Why I decided to close my shop

Might be a bit clickbait title, but well this is what is going to happen^^

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a great week. Here I am still working on my exhibition, finishing the last pieces and managing a few licensing deals.

This week I also took 2 webinars (Amanda’s one and Jacob’s one) about “making money online with your Art”. At first sight I thought it was about selling paintings online but no. Art here means selling prints in both webinars. But I learned a few things:

1. I could sell canvas prints out of my paintings. This is an idea I was not fan of at the beginning but the more I think about it, the more it could be something I could do.

2. I spent many years developing my community. You are part of it. But both webinars say this is not enough. You have to go beyond community and pay for Ads. And again, I always have been a bit reluctant to use Ads but I tried it this week with my Fonts Bundle and it seems to work. Selling through Ads might not seem easy though. We need a strong message and hook.

3. Use a Print On Demand service. And this is the thing that made me think a lot lately.

Externalising prints

From the beginning I wanted to manage everything by myself. I wanted to control the quality of my prints and wanted to pack and send them. So I bought a great Canon IPG Pro-300 printer, great Hahnemuhle paper and started selling online on my shop.

I started this thing 2 years ago. And now I can say, I really struggle at this part of my work. This is ok to want to control quality, this is ok to want to maximise margin by doing everything yourself. But now I realise it takes a LOT of my time to print, having ink, paper, envelopes or tubes in stock, pack everything and ship everything.

Here my biggest problem is shipping. For every parcel I send to Europe, France and Switzerland included, I have to fill documents. And for the US, this is even more ridiculous, because I have to fill 5 different documents for customs. And to help even more, shipping costs change every 6 months or so. Which means I have to change prices on my website regularly. Sometimes I realise the price change when I am at the Post office. Right now, sending a print in the US is 29€. And not in a tube. This is 6€ more. This becomes nearly a non sense for American people to buy out of their own country. It is probably made on purpose.

Europe shipping costs are half the price, around 15€.

The last thing is that I have ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder). It means that printing and shipping stuff ask me a lot more concentration and organisation than I have. Printing, packing, printing the labels, adding some goodies, going to the post, waiting in line, sending everyone a message with their tracking code. Man this is too much for an ADHD person haha :D

And if you know about ADHD you know that the more complicated a task is, the more stressful it will be to do it. It ends up in a long procrastination that makes it even more difficult to do the task.

The solution is Print On Demand

A few weeks ago I had a call with someone from Lama.co. They explained to me how the handle artists prints. You setup a shop on their website, create your products and they do the rest. With great quality. So once your products are available online, you don’t have anything else to do. They even have a framing service. So you can order the prints with or without frame.

Coming back to the 2 webinars I did attend this week, they both said that POD is the best way to do things because then YOU CAN FOCUS ON YOUR ART.

Last thing but also an important one, I plan to continue to sell screen prints. But always in a limited quantity and limited time. The same for t-shirts. For example, I print a tshirt, I print 20 of them, and I sell them only for 2 weeks. So I know that I will have to deal with logistics once or twice within 2 weeks. And I will do this several times a year.

And the nice thing with Lama is that I can put on the same shop products like screenprints, t-shirts or paintings I will manage on my side. Everything on the same shop then.

So yes, I am going to close my shop at Squarespace in a short time!

What about the fonts shop?

That is a good question! :D For now they will stay on my website. I paid until next June for my shop so I will probably keep them there until next spring. But then, I might move them to Gumroad. Gumroad is a marketplace selling many different things including fonts. And the thing I like about it is that they take “only” 10% of your sales. So you have a free shop and pay 10% out of your sales. 10% in nothing regarding to other distributors who take 50% or 30€ per month for every shop platform.

Nothing is definitive but for now this is the best solution I see. So in June I can cancel my e-commerce plan at Squarespace.

What do you think?

Is it a good idea? Bad idea? Have any remarks or question? Please don’t hesitate to share in the comments :)

3 more days to go for the Fonts Bundle!!

A quick not to remind you that my fonts bundle is still running until the end of the week if you want to invest in 7 fun and funky fonts for only 29€.

Let’s finish with a bit of inspiration :)

1. Collage Porn by Theresa Rego

teresarego.studio

A post shared by @teresarego.studio

2. I really like that poster from Print Haus, a good mix of type and mid century/collage illustration.

3. What a great Riso print from Zrinka Buljubašić! I especially like the shadow over the letters in a kind of cutout style.

4. My friend Jean Mosambi killed the game. Again. What a beautiful screenprint with great texture and a fantastic lettering. Wow!

This is it for today. No newsletter next week as I will be away with the family. Enjoy your weekend and don’t forget to take a break and go outside in the wild, take a walk and a good breathe.

Take care,

Francis