Artist, Spouse Price Her Work to Fit Market
Sally and Marv Huss’ fortunes improved when he started promoting her. They have galleries in three cities.
If small, entrepreneurial business is the future of American industry, then San Clemente-based Sally Huss may well be writing the artistic wave of the future.
A former free-lance oil painter and greeting card artist, Huss, 52, saw her life dramatically change five years ago when husband, Marv, 60, stepped in as her business manager. A former marketing director for Hallmark cards, he started incorporating the marketing techniques he had learned at Hallmark to promote his wife. The result has been the end of displaying her art at street fairs and the opening of three galleries--in Laguna Beach, Santa Monica and La Jolla--generating $1 million in annual sales.
The key to this growth has been Huss’ incredible productivity. On any single day, Huss may complete a dozen projects ranging from creating greeting card ideas to producing monographs, where she adds colors to the pre-printed outlines of a subject, to painting original watercolors. And where other artists may take several months to produce a single canvas, Huss eschews time-consuming detail in favor of repeating familiar concepts over and over again, each time in a slightly different form.
The resulting level of production has allowed her to upend the traditional gallery’s marketing approach.
An average small gallery displays a featured artist’s original work at prices of several thousand dollars each and more, Marv Huss explained. Most sales, however, are not of the originals but of limited edition reprints, as customers consequently find themselves “buying down” into their price range.
At Sally Huss galleries, customers are lured in by $1.50 greeting cards, $4.95 key chains, $15 T-shirts or $28 sweat shirts, all adorned with her art. It is these sales that form the base of the pyramid, allowing customers, in turn, to “buy up” to original artworks, which range from a few hundred dollars to $1,800 for a 4-foot-by-6-foot canvas. The average sale at Sally Huss galleries is $35.
Not only have price and form been determined by marketing considerations, but so has the choice of colors used in the artwork. Huss avoids darker, somber colors in favor of bright blues, pinks, yellows and greens designed to elicit a cheery feeling.
The art, in turn, is complemented by pithy, original sayings. These might include, “You brought me out of my shell and I am e-turtle-ly grateful,” illustrated by a turtle, or an image of freshly cut flowers accompanied with the phrase, “Attitude is everything; pick a good one.”
Not all the sayings are completely whimsical. Huss often works in her stores herself, listening in as customers search out the right card--sometimes asking them what they want to express, and then hand-inking a new saying on the spot. Altogether, she says, only a third of the sayings conceived this way prove “too esoteric” for future sales; the remainder go on to long and happy shelf lives.
(Interestingly, birthday greetings, which not so long ago were the No. 1 seller, have taken a back seat to all-purpose friendship and inspirational cards. “A lot of people live alone, away from their families,” Marv Huss said.
“Their birthdays come up, and nobody remembers. These days, birthdays are less acknowledged. Instead, friendship and inspirational cards are made to serve any occasion.”
The result is that each Sally Huss gallery is generating annual sales of nearly $500,000, running a 15% profit--versus 10% for the average small gallery. The profits are, in turn, plowed back into the stores, with new items such as ceramics ware about to come on line, while providing an annual payroll of $150,000 for more than a dozen part-time employees.
By operating her own galleries, Huss has eliminated the middleman art dealer, in effect, selling her work wholesale.
As far as the reaction of her artistic peers, Huss professes not to be concerned. “A lot of artists are craftspeople. A lot don’t sell much. They say: ‘I paint what I want to paint, and I don’t care if it sells.’ They are passive, reclusive people.”
Her goal, she says, is to to have stores all over the place, with six stores in California and Hawaii, and additional franchises throughout the country.
