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Slicers, Dicers and Decklers
Paper is so, well, open ended. By now you know all about its versatility. It’s one of those products (for lack of a better word) that does not have one specific application – like painting on, for instance, or folding. The different ways users “handle” paper are infinite, making it appealing to a wide breadth of creative folks, from paper crafters to fine artists.
So what’s going on with paper lately? And how can you adjust your product mix to appeal to the ever-growing universe of paper artists and crafters? To find out, we talked to the manufacturers who make the tools people use to change paper into something spectacular. Read More
Survey Results
Stores Want to Encourage Young Artists
In the last issue, we asked readers about the importance of offering kids’ art products in their stores. Overwhelmingly, they report that children’s art materials are important and that the market for “kids and families” is a growing one for them. For full details on programs for kids, product sourcing and more, Read More
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Secrets to a Successful Sale Event |
| Winter 2006 |
There are three ways to increase your sales and make your business grow: You can find new customers, you can increase your average sales transaction and you can give customers more opportunities to buy more frequently from your business. Achieving any one of these goals will boost your sales, but th ... [click here to read more]
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Local Color for Trojan Artists
"We weren’t even thinking about opening a second location when the opportunity came up,” said artist and retailer Robyn Diaz, about her new art supply store, Pigment, in Troy, New York. She and her husband Jorge have owned Central Art Supply in nearby Albany since 2005; they opened Pigment in October. “When space unexpectedly became available next door to the arts center downtown, we just couldn’t pass it up.”
The space absolutely cried out for an art materials store. In the 50-year history of The Arts Center of the Capital Region, which offers instruction to about 35,000 people annually in pottery, woodworking, stained glass, jewelry, interior design, drawing, painting and more, there had never been a neighborhood store that sold art materials. Read More
reMARKERble
Our love affair with markers began when we were kids. Oooh, the smoothness. Oooh, those bright colors. Ooooh, that smell. I would venture a guess that if given the choice between creating art with a pencil and creating art with a marker, the average untrained consumer (like me) would happily choose a marker. Our comfort level with them may be one of the reasons their appeal crosses over many markets, ranging from landscape architects to moms who do paper crafting.
And then there are manga artists. “AM retailers need to embrace manga and the culture behind it. It’s represents a new genre of creativity,” said Peter Ouyang of Sakura of America, in San Francisco. Based in Japan, Sakura makes a line of pens that employ pigment instead of dye – called Pigma ink – making them archival, chemically stable, waterproof and fade resistant. Originally introduced as drafting tools in the early 1980s, Pigma pens are used today by writers, anthropologists, diamond cutters, scrapbookers, and manga and anime illustrators. Read More
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Perspective
by Kevin Fahy
Plastic Fantastic
When I was a young man I worked as an editor at an educational subsidiary of a major publishing company. One day I was called into the president’s office, where he and other company executives told me that they wanted to move me into marketing.
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Paper Folding,
Easy as 1-2-3
Origami papers, instructional books and tools can be a natural fit with your existing product mix if you already offer fine art papers and supplies in your store. Adding some Washi to your current selection of papers, a few bone folders to your selection of paper arts supplies, and a few books to your mix can be a fairly easy and affordable way to attract new customers or introduce your current ones to this Japanese art form. Read More
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