The new year is starting off to a roaring start! After the busy holiday season, I had thought that things might slow down a bit, but not this year. 2016 marks my 13^th year of attending the international West Coast Art and Frame Expo in Las Vegas. The show is the largest in the world at bringing the best and brightest of industry designers, manufactures and framers together. Its four days of inspiration, innovation and education. It’s a great time to recharge my creative juices.

This year I have been asked to teach eight seminars to framers from the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Someone pinch me.  Sharing ideas about frame design, sales, marketing and merchandising with fellow framers is always a treat. Here’s what’s on deck for 2016:

A7178 Plan, Promote, & Profit: Tips, Tricks, & Strategies to Writing a Marketing Plan  (A7178) This seminar outlines a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to crafting a concise, logical, and effective marketing plan that produces results. Whether you manage a small business seeking to formalize the planning process, or an established frame shop looking to grow your business, gain a competitive advantage by translating the marketing planning process outlined in this seminar into a streamlined strategic document that informs your decisions and helps avoid costly missteps.

For the first time, I’ll be teaching two Quick Courses in the Wizard International booth on the show floor. “Selling Creativity” is full of sales tips for pricing and selling innovative mat and frame design. The second session, “Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You” showcases upscale frame designs for all kinds of framing projects, like this project also featured in the Wizard booth.

Every frame shop needs a Brag Book. I have two; one is a photo album I keep under the counter filled with years of my favorite projects, unusual shadowboxes and hand-painted mats. The second is a digital slide show that runs continuously on a computer screen in the gallery for customers to see. We use it often to show customers and help them visualize the framing techniques we’re proposing for their projects. The Brag Book becomes a very valuable selling tool.

Why not create another great project for your Brag Book? Tru-Vue’s framing competition is the prefect opportunity to show off, and in Las Vegas no less.

The 4th Annual Framing Competition by Tru Vue

I am pleased that over the past three years, the Tru Vue^®Framing Competition has become a highly anticipated event among framers — and we’re excited to announce the details of our 4th Annual Framing Competition. Our theme for this year is…

Ordinary to Extraordinary!

Our 2016 framing competition celebrates how custom framing can transform everyday objects into artistic treasures.

We invite you to draw upon your own creative abilities and craft a wall display for your store using ordinary objects. Whether you choose to frame autumn leaves, bottle caps or office supplies, it’s up to you. Create a display that turns the ordinary into extraordinary while demonstrating your skills, inventive use of materials, tools and techniques, while highlighting the features of Museum Glass^®.

Most of all, the display will showcase your abilities to your peers at the WCAF Expo, and inspire your customers towards more ambitious framing projects. Projects that utilize add-ons like stacked frames and special matboard treatments that add drama to their valued items — while enabling you to highlight materials and techniques that not only inspire great custom framing but add to your average sales ticket.

So share your concept — and your ideas for transforming the ordinary to extraordinary. You could be chosen as one of the 6 semifinalists

Apply now!  The deadline is June 30.

For more information check out: http://www.tru-vue.com/framingcompetition

Did you make big plans for 2015? A few months have passed since our annual turning of the calendar and it’s probably past time for some of us check in with the goals we casually sketch out on notebook paper. If you’re like me, you’ve got big hopes for your business, but if you want those hopes to become reality, you’ve got to have a plan. It’s time to click the “refresh” button and map out specific details on how to make this year your best year ever.

The economic situation may have changed over the past few years, but it’s hardly as bad as the “sky is falling” reports you hear on the daily news. Downturns in the business cycle are a normal part of the glamorous and ever exciting world of self-employment. I’ll admit though, flat sales numbers are much less exciting than the double-digit growth of years past.  This is reality of the job we chose, accept it as normal part of the business cycle and make solid plans on how to weather the storm. To thrive in the upcoming year, we must develop an annual business plan.  Here’s how:

1. Look at the past

Before going in a new direction, reconsider what worked and what didn’t. Specifically identify which activities have been your most successful in terms of profit, not just income. Evaluate the services and products you offer. Did photo frame sales meet expectations? Did installation charges cover costs? Is there an employee that needs retraining, or perhaps replaced? How much money did you make selling Museum glass versus Premium Clear? Identify what made you money in the previous year and what didn’t.

2. List your goals

Write down everything you want to do in next twelve months. Begin with how much money you want to make, services you want to add, or products you want to take away. Be sure to include changes in work patterns and store operations. If it’s your goal to be home at three o’clock to meet the kids coming home from school, set a goal to hire afternoon help.  If you want to expand to internet sales, make a goal to hire a reputable web-development company.

 3. Be specific

Now is when you add details to each goal. Instead of simply saying you want to increase sales, be specific. List each product and service you offer and set a specific number for sales and number of customers you’ll need for each. For instance, if you want to double your sales of fillets; look at last years figures, set a number and project how many additional customers are needed to reach that goal. Repeat the same exercise with Museum glass, fine art and prints, installations and accessories.

 4. Develop steps

After every goal, and the specific numbers of each, write down the steps needed to reach that goal. In other words, identify the specific actions you plan to take to insure your success. For example, if you want to increase your customer base you are going to need to attract more customers through marketing. List the ways you plan to do this; advertising, networking, e-mail campaign, etc.

5. Estimate resources needed

Each step will require time and money to achieve. Estimate the costs associated with each specific step so you can come up with a reasonable cost per goal. This will be a tremendous help when you’re building your budget for the upcoming year. Don’t forget to estimate the time needed to achieve each goal.

6. Assign people

Next to your goals, figure out who will be responsible for each and if any additional people will be needed. To reach sales goals, every sales person should be included, but if it is to “be green” you may want to assign the task of recycling cardboard to a specific person.

7. Prioritize your goals

If done right, this list would take more time and money than you probably have right now. So rearrange your list of goals and actions starting with the things you must do to survive followed by the activities with the highest chance of success. Be sure to give your plan a reality check, because if it is too far beyond what you and your employees usually do, you may need to re-prioritize.

Putting your plan into action will become more manageable when you assign a month, week or day for each task. Take it one step at a time and you will be on a steady path to success, strong enough to weather any storm.

It’s finally here!  Ten years in the making, I’ve finally published my second book. Created from a decade of talking to framers across the country and lessons learned from Tru Vue’s Retail Makeover Project this book is an answer to all framers needing a business reboot.

RECHARGE YOUR BUSINESS: The Ultimate Frame Shop Owner’s Manual

Whether you’re a new framing entrepreneur or had your business for years, this book contains valuable advice on how to plan, implement and evaluate your marketing and selling activities. It’s easy to follow style, and printable worksheets give you a step-by-step year long marketing plan for improving profits. Unlike other business books, this is designed to answer the challenges of small businesses in the art & framing industry.

“Recharge Your Business” is available for download here or order a special limited edition CD here.

Read what Ken Baur has to say about it…

It’s one thing to have opinions or experience in creating and growing a successful business, but few can explain it in the detailed manner Meg has created.  This book takes the reader from concept to completion in starting and growing a custom framing business and most importantly provides the tools to make it much easier.

I have worked with Meg many times on projects and in committees and have always been impressed with her insight and ability to understand the true value of custom framing and communicate it others. Her book brings together her years of experience and makes it very possible for the rest of the industry to have the same success.

Ken Baur, president of KB Consulting and Framing Concepts Galleries

“Recharge Your Business” is packed full of helpful tips based on real world solutions to challenges framers face. Here’s what you can expect.

Part 1 Creating a New Strategy

• Evaluate your business to determine what’s working and what’s not
• Identify the best customers for your business and how to reach them
• Create a low-cost marketing plan for increasing revenue
• What to do before you start to advertise

Part 2 Marketing

• Learn why traditional advertising doesn’t work and what to do about it
• How to make yourself the expert and build credibility for your brand
• Secrets for carving out your niche
• Ways to attract the design-conscious consumer
• Advice for creating money-generating events
• Important tips for creating a social media marketing plan
• Rules for getting your business found on the web
• Why you need a blog
• Tips for making your email marketing more effective
• Get a complete marketing schedule for the entire year

Part 3 Sales & Service

• Seven steps to selling success
• Improving the customer experience to keep them coming back
• How to turn customers into evangelists for your store
• Selling tips for handling the most common customer objections
• How to raise prices and still sell more framing!

Read a bit from the introduction…

“Does your company have more memories than dreams? Chances are that if you’ve been in business for any length of time the goals you had during the busy first years have long been forgotten. Some achieved and happily crossed off the list with others replaced by the endless number of tasks we business owners face daily.  It’s understandable. We get busy, too distracted by the relentless number of jobs required in the day to day operations of running a small framing business.  But, it is an interesting question. Stop for a moment and think of all you dreamed of accomplishing during those early weeks when your shop was new; the freedom you’d have being your own boss, the fame that comes from devoted customers so in love with their frames the line trails out the door and of course, the fortune that was sure to come with such a loyal following of fans. So what happened?

Life happens. Papers stack up on your desk. Someday projects collect in corners. The backroom fills with stacks of scrap moulding and leftover matboard. Before you know it, you are no longer running a business – the business is running you.”

“Recharge Your Business” is available for download here or order a special limited edition CD here.