The Upside of Failure
How Selling Nothing Led to Our Pay-What-You-Want Studio Sale
In the age of BLACK FRIDAY CYBER MONDAY BUY BUY BUY commercialism, we’re going in a different direction. Yes, we are having a studio sale and you are all invited, but it’s a little different and here’s why.
Real talk, gather in close now…
Just over a month ago we began preparing for a local art fair, thinking it would be a great opportunity to get our new studio humming, print a broad selection of our photographs and of course sell print after print in a clamor of demand and excitement.
As soon as we walked in the door to the art fair, we realized we were in the wrong room.
All the hours of preparation, the stacks of carefully printed and packaged prints, all displayed with the best of intentions only to be met with:
“We have too much art in our house!”
“We just downsized, I have no space on my walls!”
One visitor to our table was very interested in one of my hand bouquets. He was taken by the fact it was made in Tenafly, NJ. He was originally from nearby Teaneck, so there was a connection there and he clearly loved the photograph. But after a great conversation (while he was clutching the print the entire time) he promptly left, without even taking a business card. That was eye-opening.
This was a crowd that either didn’t appreciate our work or came with no intention of buying artwork in the first place. We sold absolutely nothing.
The Upside
Honestly, I’m embarrassed about how naïve we were, thinking that our success selling our artwork online would effortlessly translate to in-person sales. The positives were the special conversations with kind people who stopped by and truly did enjoy our work. We gained some subscribers to this newsletter along with some real world connections and local insight. But for art sales we were most definitely in the wrong room. Given that, the question becomes, how do we get into the right room? Where even is the right room? Who has the key?
In the days and weeks following the fair it dawned on me that perhaps we have the key: this newsletter is the right room and we are already there. I can close my eyes and imagine all of you milling about our studio, flipping through prints and chatting with us about how, where, when and why these particular photographs came into existence and what the art evokes for you in return. Wouldn’t that be nice?
So we’d like to unlock the door and invite you in to our pop-up studio sale where we are offering all those prints that didn’t sell in the wrong room for the generous price of whatever-you-want (just please kindly cover shipping at least).
Don’t have space on your walls? It’s gift-giving season so this is a chance to get a gift for someone else.
Thank you for reading. We hope you find something you like in the studio sale! We’ll be back to our regular programming on December 1st with our final art drop of 2024.
P.S. It’s hasn’t been all bad news though – look at this amazing 40 x 60” print of Tom’s Yellow Wall abstract that we recently sold, printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm. It barely fits in our studio!
I’ve thought exactly the same experience of art fairs can definitely sympathize !
I can relate to that struggle with art sales so much, it’s really challenging and I feel like so much of it can be luck of the draw with who shows up looking to buy physical art and who is there more for something to do (not a bad thing but can be discouraging for vendors putting so much work into selling their art).
I love what you did with these prints and the open studio sale! Beautiful, beautiful work, it’s nice to come across someone on here not too far from me in New England.