Snippets - Dallas Meets Atlanta

One of the great things about the gift markets is that you can interact with a wider variety of people than you will see at Surtex or Licensing. The mix of owners, reps, art and licensing directors, sales managers, retailers and our fellow artists and agents makes for some wonderfully diverse viewpoints. It also made Dallas and Atlanta ripe territory for snippet picking as you will see. It seems that while most people feel business is improving, the sting of the last few years has not gone away and “proceed with caution” is still the word of the day:

“It’s a lot of time and work to intro a new product, plus someone has to keep following it all the way through to the launch.”
– owner of a gift company

“The market is telling us something different than what we had expected on this line and you have got to listen to your market.” – about making some responsive line changes

“Do you want to make a statement or do you want to make a deal?” – an agent about difficult artists

“The shelf life of a piece of art is so much shorter. Where we used to get 4 or 5 years out of a good seller, now after one year we are looking to cycle it out of the line because sales have already dropped.” – owner of a home décor company

“Have you seen the crazies on there lately? I keep adding to the list of artists I’m never going to work with.” - an art director talking about Linked In

“The problem is they’re not asking anybody who has a qualified opinion – it’s like asking your mother over and over again “Am I pretty?” – an agent about artists evaluating other artists’ work on social media

“We have learned that our salespeople are not enthusiastic about being the first to market – they’d rather see it somewhere else first.” – an art director about fresh new concepts

“There are so many ideas coming at us now, especially with Pinterest and all that, that we couldn’t possibly do all the good ones.” - owner of a gift company

“I don’t know why they don’t have more artists mingle with the sales reps because it energizes the reps so much to meet them.” - a sales VP

“Our focus is on branded lines now, we really don’t do anything with individual designs anymore.”

- licensing exec at a big gift company explaining their new focus

“We would blow off this show if being here wasn’t a requirement to keep our (prime) location for the January show.” – an exhibitor in the Atlanta temps about the summer show

“I don’t care about recognition or awards or any of that stuff. I design for a particular market and what I care about is whether they buy it.”  - a well known licensed artist

“We don’t just want it to sell in, it needs to sell through. Selling through is what validates a product.” – sales mgr at a large gift company

“We had it priced at 11.00 wholesale but the packaging wouldn’t hang on the hook, it needed to be stronger. The redo pushed the price up to 14.00, so now it’s almost 30.00 retail and that was too much.” – about problems marketing a product

“I am so tired of seeing all these products made with horrible art and hackneyed phrases they pulled off the internet.”
– a licensing agent

“Here’s the problem: everybody and their brother has a product in this category, so it’s incredibly competitive and the margins are really thin. There is just no room to pay royalties anymore.”
– licensee explaining why they buy some shelf goods for their line

“She doesn’t seem to have anything new – what, is she on hiatus?” – art director’s remark (that you never want to hear!) about a portfolio

“I get really tired of this “we’re all sisters in this business of art licensing” thing. I am not giving you my client name just because we both have a uterus.” – a successful licensed artist

“I hate to say it, but in this business you are only as good as your last product.” – owner of a gift company

“It’s not just ceramics - everything is more expensive. We are using a lot more wood, paper and printing instead of sculpts because of the price.” – owner of a gift company

“It’s Trade Show 101 – lot’s of light and color.” – a gift show exhibitor about their bright and colorful display 

And my favorites:

"Every time a new or relatively unknown artist talks to me about developing their "brand", marketing their "brand", and how they're such a unique "brand", I just want to set myself on fire." – an art director

“I'm taking a few moments to recover from the wind burn I just got from [a gift company] whipping thru my portfolio.”

– an artist at the Atlanta Mart

Dude, What’s Your Problem?

Answer this quickly without thinking about it: Why should someone license your art above all others?

Don’t know? If you don’t, then you can bet your clients absolutely won’t be able to figure it out. And out of all the answers that might work, “because I want my art on products” is definitely one that won’t, in fact any answer that starts with “I” is likely to be the wrong one.

Many years ago we traveled almost five hours up Florida to visit a new customer at their factory. We had set up a morning appointment so we took a motel for the night and arrived bright and early with all our portfolios ready to do some business. The art director walked into the conference room and after a little chit chat proceeded to tell us that they work with almost 200 artists already, and asked what we had that she could not get from them. We suggested that we should look through the portfolios – and she declined, ended the meeting and sent us on our way. Stunned only begins to describe what we were feeling. I can look back now and understand that she did not feel she had a problem for us to solve – they already had unlimited art to choose from. And unfortunately we missed our opportunity to ask the right questions, dig a little, open up a two-way exchange and find out what we could do to help. 

The Number One, Numero Uno, Numéro Un reason businesses fail?

They don’t solve a problem.

The usual reasons people give, such as insufficient capitalization, low sales, competition and so on are just subsets of Number One above. Success in any market is based on finding and filling a need, not on hopes, wishes or even great ideas (when looked at through the lens of our licensing biz, an idea without a method to commercialize it has little value). Look at the patent market – of the 180,000 filed each year, only 1 to 2% make it into the marketplace, and only 1 in 600 of those make any income long term. Over 97% of patents never make back the cost of filing. Why? Because they are clever, unique ideas that don’t solve anyone's problem.   

Art Licensing is a B2B market. It is also a zero-sum game, a big one perhaps, but there is still a finite amount of opportunity. Insight is what drives success today - your ability to recognize what your clients are trying to accomplish and then launching new ideas and concepts that help them get there. This will be the engine powering your trip into art licensing. We have a steady stream of artists vying to enter into licensing with nothing more to offer than “me too” art, and it all adds to the clutter that your clients have to deal with every day--so they are just tuning out the majority of it. To get their attention you will have to show them how connecting with your vision and using your art leads to a better outcome, and the only way you can do that is by first investing the time to learn what they might need.

Let's Talk

"All products are conversations." –Hugh MacLeod

So if you consider your art to be a statement, then where does that leave you?

The most important driver of continuing success will not be what you have done, but rather what you are doing. Licensing art onto products is not an event, it is a process, and while your portfolio might earn you a place in the dialogue realize that is only the beginning. 

Think of it as the "art" of conversation.

The View from the Other Side

You, as an art licensor, might wake up every day thinking “Hmmm, wonder who I should contact about licensing my art today?” You can start your morning thinking about new markets and potential licensees, but, hard as this may be to believe... those potential licensees are not likely to be waking up thinking about you.

Their morning will start more like this: 

”Oh crap, Target has changed our meeting AGAIN, I will be in China that week and Bob doesn’t do well with that buyer. The factory that makes the wire handles can’t meet our ship schedule, and the new plush shipment has been confiscated by Customs because the testing paperwork wasn’t filed? Am I surrounded by idiots? What am I going to tell the retailers? Hey, I wonder if we ever got the factory to the price point we need on those ceramic pieces – better have our China coordinator check on that. If we can’t get the pricing we will need to drop them from the new release and that will leave a major hole in the line – that’s gonna suck. And I can’t believe we are having ANOTHER review meeting on the January release – we should have had that in the system two weeks ago and NOW they want to take another look at it? We are already working on Summer 2014 for God’s sakes, I DO NOT have time for this BS. What else was there… oh yeah, need the textile print proofs today, we have GOT to have those samples in house by the first. There’s something else… oh, I still need to go through that pile of art. Maybe we could use some on  the new mugs… no way I have time for that today, maybe tomorrow… or maybe Mary can do it…”

And so their day goes.

One comment we heard often at both the Dallas and Atlanta markets was that the licensees had not even looked at the art they obtained from Surtex. They were still putting the 2014 product release to bed, or final touches on the new catalog, or just hadn’t had time, and so on… but they hoped to get to it sometime soon. 

From a technical standpoint, licensing is a business model and not an industry. It is a method of commercializing your product or invention (i.e. your designs) without bringing it to market yourself. And your clients definitely do not see it as an industry, for them it is a tool to make and sell better product. Licensing is but one of a number of ways that they can source one of the components of their product. I am telling you this because, to be successful long term, it is vital that you realize how your piece fits into the puzzle. Licensees will gravitate toward those who make their life easier – whether it’s because you only send appropriate, targeted art, or your files are correctly sized, well organized and readable, or you (happily!) respond to any request within hours instead of days or weeks… it all matters. Keeping your client’s perspective in mind will help you help them, and for them, that is really what it’s all about.  

 

Turning Up the Heat in Dallas

It wasn’t nearly hot enough in Florida so we headed off to the Dallas Home and Gift market to see what was happening there. I’ll tell ya, there’s nothing like that midday Texas heat shimmering up off 12 lanes of freeway to make you appreciate a sea breeze. Actually it really wasn’t all that bad – the nights are still below 80 - but that will change in a few weeks…

Dallas is the kickoff of the summer show season and while it is not as big as Atlanta, the big players are all there and many debut their mid-year releases at this show. There are 2300 permanent showrooms and several times a year they set up hundreds more temporary booths on a number of floors. Mix in a lot of regional and Texas vendors (oh wait – that’s the same thing in the Republic of Texas) and you have a pretty impressive venue. The Dallas Market Center is just north of downtown and has four main buildings: the 4 story Trade Mart with about one million square feet of space, the 15 story World Trade Center (3.1 million square feet), the International Trade Plaza (440,000 square feet) and the Market Hall at 214,000 square feet. A lot of ground to cover in a few long days but we managed to pull it off.

Trade Mart entry (World Trade Center is poking up on the right)

Traffic started out a little slow on Friday morning but did build through the day, and it really ramped up for the weekend. The exhibitors we talked with had mixed opinions on how the show was going, from good to really bad, but that seems to be the case in most every show. We have not heard any final wrap-up from the exhibitors or the DMC but probably will next week in Atlanta.

Atrium of the WTC

Mid-season releases tend to be a little spotty, not everybody does them and/or not every time. They can range from a little refresh of a collection to a full blown roll out of a new line (our favorite…) however we're happy no matter what they are. We had several nice debuts this time, here are three of them:

Ellen Krans at Burton&Burton

Life Is Country® at Big Sky Carvers/Demdaco

Ronnie Walter at Carson's

One of our goals at every show or market is to meet new clients, and this one turned into a pretty good trip. We also managed to lay some important groundwork for Atlanta next week.

Wait – next week? But I just got home…