© Mark W. Pettigrew
The other day, I wrote and posted a blog article pertaining to the manner in which I intended to produce products to be sold as a part of the Artistic Rescue Project, and to the manner in which I intended to handle related financial transactions.
One option I mentioned, in terms of who would be handling the printing, was to have my prints made at Gallery West in the Fairhaven neighborhood. But that is not the only option in terms of "on demand" digital printing in Bellingham. Another option is to make the prints at Quicksilver Photo Lab.
One thing I like about the Quicksilver option is that they're using the superb Epson 7900 printer, which is one of Epson's newest and best digital fine art printers. Whatever worries might have been associated with earlier Epson models, insofar as metamerism was concerned, have pretty much vanished into the mists of history. That means that grayscale prints (also known as B&W prints) should look equally good regardless of what kind of lighting is used for prints made with that printer. (No more prints with a sickly green tint under certain kinds of lights! Yeah!) Therefore the 7900 is as good for B&W prints (also known as "grayscale" prints) as it is for color prints. That will expand my options, creatively speaking. It won't let me make prints as big as the Epson 9900 would, but it should more than suffice for my printing needs for quite some time. The slightly smaller prints will also be more affordable for my customers, which from my perspective is actually an advantage in some respects. Maybe eventually the business will develop to the point where the costs associated with huge prints can be justified, but for now, the options being offered by the printing services offered by Quicksilver should be fine for me. I see from the Quicksilver website that they still offer prints as large as 24x36-inches.
From the standpoint of logistics, I also like Quicksilver's location. They're only about a block away from the Stewart's eBay Consignment Store.
Now, I have to be candid. I tried selling things a number of years ago, using the services offered by eBay, and I never really enjoyed the online auction process. It requires that the sellers watch their auctions too carefully, and that they spend more time worrying about things I'd rather not have to deal with, like listing fees and opening bids and auction start and end dates and the like. Not really my cup of tea.
Nevertheless, there's no denying the fact that selling on eBay offers certain advantages, not the least of which there are huge numbers of people who like buying products through their services. (And it goes without saying that they are integrated very well with the PayPal service for making and receiving payments online.)
Also, I get the impression that a lot more people are using eBay these days for selling products which have fixed prices, not for auctions. That's what I prefer as a seller, because it enables me to more easily predict what kind of money I can expect from any given product sale. Maybe some folks prefer the "excitement" of auctions, but give me predictability any day.
In any event, selling things through Stewarts should be much, much easier for me. Instead of messing with the complexities of selling things the eBay way, I'll just let Randy Stewart handle those aspects of the business in which he excels, and I'll concentrate on publicizing the business and creating new images to be sold in the form of made-to-order products. That freedom should be well worth the fees Randy Stewart charges to me for his sevices, it seems to me, assuming that I can afford those fees.
Stewarts' close proximity to Quicksilver Photo Lab should mean that whenever a particular sale is made, getting the physical print will be a piece of cake. Instead of having to go clear across town to get the prints to be shipped to my customers, someone from the Quicksilver lab can just take the finished prints (already ready for Randy to ship) across the street to the eBay Consignment Shop.
Randy Stewart told me yesterday, during our enjoyable conversation, that his main stipulation would be that he'd have to be able to assure buyers that their prints would be shipped within 7 days at the very latest (and preferably within 5 days, just to be on the safe side) from the time when customers placed their orders. That's understandable. He has a very good rating on eBay, and he wants to keep things that way by shipping products in a timely manner.
Unlike some consignment shops which sell on eBay, Randy's shop seems to offer a sufficiently wide range of products to enable me to sell my prints through his shop in the first place. Some competing businesses seem to be far less flexible.
I intend to keep adding updated information to this blog site, and to announce any actual sales at Randy's shop, and to link to the product listing pages for those images on his site so that folks can easily purchase those made-to-order products.
