Coffee shop by day with local artwork. Local artists displaying their artwork and pastries made by local grandmas, and dive bar by night with local live musicians. As a photographer and artistic creator, I contend with the artists' struggles.
Here are some of the problems that artists face and how our place will be a potential solution.
Problems
1. You have artwork but no one knows who you are.
2. You don't have a shop to sell your work.
3. You don't have social media or very little following.
4. Renting spaces for shows is expensive.
5. Renting office space for a Studio is more expensive.
6. You're an artist, but you've never sold your work to the public -yet people love it.
7. If you do find a location to support your art, you have to pay sometimes up to 40% commission on everything you sell.
8. How do we as owners generate income?
Solutions
1. Artists will have a place where they can display their work. On the walls and throughout the decor of our location.
2. For each artist that we take into the location, we will promote them on our social media and do spotlight advertising sessions, make video content promoting their work at our location.. even artist Interviews, and have a QR code that people can scan to learn more about them inside next to the work.
*** This not only solves a problem for the artist, but it also solves a problem for us because their promotion is our promotion and it helps everyone know the good we're doing for the community, which also is promotional for us.
3. We won't charge a commission on anything the artist sells. Everything they sell they keep we will charge to host them as a guest in our space.
4. This helps solve our income problem: I personally know three people who are excellent craftsmen. One and making cookies, one at making savory sauces, and another at making pies. Each of them could easily sell their products, but only one went through the trouble to do so.
Imagine someone comes in and when they get to the counter to buy coffee, they see other options like cookies, pies, savory sauce, etc. all made by local artists.. and imagine if each one of these vendors is paying us $250 for the month for all of the services we provide.
That $750 that we are making just by allowing a space and that's just the counter.
If the artist wants to make $2.00 per cookie, then our cost is $3.25.. The artist gets their full cost of $2.00 without any loss from commission, and we still make money off the transaction..
(And just as a side note, I don't see us as specializing in coffee as much as offering coffee.)
These are just round numbers to illustrate how we can generate income in this scenario.
The artist will have motivation, and reason to bring us customers, because this is where their work is, so we can host events, and have parties promoting the artist and all of this generates income and traffic.
When I have my own shows, I team up with a local winery, and I have their wine paired with my art, and it works out really well. This is something we can continue to do building relationships with other local businesses.
The walls:
We can have anywhere from 1 to 3 featured visual artists of the month. We can charge them by the wall if they want one wall or if they want multiple walls.
If the idea is to have multiple levels, then we have two stories worth of wall space. I would pay $400-$500 a month personally to have my place at a high-traffic area with promotional help from an institution with no commission all day long.
So imagine additionally, adding another $3,000 a month from wall space.. Again, these artists also will have motivation to invite people and increase our traffic, and we can have promotional events and release parties for these artists as well.
Towards the evening bands, that we invite would also be local artists, who will follow the same formula.