Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What we do- the middle years

Sometime during the early 70's the original owner sold/turned over Lady Bug Gallery to someone else who kept the custom picture framing business going until selling it to Frank and Martha Lee in 1978. Frank and Martha were local folks who knew a lot of old Johnson City people and built Lady Bug Gallery into a very respectable business. Frank was a woodworker/cabinet maker and took pride in craftsmanship. If it wasn't for Frank and Martha, Lady Bug and now Nelson Fine Art would not be what it is today. I am forever grateful. During their tenure, the Lees moved LBG from the downtown business district to a small store front on Watauga Ave. a couple of blocks from the Firehouse Restaurant (locals will know where that is) across State of Franklin Rd. I miss that $275/month rent!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

What we do- An Inauspicious Beginning

To understand what we do at Nelson Fine Art, I'll give you the background. First of all, Nelson Fine Art began as Lady Bug Gallery. I was playing golf in the early 90's with Ted Mars (Morris?)who once owned Regal Art and Framing which became Essyx Gallery. He told me he went into the framing business with a woman in 1970 or 71. Within a year he realized she was using company money to buy office equipment and taking it home. So he promptly fired her. In 1972, she used that equipment to open a custom picture framing business on East Main Street in Johnson City, TN and named it Lady Bug Gallery.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Call of the day:

We often get calls from folks who have valid questions and often have not thought out the details. Today we had one such call.

Caller: Do you have the ______ print?
Me: Yes we do.
Caller: How much is it?
Me: It's $25.
Caller: Is that framed?
Me: Uh.... no.

This call pointed out the lack of knowledge regarding the value/cost of framing. People just don't know how much framing costs. And without that knowledge, pricing can be an obstacle especially if you have a preconceived notion on price based upon some comparison. For instance, many people think the price of framing should have some relationship to the price of the painting/poster/print/photo/tapestry/violin/crosstitch/Granny's tiara/keys to your first car/etc. (Do you see where I'm going here?) My examples have ranged from $2-$100,000,000. So, the value of the art has no relationship to the cost of framing other than the more expensive the art, the less painful the cost of framing becomes. So, my other point is, be prepared for the price of CUSTOM framing to be more than you thought. Wow, I hope I didn't scare anyone off. (See other posts about competitors weekly HALF PRICE coupons before you go running off to the big box framers.)