Art Just Keeps on Selling

In this episode, Nick and Patrick discuss the ongoing growth in art sales conducted through individual artists' websites despite the end of lockdowns. They highlight a significant 180% growth in sales compared to last year, stressing the importance of artists developing their online sales channels independently. They mention how the adaptations of online shopping habits, particularly in art, have provided new opportunities for artists and photographers. Artists can engage their audience more effectively by showcasing their creative processes through live streaming. The episode also covers the struggles traditional galleries face during the pandemic and encourages artists to build their own direct sales businesses to avoid dependence on third-party galleries. They conclude by announcing a live Zoom call to assist artists with their business challenges.

Podcast Transcribe

Nick Friend: And I got a background this time.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, spicy. Whoa, like that? Yeah, you know, I feel like a green tree. This is annoying. You gotta switch it up a little bit, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, yeah, no way. Anyway, how you doing? Having Monday?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, YouTube. YouTube doing great, ready for another awesome week. Great news from last week, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, fantastic news. Yes, which we will, let's... yeah, so you know as we always do, we just finished our metrics meeting at Art Storefronts looking at the sales numbers of the art and photography from the individual websites from our members, right? And the narrative continues, right? The Black Friday sales levels, sales volumes, they are not stopping. And so we had, I think the number, what do you have it in front of you? It was 180 percent growth, I think it was. And that was what we're doing there is we're looking at the exact days of the week in 2020 compared to 2019, right? And so week after week, and you know that, we're looking at the total sales volume and it's just continuing to go. And you know what, you know what's so interesting is like, you and I were talking about this on Saturday a bit, like the interesting part about the lockdowns, right, and technology adoption, you know, accelerated in 10 years as many people have said. It's the habits that have changed, right? And like even though things have started opening up again around the country, people getting back to work, things are opening up, those sales numbers are not changing. How interesting is that?

Patrick Shanahan: How interesting is that? They haven't changed at all?

Nick Friend: They have not dipped at all. In fact, they're higher, you know? And so, so like it just shows you that habits that were formed during this, the lockdowns in terms of online, it's really about online shopping, like what you are willing to buy online, what people have realized is more convenient or a better experience or whatever it is, right? Like online, you know, like ordering your groceries online, you know? And of course, where does this go to? It goes to buying art online, but buying it directly from the Creator, going to their live art shows, seeing them live painting, live shooting, seeing photographers like Andy Crawford going down, you know, the Bayou in a canoe, right, to go get his shot with alligators around them.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, kayak.

Nick Friend: Yeah, like to go get his shot. And be, you know, Anthony Canton, right, getting in the water, like, you know, he shoots waves, right, like as they're breaking, going live, getting in the water with his phone in a camera, you know, and explaining his process. He's doing that at sunrise. Like how cool was that, you know? And you're becoming a part of the, like, you know, you're bringing your viewers in, your fans and your audience in. It's like, how do you even explain this, Pat? Because I talk about, you and I talked about how running your own art gallery business now today, being able to run your own international art gallery business from home is like an incredible business model and it's totally viable and it is the way, right, to build an amazing business. You're no longer relying on third parties, no longer, you don't need them. They're great, then let that be the gravy. Let them be the gravy. You own your own customers, your own distribution. No one could ever pull the rug out from underneath you. And that is the biggest lesson, the biggest takeaway, you guys, is like, if you learned anything in this pandemic, if any artist or photographer was selling well during the pandemic and was relying on third parties, they got crushed. They got crushed and they learned their lesson. And what are they doing, Pat? What are they doing more?

Patrick Shanahan: They are building their business online.

Nick Friend: Yeah, they are building their business online direct. I don't mean uploading to Fine Art America and Saatchi Art. Those are just third-party galleries online. It's the transition of, you know what, I'm going to own my own email list, my own customer list. I'm going to sell direct. I'm going to make the most money from my work. I'm going to control my destiny and no one's going to take that away from me. Because eventually with third parties, it always happens. It doesn't matter if it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. You build your own direct business. And the way to do that is to run your own art gallery and do it online, you know? And it's just an amazing, it is an amazing time. But what I was saying though is that like, it's not even just the fact that when you're live online, for example, and you can bring people virtually into your store, into your gallery, right, and show them your products and do close-ups and it's high-definition video and it's just incredible, right? But you're able to do what Andy Crawford and Tony and all these other people on our platform are doing, right? They go out to where they're taking the shot and they explain the process and how they're thinking about the creation, you know, and the after effect and all of that and how that drives such a deep connection and value. It's just, how do you even put a word to describe this, you know?

Patrick Shanahan: That's effective marketing. It's just, unfortunately, what it is.

Nick Friend: It's just effective marketing, but it's like, these are things that galleries never did, not even close. And they could never do because they can't speak for you. They can't go, "Oh hey, this is how Anthony, you know, I'm hanging his art in my gallery. This is how he got his shot. This is how he thought about it. This is how he did it." They couldn't even do that. They never did that. They never were able to do that good of marketing, right? And the artist and the photographer can easily do that type of marketing, right? And if you're going to do that type of marketing, you do it yourself and you get 100% of the benefits. I saw the news this morning that 24-Hour Fitness chapter 11 filing today. Hurt.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh no.

Nick Friend: Hertz just about there too. And you know, Nick's out in Texas and most of Yard's references are in Texas. I'm in Southern California in Newport Beach, and one town south of me, Laguna Beach, a town in which there are more art galleries than just about anything. And I'm really curious. I like got to go down to the Chamber of Commerce or whatever and figure out how many are just not coming back, how many are not.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, there's going to be a ton. I mean, it's going to have to be 50%. I mean, it may even be higher because it's just that model, you know? And here's the thing is with everything that we're talking about with the ability, like you look at like the 3,500 members that we have and you look at the sales numbers that are online, right? Like whose pocket does that come out of?

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: You know what I mean? It's coming out of the retail, the retail segment. It's coming out. It's, it's getting to, it is demand that has shifted over and it's gotten taken away from galleries and art shows, right? So that's our topic. It's, it's moved.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: It's a tale of two artists. It's a tale of two creators. If a particular artist that was in that art gallery that went out of business, insert name here, the plus side is you get your work back that you now get to sell at a hundred percent profit margin and or 100 percent of the profit goes to you. But that's a double-edged sword, right? Like if you're one of our customers and you've been marketing and you know how to actually move the product, it's a boon. It's a windfall that just releases you from a contract that stated you couldn't sell that stuff. Now you have all this inventory you can blow out and oh my gosh, don't we know some good ways to blow that inventory out. But if you don't, you won't have the following.

Nick Friend: Look, you rock. And by the way, you still have a schematic shirt. That's amazing.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah, I do. We're going to do, by the way, brand new, you know, in an old box.

Nick Friend: Perfect.

Patrick Shanahan: Perfect rockin'. If you do know what to do, if you know how to market in that situation, what a boon, what a windfall. Like how many...

Nick Friend: Oh yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Even on our platform, like you and Betty were saying, like Betty is under contract till the end of the year and has a ton of stuff in the gallery and she's the one moving it all right now. And she's taken the haircut, whatever her number is.

Nick Friend: Yeah, fifty percent.

Patrick Shanahan: So it's just all...

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: And you think about like how much money it's so much money like 50% of your attention and oh, by the way, now you have to sell it. It's just like I'm just wrong. It's just wrong.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. And I, I mean, you know, the stories that we're going to hear, right? I can't wait to hear you guys have to tell us, you know, like when, when you start getting these, but like you're going to, you're going to start hearing the stories about the gallery owner coming back saying, "Hey, you know what? We gotta take, we gotta take 60%. Like we're just not going to stay alive. We're going to take 65%, you know?"

Patrick Shanahan: The way it's...

Nick Friend: You know what, they don't be able to, you don't want to do that as it turns out because some of the galleries closed, I've got a bunch other artists I can potentially represent. So we're one of the ones that did survive. So we're 60 now, 60% and you get nothing, no email address, no follow-up, nothing.

Patrick Shanahan: Cause you can't and you can't even like, I don't even want it like, I'm not even blaming them personally for that because it's like they're going, they are going to have to do everything they can to stay alive, you know?

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: And it's, it's, it's going to be worse. It's going to be way worse, you know? So not a good situation there, not a good situation. No. Talk about what we're doing at night.

Nick Friend: Yeah. Yeah. We got a Zoom coming up tonight.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: For non, non customers, non customers, Patrick and I will be live tonight and it's on a Zoom that you could join us on for us to answer your questions. What are you struggling with? What's your biggest business problem that's getting in your way to build your art and photography business? Why aren't your sales where you want them to be? Has your business been stagnant the last couple years? Have you really been growing? Where are you headed with it? Get on tonight. Okay, it's going to be 3 p.m. Pacific, 5 Central, 6 Eastern. All right. And if you're on our email list, you'll get the link to join the Zoom call. Where else can they get the Zoom link?

Patrick Shanahan: It's in the bio and Instagram or if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, it's, it's in the post description. Yeah. And what we're going to do a live demo. We're going to do pricing, all of that.

Nick Friend: Go over some of the features and we're unclogged from drains.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing too is like, okay, well, I'll rattle through a couple things. Number one, we have a summer special going on, right? We got a bit, we got a summer special. So if you've been looking to join Art Storefronts, there's never been a better time, right? Like take advantage of that. It's in June. We're getting to the last like two weeks. So get your demo request in so you get in the queue. When you're in the, on the last week, it's almost, you know, the schedule's so booked. So make sure you do that and take advantage of it. The second thing is like, you know, this concept of that we've been talking about, Pat, like this pandemic hit, like it's stung a lot of people. It's stung most of the industry. What's so interesting is, is that the people who had already built their business on rock, right? They built a direct business. They built it online for the last like three to five years. What happened to them? They're the ones thriving this whole time.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: They're part of this whole Black Friday level of sales. They're the ones thriving. They didn't get hurt at all. They didn't get hurt at all. They're moving forward, right? That's where you want to be, you guys. That's where you need to be. That's where you want to be. And so you need to build you. If you build your house on sand, i.e. relying on third parties, whether they're offline art galleries or online art shows, which can get canceled and run, and you depend on the marketing of that art show, right? You depend on the, on the attendance of that art show. You can't rely on these things. If that's the biggest learning lesson to take away, you know, you have to build a direct business, you know, where you own the customers and you're going direct online, you know, and nothing can get taken away from you. So it's just, there's never a better time to actually get started and do that. And here's the other thing too, Pat. So many people, this is where the perspective piece comes in, and I love your commentary on this. I love your commentary on this. The perspective piece is so many people think like, oh yeah, I'll just do that in like four months or in six months. And it's like a light switch that they think they could just turn on, right? You didn't realize that this is not, I don't care how good your art is. I don't care if you sold a hundred thousand dollars a year with galleries. Building your direct business is a skill set that you have to build, that you will get, that you will start at as a beginner and you will get better at over time, right? And it's going to take time to do, right? So the sooner you start that clock, the sooner you will arrive at where you want to be, right?

Nick Friend: Plant a tree, right? The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The next best time was yesterday, right?

Patrick Shanahan: But you can't...

Nick Friend: Or 30 years ago, 20 years ago.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly.

Nick Friend: The next best time is today, right? So like you can't just flick that thing like a light switch, right? So you know what you need to do. You guys know what you need to do. You can't rely on third parties. You got to build your own business. So start that clock, start that clock. I think the other thing too is that the opportunity right now is absolutely fantastic, right? And but it gets worse every single day.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: It gets worse because more competition is going to be coming in. So right now, today, there's, if you want to be like at the front of the line and not be the last, be the last guy in line at the very end, the last person to run their direct business online, your results are going to be worse if you wait a long time. Get on that train. You keep hearing us talk about it. Like what are you waiting for? Don't wait. Like if you, if your urge is to wait again and you haven't ever built your business online and you haven't been building a direct business and something in your head is like, oh, I can wait. I can wait. I can wait. I'm going to guess that you tend to do things last, that you're last in line. Stop being last in line. The people who are last in line are the people who got crushed during this pandemic and they're going to continue to be crushed until they change that habit, that mental mindset, you know, that is getting them to continue to just wait until everything is done. You know what I mean? Like once it's like, they're literally the followers of the followers of the followers, right? And we're sitting there just going, here's the opportunity. Are you sitting here going, oh, wait, I can't wait to go to that one or two local art shows that I normally did. The tiniest market, the lowest opportunity, you know, reliant on third parties, house built on sand. People who did that got crushed. Don't be that person.

Patrick Shanahan: Right. I take your point about, you know, you have to start immediately. But I also think that like the disruption that's going to continue to happen as a result of this pandemic to this particular industry is going to continue to speed out. When you realize that you can be more effective and move more product by marketing from your house than being in a gallery or then going on the roadshow, you know, doing the shows and fairs, it's just going to obliterate, it's going to obliterate that whole thing. And they're going to do whatever they can to fight to keep their business model going. But look, if the audience is not there, the audience is not there. It is not going to be around for a long time. This frickin virus is not going away. It's just not going away, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Maybe some small bumps that you see from the offline sources just based on the fact that no one is going to be going abroad, right? You know, international travels and we just can't rush this whole summer long. But apart from that, like what are these little fairs doing? Attendance is down and booths are down. Crushed. Business model doesn't work. Operate, it's like trying to operate a restaurant with only 50 percent of your seating. Like that is not going to work. Like the margins in restaurants are so thin, right? It's the same with art shows. And so more of them are going to close. They're going to have less people. The big ones are going to have more people, more competition. You know, with all the galleries that go out of business, if you're not willing to play ball, they will kick you to the side in two seconds or you will take that higher percentage commission. You know, they're there. They're going to do what they can to survive. And it's going to be a sad run, man. It's going to be a sad run.

Nick Friend: I know. All right. So I got to leave it there.

This is no short discussion today. So I hope to see you guys on the Zoom call tonight with Patrick and I. Again, it's at 3 p.m. Pacific, 5 Central, 6 Eastern. OK, get on the Zoom call. Don't let your business get stuck. If this is what you know you're doing as a photographer, artist, you've been doing it for a while or you know you want to do it, let us help you. OK, that's what we're here to do. We're helping everybody every time we will get you unstuck. We'll help you move forward and figure out what your next steps are, whatever they are.

Patrick Shanahan: That's right. All right. So I'll see you at 5 p.m. tonight.

Nick Friend: Yep. In a few hours. All right. You got a drive? Call me from the car. We got to get into some topics that I forgot about. So we'll deal with that.

Patrick Shanahan: Done. No problem. All right, guys. We'll see you tonight. Thank you.

Nick Friend: Yep. Drive safe. All right.

Patrick Shanahan: And broadcast.

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