Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for your responses. I read your comments and feedback. I am very happy to see most of you love interacting with the clients. I have to say it amazes me since not many around me genuinely appreciate interacting with the clients and servicing their needs.
Perhaps, that's the mentality that separates business owners like yourselves and employees like my friends.
I have to say people on this forum are very, very blessed to have a career that you love even after decades of practicing. I guess that's what craftsmanship and mastery is all about!
Sorry if my idea sounds horrible to some of you on this comments. Thank you for sharing the honest opinion. That's a big learning for me! At the end of the day, I want to create something to bring more money to custom frame businesses. If it happens, it will be a business to serve small framing businesses. If there's no need for my input, then I will happy to move on to next business.
It seems like responses on thegrumble.com were double edged. One group of people say, "it's about the time for us to do more and expand." The others say, "we are doing well ourselves. Leave us alone." Either way, I appreciate every feedback.
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Before I respond to your comments and questions, I would like to apologize for my ambiguous questions. I come from financial technology consulting (which sounds fancy--but it really is to build websites for you to send the money online without writing a check).
We are trained to ask ambiguous questions to capture the improvement points and validate (or correct) our understanding. It sounds like it has been a success, because my initial guess was framers would be tired of making sales pitch and arguing over prices with rookies like me . I was terribly wrong, and thank you very much for such an enlightenment!
Below is my resume, just in case if any of you are curious about my background --
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wjhong/
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Here are some potentially useful information for frameshop owners:
Although I am an industry outsider building website and software, I have done a quite bit of framing. I have framed about a dozen in last three years for myself and my friends.
The reason why asked about the client consultation comes from the fact that millenials don't like visiting stores and get consultations.
There are two elements to it: (1) we don't like the fact that we have to walk into the stores, chat for 15-30 minutes to get a quote and (2) custom framing costs are high from our perspective.
Yes, we appreciate pretty apartments that we see on Instagram, but our income levels are not quite there yet. We would like to get to the similar results without spending thousands of dollars.
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Here's a potential new idea:
So now I have been thinking, what are the ways to (1) reduce the client consultation, (2) increase price transparency and comparability, and (3) lower the prices in general. That will make custom framing easy for many computer addicted millenials.
I think this is very doable since more and more of my friends frame their own artworks and beautiful posters. I have seen it with my own eyes. Popular websites, like art.com (mainly framed poster retail) were being acquired by giants like Walmart. Online framing websites (mail-in framing websites), like Framebridge, were funded with USD $70 million. Let me give you some metrics. Per my own research and intelligence, about 40k people view framebridge.com per month. 61K view levelframes.com, and there are 10 more of them, just in North America.
If one percent buy them, which is an extremely conservative estimate, they would still push out 1000 frames, 50 a day between two websites. I have used them when I was living in New York City. Quality was good (from a rookie's perspective). Prices were not convincing--it was not low enough to justify the mailing-in and mailing out process. The price difference would be maybe $170 for $200 offline work. If a lot of us are too lazy and overwhelmed to go to framing stores for consultation, post office is the last place where we want to go, especially in American big cities. Plus, we don't have cars to pick up from a post office, in case UPS or Fedex misses our delivery. That's why I think an online business specializing in framing connecting local businesses can be a thing--especially in big cities.
Again, these websites are not any easier than going to a local farming shops. They are not much cheaper. But they are selling! Selling by thousands and thousands a month. They are raising hundreds of millions in investors' money. They may not be making money yet, but these investors are not idiots. If they can do this mail-in mail out, why can't we do this locally. That was my question.
Let me give you some numbers. In city of Vancouver (metro population of 2.5 million), there are 22k searches on custom framing near me. So for the London metro, with 15 million, there will be about 150k searches -- a day. I think people would love to buy more locally, if there is an easy way for us to connect those online people with local shops, seamlessly. That's my goal.
I would like to seek more feedback from you in regards to what milennials frame in UK. Do they frame posters? Photography? And what were your experience interacting with them. Approximately, what percentage of your customers are below 40?
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To answer John's question above, here are my answers:
You have an interesting website
http://www.elliesframes.com.
Another quick question:
1. Is the intention of Ellie's Frames to lower the price to the customer for bespoke framiing in the Vancouver area?
My initial business idea was this:
STEP 1: Customers can design and render custom frames easily. They can even project how the rendered frame, move around in 360 degree view, to see how it actually looks. I can make this pretty easily.
STEP 2: They pay to me, process payments centrally--since that's the preferred method among our new online commerce.
STEP 3: They pick and choose a local frame shop in our network. The moment they click the "Select this shop," their order information will be sent to your email for your to get ready.
STEP 4: They come in, clarify any questions. Give you opportunity to up sell if you want to. And framework that was previously going to go for big box stores or online framing stays local.
STEP 5: I will send you shops the money once the work is done, within a day.
To do this, I have to build:
Task 1: Customers who are going to come to my website -- which is marketing and search engine optimization -- which is difficult and expensive for outsiders but for doable for tech insiders like me. Essentially, local frameshops are outsourcing the marketing and customer acquisition efforts to me.
Task 2: Find local frame shops.
To answer you question
The whole point of my website was to just check if there's any demand for such a service. I want to validate task 1 is doable or not. I have built a website and wrote blogs in a way that my website would appear on the top pages of Google search in Vancouver, people looking for "custom framing near me."
I want to see how many people come in, and how many of them actually click around. I can track what kind of services (is it custom framing or plaque mounting) that people are interested in. Before I invest my 100% into this business, I want to first see if there's a market.
2. Will the framers in your area be paid less for their work than they would normally charge their customers?
Here's the interesting part. I would call our generation an IKEA generation. We want to live in a decent, clean look apartment, but it has to be cheap. We look for art, but we look for arts that are mass produced. Like posters or printers of digital illustrators. Many of us don't hang paintings anymore. There's lesser need for conservation. We don't really go for ornamental frames either (remember IKEA). We are mainly looking for simple, wooden, customized frame that matches to IKEA furniture (only four colors -- white, black, maple, walnut).
Going back to your point, yes, the prices will be lower, not because we want to reduce your margins substantially, but we just want to get the "unnecessary frills" out. For us, we are looking for something that looks nice--we don't look for conservation or decoration.
3. what advantage is it to the framer to join your scheme?
Again, this is theoretical; it's an experiment. As I meet more people, I will change my business models to cater business owners' needs.
I bring you clients for free. You don't have to pay me anything. I never thought about charging a cent to frame businesses. From my perspective, building a beautiful technology like this is easy. It's not expensive since I can build one myself. But selling is the hardest part. [/b]
Yes, your per client revenue will be lower (cuz our target customers are more budget conscious), but I doubt your margin percentage will be lower.Number one, you won't have to spend time and effort selling and consulting, number two, I heard from the masters in grumble that often margins on cheaper frames are actually higher (which surprised me actually), after adjusting to material costs and effort level.
Yes, the revenue per client is lower, but margins are not lower. It's still money on the table, brought in by new clients. At the end of the day, people who frame with you (higher end market) won't even come into my website. What do you have to lose?
What do you think? Would you be interested in joining such a network? I want to see if any of frame shop owners will be interested in such a business referral system.
Please let me know what's the marketability of such a business scheme. If you think I am wasting my time, please let me know If that's true, I would love to hear that and move onto next project.
In fact, to quench my thirst on this industry, I will be flying to Las Vegas next week for the WCAF Art and Frame Expo to chat with people and see what's going on. Apparently, lot of people on the Grumble are coming so excite to finally get to meet them in person!
I would love to hear more from folks in UK! Any input is a learning lesson for me. Thank you very much!
Cheers and have a great weekend!
Respectfully,
WJ Hong