John Chester, Wild Apple

The Nicest Letter

Here's an amazing letter to receive out of the blue from an old friend I haven't seen for a few years.  It's a wonderful way to start the holiday season:

"Hi John, Sometimes, people’s lives cross, and one person has made a major impact on the other.  And the shame of it is in so many instances, that person doesn’t know the impact they have made.  My association with you and Wild Apple did just that.  The story of you and Laurie and Wild Apple winning the Best Company to Work for in Vermont was truly inspirational to me.  It set me on the path to better my company, and I would just like to take this chance to thank you for having been an inspiration to me.  We have just won “The Best Small Company to Work for in NH.”  Again, I thank you for putting me on that path.  Merry Christmas, and my best to you and your family."  David Greer, CEO, Wire Belt Company of America  Download Best of NH story

Hospitable Hospitality Show

This is the first time we exhibited at HD Boutique (Miami), the two-day show geared to the hospitality industry.  We brought our Wild Apple Open Studio^TM line of prints on acrylic, metal, and wood.  The show was well attended, better than the (bigger) HD Expo show in Las Vegas in May, and for us it was better than expected.

While we were not the only company offering prints on non-traditional substrates, customers seemed to like that we can do custom work as well as draw on our extensive art resources, and the fact that all the printing is done in-house.  The show was great developing contacts with designers and getting Open Studio into the notoriously long selling / product development cycle.

Our upbeat perspective may be a little different from that of established exhibitors, who felt the show was down from previous years.  The hospitality industry has been a vibrant market for a long time, but the pipeline of hotel projects is slowing significantly because there just isn’t as much bank financing available.  The design industry has shifted much of its focus toward hospitals, health care, and elder care markets, which show no sign of slowing.  We found it interesting that even in this largely regional show in Florida, hit hard by the real estate recession, attendees at the show had projects in the works and a positive outlook, and we were delighted by their excitement for Open Studio.

And I have to say I was delighted to swim in that warm Florida ocean!

Maison & Objet

I just returned from Maison & Objet, the home show in Paris known for being at the front end of home design and fashion.  The buyer traffic was light on the first two days, but it was quite crowded on Sunday.  In my perception, the mood was somewhat guarded - it is clear that most companies have been struggling for a long time, but they have made it through the worst and there is a slight pick-up happening now.  A similar story to what we see in North America.

In wall decor, we saw a number of trends.  Overwhelmingly popular were scenes from New York: collages were everwhere, incorporating taxis, bridges, street scenes, Times Square, iconic buildings.  Paris and London were other popular themes.  Celebrity images (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn) were still popular, though not as prevalent.  Black & white photagraphy is alive and well.  Throughout decorative themes, white, grey and black with splashes of red appeared consistently.  There was a wide mix of canvas product and paper prints under glass, as well as "hand-painted" art from China. It was gratifying to find Wild Apple prints being shown at almost every company exhibiting artwork, though of course we'd like to see more!

Apart from the wall decor companies the show was enormous, and we met a number of potential licensees.  I personally liked the section of the show filled with what seemed like a thousand companies selling espresso makers for the home - and giving out sample cups! 

A No Show

Decor Expo Atlanta has been canceled for 2009, which was the right decision.  It’s too bad not to have an art and framing industry event in the fall, but there just is not enough demand from buyers or exhibitors.

 

The question is what happens next year and beyond?  The January West Coast Art & Frame show in Las Vegas, already an excellent event, will be more important than ever in 2010.  The industry may be of a size that can only support one trade show a year.  Compared to “the old days,” internet / email marketing and one-to-one selling have displaced trade shows to a significant degree.

I tend sure would not want to be the company starting up a new show (or even trying to revive an old one).  Don’t get me wrong – I think it would be great to have a successful, vibrant show in the late summer / early fall.  But it would require moving mountains to convince enough buyers and exhibitors to show up, and I’d be just as skeptical as the next guy about spending the money and taking the risk.  Meanwhile for now we’ll just look forward to Las Vegas!

Alternative Art Approaches

One of the biggest changes in the art print and licensing industries over the last decade is the growing amount of digitally generated and digitally manipulated artwork.  It can be a sensitive subject because some view digital art as soulless, unauthentic, and lacking the richness of painting.  Indeed, a lot of work on the market appears unfinished and hasty, and comes under the heading, “Just because you can use photoshop doesn’t mean you should.”

 

But just as paintings can be poorly or beautifully executed, so can digital art.  At Wild Apple, we are playing a little bit of catch up in the digital design world, but we enthusiastically embrace both traditional and digital approaches.  There’s no question about the importance of oil and acrylic paintings, as they account for 8 of our 10 best selling prints and over 80% of our top 100.  The picture is similar in licensing, though there is more of a pronounced movement toward flexible artistic components that can be readily adapted to a variety of product shapes. 

 

We intend to keep our creative juices going on multiple fronts, constantly introducing beautiful paintings and artistically layered digital imagery – all to feed the ever present hunger for new artwork in a variety of styles.

Gadget Lust

Vermont is sort of like purgatory for gadget lovers. Beautiful mountains and valleys make for limited phone service coverage.  We thought the oh-so-unsexy bag phone was a big deal in the early 1990’s.  I sat on and broke several precursors to the palm pilot, then owned the latter for what seemed like forever as I waited and waited and waited for the  blackberry to be serviceable in our area (I had the very first “Upper Valley”-based blackberry, even though they had been around for almost a decade in the city).  The iPhone became available in Vermont this January, and I have been exercising extreme restraint waiting for the next version to come out.  WHICH IT HAS.  My birthday is coming up very soon and I’d sure appreciate it if you’d casually mention to Laurie that the iPhone would make an ideal gift…

Taking A Break

Laurie and I recently celebrated our 25^th anniversary with our first non-business, no-kids trip in 20 years.  There are a thousand reasons why it was such a great trip, and I’ll spare you the details of the sights, scenery, food, wine, and gobs of photos.

A big part of such a great trip was that for the first time in many years, I unplugged completely.  No laptop, no smart phone, no blogging, no emails.  I wasn’t sure it could be done, and surprised myself with how fast I let it go.  It was rejuvenating living in the moment, just the two of us, in a place we love to be, without the To Do list sitting on the shoulders.

So basically this is a blog about how great not blogging can be. Now I’m all plugged back in; re-entry was surprisingly OK after a refreshing break. I just hope I can remember to take that kind of true vacation before another 20 years sneaks by.

  

Me and My 200,000,000 Best Friends

Being right on the cutting edge, I recently joined the tiny group of only 200 million people with Facebook accounts. And created a Facebook page for Wild Apple. 

 

I’m still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. I resisted for a long time, but despite my negative predilection, I’m enjoying it.  Maybe too much, as it tends to eat up a lot of time. I like the fluidity and inter-weaving texture of the site, though it can be confusing at times.

 

So if Ernst & Young, an accounting firm, has 28,000 Facebook “fans,” can’t a creative art company like Wild Apple build a strong base? Trouble is, we don’t hire so many people… I look forward to creating more dialogue and getting more feedback over time via Facebook, this blog, LinkedIn, and who knows – Twitter?

Taking Stock

Just recently a number of industry magazines have posited that inventory management is the key to surviving and recovering in this challenging economy. But surprisingly the point was not about reducing inventory, but making sure there is enough stock.

Warren Shoulberg, publisher of HFN and one of my favorite industry commentators, notes "stock outages, slipshod displays and just plain poor execution on the selling floor" at a chain whose stores usually look great. In Home Accents Today, Lisa Choate of CAS is quoted, "Wall décor is a business of choice, and if there isn’t a breadth of selection, the sales in the category will start to decline... The more that is stocked, the more that will sell."

Self-serving as it may be, I agree wholeheartedly. Empty shelves, messy displays, and tired same-old-same-old artwork give consumers no reason to buy. No question that wall décor is a notoriously difficult category to merchandise. How many times have you seen the wall décor section of a major chain store in shambles? At the other extreme, highly organized plan-a-gram peg-board walls make stock-outs stick out like a sore thumb.

Every product category surely has its own set of challenges. For retailers, framed art is still a great category – it takes relatively little space and generates high revenue per square foot, with good margin. Art is (duh) a visual product, and it’s gotta look good in the store. Tired, messy, and especially empty shelves & walls don’t look good.

Positive Prognostication

On Monday, I sent an email to everyone at Wild Apple “officially” declaring that we have hit bottom and the economy is going to start a slow steady climb.  It was pretty lucky timing, as by the end of the day the stock market was up 500 points!

The downturn is largely due to a simple lack of confidence.  For months the media has been feeding the downward spiral in our confidence, pouncing on every bit of bad news.  I have been anxiously awaiting a shift in the overall tone in the media, and over the last couple of weeks I think it has happened.  At least there is some balance between bad and good news – a marked changed from the daily (hourly?) deluge of nastiness.

I celebrated my increased confidence by buying a cup of premium coffee at the local shop (we don’t have those national chains in Woodstock) instead of waiting to get to the office for the shared pot.  Hey, it’s a small step, but maybe it’ll lead to bigger things.