John Chester, Wild Apple

What's the deal with the llamas?

"Why do you have llamas?" is a question I'm asked all the time.  There's no reason we have them; we don't use them as pack animals, their wool is too coarse to use for anything, you can't ride them.  It's just that llamas make great lawn ornaments.  We moved up to Vermont 16 years ago from the city, and we found ourselves with this giant back yard -- a very empty back yard.  An uncle who could be described as eccentric (imagine that in my family) had about a dozen at his farm out in Wisconsin, and so I asked if he had any spares.  Obviously the answer was yes, so here they are.

They are beautiful animals.  I can't imagine the fields without them there.  They aren't friendly like dogs, but are somewhat aloof more like cats.  They are blissfully easy to keep.  Blanco is older than 20, and Flash (I didn't name him) is in his teens. 

Business "Philosophy"

In 1993 or 1994 or sometime around then I put down on paper what I called “my philosophy of business.” For a long time I didn’t show it to anyone, as it felt kind of embarrassing or pretentious. Eventually, I did send it to my cousin, who was into that kind of thing, and he went ahead and shared it with his employees… who liked it. So I held my breath and handed it out to the 10 or so employees in our company at the time. There wasn’t much of a reaction as far as I could discern. I didn’t want to impose a belief system on others, but on their own employees started using it in various internal and external materials, and it’s been on our website from the beginning. I’m surprised at how many people mention it to me.

I think the reason people respond to it is simple – it’s just a human approach to business. Laurie and I were refugees from large bureaucratic corporations where people often acted out of character, and we thought business and personal values shouldn’t conflict. Much of what it says comes down to having and showing respect for others. Not a difficult concept, just a powerful one. On occasion over the years I have considered “updating” the philosophy, but I find there’s no real need – it would just be tweaking the emphasis here and there, not any kind of overhaul.

Homage to Artists

The lifeblood of our company is the artwork and the artists who create it.  All the sales, marketing, accounting, operational, and so-called executive jobs like mine depend on artists creating great images.  In our world, artists are the celebrities, and they deserve special attention.  We are really lucky to be able to work with such creative and talented people - I'm so grateful I left banking for the art world 15 years ago! 

It is incredible when I hear stories of artists being taken advantage of, most commonly by not being paid as promised.  Why would a company ever mistreat an artist like that - isn't it in the interest of the company to keep the artists happy, not to mention keeping the company reputation in good shape?   Since we started Wild Apple in 1990 we have never, ever, missed a royalty payment.

Artists deserve a lot of communication & feedback, and a recent survey we did with our artists told us we are doing a pretty good, but not perfect, job there.  We're making concerted efforts and aiming for perfection - but make plenty of mistakes.  To me everything comes down to a matter of respect, and it is very important to me that everyone in the company maintains an especially high level of respect for our artists.

Blogging Virgin

My name is John Chester, and I’m the owner and janitor of Wild Apple Graphics, a 15 year old art publishing and licensing company in Woodstock, Vermont. I keep reading how important blogging is, and quite honestly, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.  Who has time to read them (no offense to you, of course)?  If written by company figures, aren’t blogs just disguised advertisements?  Who the heck would ever want to read my blog?

It reminds me of the early days of the internet, when it was embarrassing at parties to say you didn’t have a website yet, even if we didn’t have a clue what it was really for.  But our website worked out great, and my early skepticism was erased.

So I’m going to give this blogging thing a shot and see what happens.  But I’m not telling people in my company - not even the marketing department. I’m working with our outside web consultant to link this blog to the Wild Apple website – let’s see how long it takes someone to notice…