The Framers Forum

What would say was the minimum square footage for a framing workshop/gallery type outlet? My workshop at home is pretty cosy at 200sqft, would doubling it provide enough for a sales are and small gallery space? And as a guide, what sort of investment is needed to go from a home based to a retail operation? I have a CMC (on lease) and I'd probably need to increase my stock holdings, range of mouldings boards etc. Overheads will go up of course....what else?

Just thinking ahead a little...

Well - I have 300 sq ft here in my home office/workshop/gallery (two rooms), of which one room (4m x 3m) 30% is storage, and the worktable/morso/underpinner/desk/printers/monitors and plan chest in the the other, which measures 4m x 4m approx.

If I was to move to a retail outlet I'd want a MINIMUM of 1200ft at a guess, broken up something like 60:40 gallery:workshop and storage. I'm FAIRLY tidy most of the time, so I wouldn't really have any objection to customers being able to see what's going on - as long as I had a reasonable space to store offcuts etc (and a morso waste chute) which I don't have at present! The big shed up the garden is my 'skip'....

As a fair proportion of my business is moving away from bespoke framing (at an alarming but profitable rate), I'd need space to display a fair amount of artwork and other craft items.

My retail area is approx 20x20'. Room to swing a cat (not that I do). That's 60ft of hanging wall (inc samples) + double windows at the front. OK, if you had a shop the size of an aircraft hangar you could fill it, but that size suits me fine. My old shop was 16x10' and I got a heck of a lot of pictures on display as well as 600+ chevrons.

A small shop can be intimidating to some people, as soon as they enter they're face-to-face with you/the sales counter. In our first shop we'd get people with their noses pressed against the window trying to see what was inside rather than just coming in to see like they do now. People like their space - don't want you watching their every move, not that you would be, but they could feel that way and I can relate totally - in some places, especially places where I'm pretty sure the 'assistant' is the person that owns the business and they're in my face/space, I feel pretty guilty slinking out without buying anything.

I agree with Robo there especially if you want some sort of gallery you need space to view and allow people to browse, you want to be able to have more than one person in at a time .

With regards to workshop it depends what you want to be able to do. I assume that if you are having retail you are wanting to increase our sales and workload. You may find that you will work more efficiently in a larger workshop than you are used to.

You can work in a very small space, it's all about the layout - but it's vital that you make the effort to keep things clean and tidy.