the fact that they were giving good service; they couldn’t operationally make money. It’s the easiest thing to track, strategize and get outside opinions on. It’s an easy metric. Your accountant can come in and tell you how you are doing.

The next one is far harder to measure: happy customers. This one is almost instinctive. I grew up working at my family’s dime store, Jay Neal’s Variety Store. I have been “taking care of customers” since I was five years old. It makes me feel good. It’s why I got into retail. But it’s also what limits me. I don’t have 20 stores because I don’t think I could keep the level of service up to what I need it to be.

The last one I couldn’t have figured out until my company started getting bigger. I want happy employees. Partly because who doesn’t like making people happy, and partly because if they are not happy they are going to make me miserable. You see I figured something out that I call The Happy Triangle. If the employees aren’t happy, they aren’t going to make the customers happy. If the customers aren’t happy, the company isn’t going to be happy. If the company isn’t happy, employees won’t be happy… It keeps going.

Happy employees. Happy customers. Happy company.

I don’t know how you can have only two of the three. As a matter of fact, I don’t know why you would want to. Speaking of happy employees, I’m looking to hire a couple of people for our Customer Service department (in our wholesale moulding division) and a sales person to work in Jayson Home & Garden, selling in our Hunter Douglas Gallery. Send your resume to Felice (felice@goltzgroup.com) — mention the blog…that would be blogerific!

I’ve got a new business friend that commented to me that he couldn’t understand why framing was so expensive. No big surprise. Most people aren’t used to buying custom-made products. He took me on a tour of his office and showed me all the custom framing he had done. Ouch! Paying good money for beautiful framing is one thing. Paying good money for mediocre framing is quite another.

What’s the difference? It’s not just price, though the price difference may be less than you think. And I’m not talking about the difference between a beautiful hand-leafed frame from Italy and a simple black frame. I’m talking about whether you picked out in the best matting and moulding in the first place. If you didn’t, you can be assured that you will be getting something that was “just” framed. No wow. More like an oh. Did you ever notice that the pictures of homes in magazines don’t look like most homes you actually visit? That’s because someone paid a lot of attention to the details. Picture framing is one of those details.

Framing isn’t as simple as it looks. There are lots of materials, techniques and just plain sloppiness that effect the way a piece looks. Here’s the reality: there are plenty of cheap mouldings out there, some of which are made of particle board with a covering on top. They are really made for cheap pictures that end up in discount stores or cheap hotels. These mouldings have made their way into the custom business by “framers” who are looking to save money. At the end of the day, while they are cheaper, by the time they get marked up in price, not that much cheaper. The labor is the same. Unlike most things you buy, this thing is going to be “hanging around” for a long time. Way longer than your clothes, or car, or expensive dinner.

When someone sees the difference between a beautifully done frame job using quality materials and some of the mass market stuff, they can see the difference – and seldom go back. Once you know the difference, it’s like getting used to Chinette plates and going back to those paper thin ones. The difference? The plate ends up in the garbage in an hour. Framing a picture so that it has the wow-factor will pay dividends every time you look at it. For the next 20, 30 or 50 years – maybe on to the next generation.

Beautiful framing is one of those intangible joys – just like your favorite pair of jeans.

People’s “space” has become more important in the last 20 years. With more stores, more full color catalogs, more education and higher incomes, there are far more people paying attention to their “space” than previous generations. Think about it – every other day you get a full color catalog or magazine in the mail showing room settings that can inspire you and make it easy to go out and decorate your home. Even Target has brought a higher level of design to their home furnishing offerings. Design has gone mass market.

On an episode of Friends a few years ago, one of the cast (I don’t remember who) bought a coffee table from Pottery Barn and wouldn’t admit it to the group because they wanted to be more special than that. That’s what’s so interesting about this shift from very few people getting into design to the mass marketing of it.

The law of nature since the beginning of man (though I’m not sure – I wasn’t there) is that some people don’t want to be in the mass market. The cave man wanted a better cave, the pharaoh wanted grander gold jewelry, the “Gatsby’s” wanted a more extravagant car, and there are plenty of people around today that want more unique, interesting, personalized, better designed and made, more thoughtful, more inspiring home decor.

And that’s good. Because at Artists’ Frame Service and our sister store Jayson Home & Garden, we like to find that stuff.

We’re allowed to stay in this little “niche” because we don’t have 50 stores to feed – or for that matter 5. We don’t have to worry about it fitting in too many markets. If we want to buy something that is too edgy or too unusual, we don’t get stuck with 200 of an item, we get stuck with 6. And that’s what we have an Outlet for. It’s also part of the reason why we always have 50 or 60 frame mouldings that are at a “special” price – they might have been too special!

Mass market is great for toothpaste and breakfast cereal. I think you should surround yourself with beautiful things – that you don’t see everywhere. It’s America: land of the brave, home of the free-thinking.