New Lower Pricing on Prints
I launched the smt art store in September of this year and three months later, I feel like I've learned a lot in the process. The impetus for starting it was a few things: 1) moving to market and sell my own paintings; 2) offering lower priced prints of same; and finally, 3) beginning to sell my photography work. Leaving behind the gallery representation and going it alone took a leap of faith, but one worth doing as I've laid out in prior posts. I knew I could market and generate traffic to the site and have. It's the rest that has taken longer to refine.
I had a lot of people tell me through the years they wish they could afford my paintings. I don't feel like my paintings are super expensive although I don't crank out couple hundred dollar pieces throughout a month. My process for each piece can take anywhere from a week to months. As I began selling paintings, I take into account the full process from concept to completion and price accordingly. With selling through dealers I found I had to raise the sales price to account for commissions, shipping etc. and ultimately got to a point where they were priced too high in my mind.
The store has provided me the ability to drop prices substantially on my originals. Offering prints of my paintings gives fans of my work opportunities to own smt pieces at substantial savings. The canvas prints, while lacking the texture of an original, nonetheless are faithful recreations - I've seen a few of these first-hand and am extremely pleased with the finished product. I'm also really happy with the photography canvas prints. I first started offering framed prints and they were pretty lackluster. The canvas prints are next level.
With the sales platform and viable products, the final piece was pricing and that has been a work in process if I'm honest. The original print vendor I was working with had an overly complex shipping model that was going to add hundreds to my monthly operating cost, not to mention the time it was going to setup and administer. As it turned out, that should have been my first red flag working with that vendor. I had multiple issues working with them and ultimately dropped them and after finding my current print partner, built my product line all over again. I should have moved off the free shipping model at that time, but didn't even consider it.
As I've set and adjusted pricing, it was always taking into consideration that I would have to cover shipping and so my retail price reflected that. Shipping can vary a great deal however, especially since I sell in multiple markets all over the world. I really couldn't set too competitive pricing because shipping was an unknown until the sale was processed. I've done my best to work within those boundaries, but ultimately there were sales where I didn't make much of anything and others where I made quite a bit. Ultimately I decided free shipping wasn't really benefitting anyone - especially my customers.
Effective December 2, 2023, the store platform was changed to add flat rate shipping at checkout for all prints (original paintings still include free shipping). Pricing for prints have all been lowered - some substantially - and existing discount codes are still valid. If you would like to get a 15% discount, just subscribe to my email list and one will be forthcoming.