Printer aims to press on
Abandoned in the Nevada desert for two decades, the rusty hunk of junk didn’t look like much. ¶ Except to Christine Brandt. The former art student had spent months searching for just such a 1,200-pound treasure. ¶ Brandt paid the desert salvage yard $1,500 for the privilege of hauling it off to her studio in downtown Los Angeles and then spent the summer of 2006 restoring the hand-operated Vandercook letterpress to its former glory. ¶ The machine now cranks out wedding invitations, business cards and personal stationery as the backbone of her 18-month-old custom printing business, Flora and Fauna Press.
“I was really drawn to letterpress because it’s the antithesis of our disposable culture, this idea that craft and quality don’t matter anymore,” says Brandt, 35, who creates the designs for most of the pieces she prints. “I was hoping that people would feel the same way about it that I did.”
Lately, it seems that more people do.
Brandt’s sales could reach $35,000 by the end of the year, up from $13,000 in 2007.
She has quit her part-time job and works 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, to produce the distinctive deep impressions on high-quality paper that have helped revive demand for a printing method that goes back centuries.
Still, Brandt worries that her flurry of business is a blip, not the beginning of sustained growth. Wedding stationery, her most profitable product, accounts for most of her sales. Yet it can be a seasonal business.
She knows she needs to reach out to enough brides to keep her press busy year-round, while also building sales of other products. Those include $20 boxes of 10 hand-printed thank-you notes embellished with chocolate brown daisies and green highlights. Baby cards, with a restrained bunny design in pink or blue, are $3.50 each. She also works with pet-related charities on holiday cards and other special projects, such as postcards and CD covers.
Brandt attributes much of her recent sales bump to her $125 monthly advertisement at Theknot.com. She’s unsure whether she should spend money on magazine print ads, given her modest marketing budget of “a couple thousand dollars.”
She tried a bridal expo in Long Beach last year, but her higher-priced products didn’t seem to fit with the show’s demographics. “I feel I need to reach people who know what letterpress printing is and they are looking for something a little artful and a little nicer as opposed to just the regular printing,” Brandt says.
She believes it would be better to try to get editorial coverage in bridal publications or websites but is unsure how to go about doing so.
Although she attended a cocktail party as a new advertiser on another bridal website, Brides.com, networking is awkward for her.
She’d rather be in her studio, perfecting her creations. “It’s like an art form for me, so I really take a lot of pride in what I do, which is why I’ve been able to weather the last two years of making no money,” says the self-proclaimed perfectionist. Of course, that can’t go on forever. Brandt hasn’t yet figured out her break-even point, where sales cover costs, but hopes to reach it this year through improved marketing.
“I want to keep the momentum going,” Brandt says.
Is that a realistic goal, given her current workload?
Art management consultant Nancy Hytone Leb thinks it is. She advises the small-business owner to focus on marketing. Brandt also needs to find part-time help, the consultant says, so she will have time to do more marketing.
Hytone Leb is also director of entrepreneur training at the nonprofit Los Angeles-based Center for Cultural Innovation, which helps working artists gain the business knowledge and skills they need to succeed in for-profit or nonprofit creative ventures.
To help Brandt address her challenges, the consultant gave her a copy of the resource guide the center released this month, “Business of Art: An Artist’s Guide to Profitable Self-Employment.” Hytone Leb co-edited and wrote a chapter on marketing for the $34.95 book, which is available at www.cciarts.org.
In the short term, Hytone Leb suggests that Flora and Fauna Press concentrate on increasing its wedding trade. That business category may not be completely recession-proof, the consultant says, but it will be less challenging than trying to sell more business cards and other non-wedding items during a soft economy.
Brandt should also consider increasing her marketing budget to a minimum of 15% of her gross sales, the consultant says. The small-business owner now spends just under 10%, or $3,240 a year, on the two bridal websites and Google Adwords. Ideally, a small business will spend about 20% of its revenue on marketing, Hytone Leb says.
However, the consultant warns, better marketing will mean more to do, so Brandt should bring in people to help her with office duties such as bookkeeping and mailings or with the printing. She might consider an intern from CalArts, one of her alma maters, or networking with other creative entrepreneurs to find reliable office help.
“I was just concerned about her business expanding in a way she couldn’t service it at the level she wants to,” Hytone Leb says.
“I really believe in managing your growth, and sometimes that gets frustrating for people,” she says. “But I think it’s better to build a little slower and be able to be more aware of what’s going on and maintain your quality.”
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Flora and Fauna Press
Business
The Los Angeles company makes hand-printed, custom-designed wedding invitations, baby announcements, party invitations, business cards, holiday cards and personal stationery.
Owner
Christine Brandt
History
Founded: August 2006
Start-up funds: $15,000 from
a family loan
Company snapshot
2007 sales: $13,000
Employees: None
Main business challenge
How to increase sales and manage business growth
Goal
To hit $50,000 in sales in 2008, purchase more equipment and relocate to a storefront or walk-in location
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Meet the expert: Nancy Hytone Leb
Hytone Leb, an arts management consultant, is director of entrepreneurship training at the Center for Cultural Innovation in Los Angeles, where she also teaches a marketing workshop for artists. She is co-editor and a contributing writer to “Business of Art: An Artist’s Guide to Profitable Self-Employment,” published this month by the center. From 2000 to 2004, she was director of marketing and development for Playhouse West in Walnut Creek, Calif. Previously she was a senior account manager serving national brands at several large West Coast advertising agencies.