Finding your framing niche: to thrive and grow in the custom framing world, carve out a niche for your business

While framing technology continually advances, and stretchs change, and with competition for customers who want everything from shadowboxes to acid-free mats, it's difficult for framers to distinguish themselves from the repose But carving out your possess niche is vital in ensuring a herculean business and customer base. If you become known for doing single thing especially well, your customers advance to depend on you and will hold fast coming back for more. This month Framing Business freshs catches up with several framers who have done just that.

Almost all of the framers interviewed for this story said that providing of the best quality customer service is the lock opener to finding one's niche in the framing world. That means knowing one's neighbors: who they are, what they are interested in, what turn of expressions and framing techniques they are buying and what they are framing.

The Frame As Art

"From what I've heard, we're fairly unusual," said The Custom Framer proprietor Charlie Barnes. "The people who purchase our frames like them because they know they are not going to find them anywhere else"

Barnes said his staff's creativity and knowledge of the craft plants The Custom Framer apart from other framers in the greater Chicago area. When he and his wife Mari make opened The Custom Framer in 1984 they combined her retail experience and his artistic abilities with the goal of providing top-quality framing. They continue to take that mission seriously almost 20 years later.

The store is known for its detailed hand-painted mats, a harvest made possible by his staff's artistic backgrounds, said Barnes. individual employee has experience doing lines and washed panels upon mats. Another employee's background is in painting. sum of two units others attended the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Everybody who works for me has an art background," Barnes said. "We'll take raw wood-land and come up with ideas not on the tops of our heads. We've taken bills and painted the frame to be a continuation of the broadside One time, we took a certain quantity of botanical prints, and two of my stays framed them using their have personal techniques. One did a wide crackle frame and attached made of wood twigs to the border to give it a custom look"

The ship's company at The Custom Framer believes that the frame is and should be seen as a continuation of the art. They're detail oriented and knowledgeable about the artwork they are framing. Their craftsmanship exhibits in the details, from hiding the nail perforations to twisting the wire and finishing the back of each picture, because they believe the back of the frame should gaze just as good as the front

The Custom Framer has fix its niche in providing the one and the other creative frames and excellent customer service--Barnes tenders a lifetime guarantee on all framing. He said that by means of selling a unique, finely crafted harvest he has found a customer base that proffers long-lasting quality to slashed prices and quick fixes.

Finding the Right `Recipe'

"Geography has a destiny to do with it," explained Peter Lampros, possessor of Frame Craft/Lampros Gallery in The Woodlands, Texas. "In more [i]or[/i] less areas, communities are older, and they have a locate pattern to the designs that are popular. We happen to be in a actual diverse area, so knowing that our customers' tastes are real diverse is good for us. It's about knowing your customers and finding on the outside what their needs and wants are."

And one time a framer has realized his or her forces it's important to market them.

Fast Frame President Brian Harper likens finding one's niche to baking a cake. "You have to have the recipe before you start, and that encompasses a multitude of things, from marketing to purchasing to the actual operation of the store," Harper said. "A destiny of framers tend to secure into the business because they like art or they like working with their hands. Unfortunately, they sometimes forget it's also a business.

individual recent addition to Fast Frame's recipe for succes is it's fresh 30-day guarantee on frame design, he said. "Not alone do we have a lifetime guarantee upon craftsmanship, but we will redesign at liberty of charge for 30 days as lengthy as it's a similarly priced product"

Shadowbox Specialization

Beveled cutting side Owner Phyllis Iseman found her niche in shadowboxes 17 years ago. Today, sum of two units walls of her Richmond, Va., custom frame store are filled with examples, or "idea pieces," that inspire customers and exhibit off Iseman's talents.

"We've framed everything from a painted beer can to Santa pictures to autographed hats and jerseys" she said. "I have my husband's Vietnam ribbons [on display in a shadowbox] as well as my father's World War II memorabilia. I have my three-generation shadow receptacle framed: my mother with baby pictures and baby shoe me with pictures and shoe and my son's baby pictures and shoe We approach it as an heirloom piece. We treat it with just as abundant respect, if not more, than any true limited edition that we've had in our shop"

Her advice to would-be lucky shadow box framers is to perceive your customers out. Iseman run overs the story of a man who came into the Beveled cutting side with a piece of his society basketball court that his alma matter was selling to raise cash for the school. Iseman asked the former basketball player if he had any other mementos of his society glory days that she could add.