It’s not really a “shop”, it’s a 100 square foot space I rent in an antique mall. I’ve been renting the space to sell my paintings for 9 months and I’ve decided to find another way to sell my paintings.
If you don’t want to read about the ins and outs of selling paintings in a retail market, skip the rest of this post and come back in a couple of days when I’ll be back to talking about painting. My intention with this post is to share my experience about what’s involved in selling paintings to the public in a retail situation.
Having the “shop” was great fun. It was exciting when I went up to the antique center and checked my folder and saw sales receipts. When I was a kid I loved to play “store” with my sister, I guess it was kind of like that. Though sadly I didn’t make much more money with this real store than I did with my sister when we were selling each other items from around our house and using play money. But, as I said, it was fun. More fun than the pretend game.
I did sell paintings, in the 9 months I had the space I sold 13 paintings and 3 went out on approval last week to a designer. I was very pleased that many of my paintings sold. The antique center gets a lot of traffic from designers and some traffic from individuals. The problem came with the actual finances of the whole operation. Designers get a discount of 15% off each purchase, then the shop gets 10% commission of each purchase. That’s 25% off the retail price of the painting that I lose, which doesn’t sound like too much. But . . . and this is a big but, at the beginning of each month I have to pay my rent of $400.
Say I sell a painting for $600. Woohoo, right? Well, after taking off the 25% in discounts and commissions, that leaves me $450. From that “profit” I have to pay the $400 rent each month. So I’m left with $50. Deduct the price of the frame and I’m left with zero. Now, before things get too depressing, the good news is that when I sell a second painting in the same month, I actually make money from that one. So say I then sell a $400 painting, minus the 25% leaves me $300. That’s better. If I deduct $50 for the frame then that means I bring home $250 that month. So, effectively, I’m selling my framed paintings for $125 each. That’s when I decided there had to be a better way.
Galleries are looking better and better. Yes, they take 50% of the price of the painting. But compare that to the example I have above: I sold two paintings in one month totaling $1000 retail and I came home with $250. I brought home 25%. See how much better 50% looks! And a gallery markets the work, and actually houses and shows the work. So I will be approaching galleries in the near future.