Fine art trade guild

[jon buck]

Being new to the business is it worth joining the Fine Art Trade Guild ?
They do appear to offer quite a lot .

[Roboframer]

You'll find a lot of differences of opinion on that one - a quick search here will reveal lots.

Not a fan myself but I must say I was impressed with the entries to their last framing competition.

[prospero]

They do appear to offer quite a lot .

'appear' being the operative word.

I suppose they are like the local church. You like to know it's there even if you never go in it.

[Jonny2morsos]

If you are not yet taking card payments they do have a good deal arranged with the Bank of Scotland for rental of a terminal etc. Forget the exact amounts we pay but no one else could get near so that alone might pay back your membership fee. Fair bit of bad feeling about this year due to us all having to stump up a £50 one off fee to upgrade the website which has not yet gone live but if you can join now without having to contribute an extra 50 quid you get the advantage of this with no payment.

I am sure you will get more opinions (both ways).

John.

[Roboframer]

There's a lot of competition out there for credit card terminals - we've beat the FATG one - and their insurance deal, by miles!

Ask yourself why you want to join the guild, to become a better framer or to get 'deals' on insurance, card transactions, etc etc?

Depending on how good a framer you already are, you could well become a better one for joining the guild, plus get some better insurance (etc) deals that you are incapbale of achieving without them. Not that those deals aren't out there.

Plus it may work 'for you' - you may be close to a local branch, you may have the time and inclination to get stuck in to them instead of being a passive member, just paying your subs and expecting things to just happen as a result - that's not how it works. Nothing they publish is unavailable to a non member.

[The Jolly Good Framer #1]

As Robo said, if you want to get in to the whole social side of it and take an active roll with the branch meetings etc, great. But if not (this bit is in my opinion) it’s a waste of money as you can get the benefits they offer for less elsewhere

Personal, I think that being a Jolly Good Framer is better value for money than joining the FATG.

[Martin Harrold]

Interesting aside.

We are doing a bit of reasearch on the German market. There, until the first, and highly successful, Art Fair Europe last October, they had no real art and framing trade show - the Frankfurt thing had been fading for a long time. Their magazine, Der Kunsthandel, was a somewhat turgid publication but is now being revived. They appear to have a moribund trade association, with almost no activity.

And, would you believe, the framing trade there, with some exceptions, is sleepy dozy, with few knowing about, let alone using, using modern equipment. In fact, Morso don't currently have a distributor there.

Now with the next AFE having a huge number of stands booked, Der Kunsthandel brightening up and the FATG starting to launch GCF training and testing there, there are already signs that framers are taking notice.

It's easy to take all the good things we have in the UK for granted, but it's also important to be aware that all those things feed the natural curiosity and ambition of framers. To the good of all.

In France, there is a crap show, a weak trade magazine and no trade organisation. And, the framing trade there is less than half the size of that in the UK. Maybe the two things are not connected, but it is certainly food for thought.

[Odems]

In Holland we have a framing-organization, but many framers don't like to go hand by hand with the big dominating guys. I see much more open discussion in this forum as I ever saw in Holland. I also notice that many framers are very protective against new framers and new systems/ideas. You can speak of "open" and "closed" framers as they are interested or not. Many of those do not even visit an AFE or SACA. But I have good confidence to see more integral commitment between framers in the next years as I see in your UK.

[markw]

Should be, but in my opinion no. FATG have always had the potential to be a good organisation for the industry - but not necessarily for the small framer. I personally think its badly managed by people who have very little appreciation of how the business works for the average framer. (Not "the average framer"). The website is a great example - how long does it take to design a website - must be twelve months and counting as far as the FATG are concerned. All other benefits can be beaten easily by joining the FSB at third of the cost.

[framemaker]

My experience of the guild over 6 years being self employed and 8 years employed by galleries and framers who were members has been generally good. I feel that I have easily got back my membership fees a few times over and I think my business is better for being a member. But I do agree that it is not for everyone, and I understand why some see it as a waste of money.

I am not sure how many members they have, maybe 1000? so the £50 website fee will give £50,000
I really do hope that this new website is one of the best I have ever seen for that sort of money, seriously it is going to have to be amazing!

I have only recently started attending my local branch meetings and I think this is a positive aspect of being a member, and will certainly attend more.

I think they are doing the best they can, which is obviously falling way to short for many, I do wonder (rather naively) if every framer in the country was a member whether we would have the trade body that received the respect of all the trade and the public, and maybe the membership fees would be lower!?

[kev@frames]

In contrast to Foxy my impression of the guild had been poor, and getting worse. 9 years with them, we cancelled our subscription/membership.
imho they dont do much at all, if anything, to promote the framing membership or retail framing businesses.
Certainly nothing to justify the membership costs. (imho)

There are probably as many registered members on this forum as worldwide FATG framing members, so this is like an ongoing branch meeting anyway

I dont think we ever had a branch in striking distance when we were members, but I might be wrong. So I cant comment on the advantages of belonging to a branch.

The only remaining FATG member in the town and I have never spoken to each other anyway, and I've never met another framing member apart from Merlin, and he'll talk to anybody ( ) so the FATG was never an introduction to other like minded businesses. It was just a lot of money for a logo, and a magazine that ceased to be very interesting.

imho its not really a framing organisaton.

a lot of imho in there, eh

[Roboframer]

In contrast to Foxy (

Er - Foxy ain't posted - that's a Jack Russel - not a fox - BOOM BOOM!

Anyway - one thing the guild could do that would impress me, would be to send a rep to my shop to see what I'm up to and to find out what we could learn from each other. They don't get their hands dirty unless it envolves sending someone to the 'colonies' Ask Pete Bingham - I was a member when I helped fund his trip to N Zealand. Would have been cheaper to send him to Sussex I think - we have a beach and it's quite warm in summer. At the time I would have benefitted from a visit from him, instead I paid for framers the other side of the globe to benefit.

These days I think he'd benefit from a visit here.

[markw]

I know that a few prominent members of the guild read this forum. They never touch the keyboard to defend the guild - you might get the odd private message if your lucky. I find this lack of communication with grass roots framers to be fairly indicative of the guilds attitude.

Locally I can think of a number of framers who have left the guild - I honestly cant think of one that has joined and this was an area with a very strong guild membership.

An intelligent FATG would have answered this posting setting out the advantages of joining - they wont, and John is going to be waiting for a long time down in Sussex for them to come a knocking.

I would love to know what the FATG did for Framemaker to so justify his membership?? I must have been missing something when I was a member.

[kev@frames]

Er - Foxy ain't posted - that's a Jack Russel - not a fox - BOOM BOOM

quote]

well spotted, Robo, I was just testing to see if anyone was on the ball. I just glanced at the avatar without me specs on lol. Sorry Framemaker!

I agree with your comments on the guild. In this area we are a hotspot of art and galleries, particularly with the tate in St Ives and a resurgence of art/culture tourists in the area, our town is also filling up with some very top class galleries and art related businesses. Much of it is what people accept as "Fine Art" and people are in the fine art trade in their thousands in this part of the country. Yet there is almost no sizeable membership of the Guild here - considering the number of printmakers, publlishers, artists, framers galleries and art dealers - and if I'm being fair, not many members of the public has much heard of them, or cares what they are or what they do. Thats purely down to poor promotion.

the "logo police" have not helped.

I still think that for any framer, membership of this forum and the grumble is a higher priority resource than joining the FATG, unless you distribute mouldings or publish and distribute prints.

[insider]

I am currently a guild member but will not renew, Any framer worth their salt will do a good job and does not need a sticker on their door to prove it and if you do a bad job can the public call in the FAG and put it right -No they can't also as a someone who has had contact with hundreds of framers in my country including FATG members most of them only joined to get the so called cheaper insurance and credit card deals etc which I have beaten very easily and those members who went on to sit an exam many have not kept up that level of framing and no one polices them so I see no point in membership.