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The Future Of Custom Framing?

Les Martin. MCPF

Frequent Poster
Master Certified Picture Framer®
Messages
347
Location
Hanover, PA 17331
Company
Martin's Gallery, LLC Est
I have a question for those of you smarter than I - which opens it up to every one. ?!?!
I have a theory that in one to two decades custom framers will go the way of blacksmiths when the horse-less carriage came into vogue. The reason for this is that I feel 75- 85% of all two dimensinal paper born art will go digital on decorative screens through out homes and offices. Technology will reduce prices, images will be easier to download, program and display to individual needs: framing will be digitally available as taste dictates.
Paper art will go the way of newspapers, land lines and paper books. Framing will only be needed by those who want originals and can affort them. Three dimentional memorabilia will still require custom work but our market share will drop drastically as the "digital image generation" matures.
Please have a good logical reason to explain to me why I am terribly wrong, please???? THANK YOU!!
 
Most art museums are doing just fine; some are crowded. This shows that people continue to value art generated by hand. I just don't think this is going away. People value art by hand, and will want to display that art.
 
I think the reality is somewhere between your two positions. Like the ubiquitous preframed wall art available in multiple retail outlets, the increasing prevalence of digital imagery will not eliminate the need for custom framing altogether, but it will continue to diminish the range of what people are willing to have framed. This will present great challenges for us in terms of having a critical mass of orders to maintain a business. It will also put further pressure on distributors of our materials. Price hikes will increase these economic pressures for all of us.
:numbness: Rick
 
I like to compare our business to buying a dress.

Long time ago, one only bought a dress that was made by a dressmaker, either hired or self. A woman had very few dresses, one or two for every day and one for 'Sunday' or for 'good'. They fit exactly for each individual figure.

Then someone figured out that dresses could be made in standard sizes and sold in dress shops or department stores. Sure, they didn't fit exactly, but they could be altered. A woman could afford a larger variety of dresses. Saleswomen knew their customers, what they liked and what they might pay. They would even call good customers to say 'We got in a darling dress, and I have held your size in the back'.

Then someone else figured out that dresses could be made cheaper overseas, and sold in racks large stores with no saleswomen at all. Women have lots of clothes, and most are meant to only last a season or two, not because styles change, but because they wear out that fast.

There are still dressmakers. Women still make their own clothes. Some clothes are still bought in dress shops or department stores. but the great majority are bought at big box stores, and meant to only last a few months.

Our analogous pattern in custom framing is that our framing has gone from most being custom made, hand finished and expensive, to a lot of custom frame shops putting the art in frames that are prefinished, but still custom cut and much less expensively, to big box stores slapping most stuff in a smaller choice of frames, or selling ready made components, or even pre-framed art, most of which is meant to be on the wall a relatively short time.

We will need custom frame shops, but not as many of them, because there will be fewer and fewer customers who perceive that $500 for a frame that will last 50 years is a desirable product to purchase. Most will buy $100 frame jobs that don't look nearly as good, but if one doesn't have a trained eye, then it looks fine. And more will buy framed pictures of cottages in gardens or babies in flowers or whatever is in style, with the plan of pitching the whole thing away when the magazines are showing black-and-white landscapes, or close-ups of flowers.

My view is that this is a shrinking industry. I plan to be one of the few shops left who do custom work, but will there be enough to pay the bills?
 
Les , A not so logical reason.

An underlying question may be , in twenty years, will Warren Buffet, Tom Pavlock , Les Martin and many of their picture framing peers, even care ?

Tom

Sorry,depressed today !
 
Certainly, there will be less custom picture framing going on in the coming decades, but as to whether it will be extinct, in a word, NO!!! There will ALWAYS be people who need or want custom framing and will be willing to pay for it. My father recently retired from the custom tailoring business, undoubtedly a less pervasive craft than that of custom picture framing (supposedly 1 in 10 people have had something custom framed sometime - how many have had something custom tailored?), and yet he worked as long as he wanted and retired more comfortably than I ever expected he would.

Those that desire to stay in the business will have to be aware of what's going on around them and be willing to adapt. There will be no "one size fits all" solution - every company and region has their own unique circumstances and what works for one may kill another, and vice versa. For many it may be easier to fold, and if that's what one is going to do they'll be better off realizing it and doing so sooner rather than later.

It seems to me that right now it's mostly the high(er) end and low(er) end that are doing best. I think it will continue to stratify and maybe eventually the low end will mostly dry up, but the high end will always be around.
 
Sticking with the initial analogy . . .

The “maintainers of ground transportation” have evolved—from blacksmiths to auto mechanics. It was a long, unpredictable, and varied evolution, but I think a direct connection can be made. Similarly, the “stuff displayed on walls experts” (for lack of a better term) field is evolving in varied and difficult to predict ways. Those who adapt to things like digital printing, gallery wraps, and face mounting (augmenting traditional custom framing, which is not going to disappear) have a chance to thrive; those who do not adapt will be as the noble, steadfast smithy—pounding out a few horseshoes a day before being drowned by a wave of asphalt and internal combustion engines.
 
The future of framing/paper

I saw this in the paper and thought it fell right in with my paper theory.

View attachment 159 Talking with a supplier rep. and he says that his company is trying to go "paperless" as quickly and as soon as possible. His comment was simply, "memorabilia framing." I was waiting for a follow up item and he had nothing. Hope every one had a great Memorial Day.
 
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