When David and I discussed the idea of making sure that his website was able to also sell his art in Toronto, neither of us had any idea where the combination of his art and my business mind would take us.
Neither of us realized that the "web designer" we hired would upload his art to a Shopify site and we'd be in business in less than a day! Then came the tedious process of learning about SEO optimization, alt tags and making sure the product descriptions and images of the artwork were informative. Next came figuring out how to start to create some buzz using social media and all the intricacies of Facebook, Twitter, Linked, Pinterest and Instagram and all the different formats for images which were key to users finding David Crighton Art. to buy Toronto gifts online. Next came the notion of newsletters and building contact lists.
It wasn't until I hired a social media assistant that things really started to ramp up from a sales and product perspective. Building on products that David had created purely for sales at Toronto Art Shows like the One of A Kind (#OOAKS_Toronto) and The #CNE Shows, I started to create products on a more "inventoried" basis. As we saw the success of these products at the shows and how their presence boosted the bottom line, we added to our "show" roster including Kensington (#KMART) and Toronto Outdoor Art (#TOAE) after David's absence of 10 years. Creating products meant having inventory and all the challenges that presents - learning how to track inventory and integrate Quick Books and other inventory tracking tools. These types of developments are massive undertakings on their own.
My thoughts of building an empire and my big eyes had to be cut back sooner or later and now that I have a pretty good understanding of what needs to happen and how things work, I am focusing on making things happen in a simpler way and finding balance in my life again.
That didn't last long and by the end of 2017, I decided to go for broke and more DC Art out into Project Spaces and I am working to deepen our reach into Toronto Retail Stores, Corporate Events and expanding to a bigger line up of art images from different Toronto artists through a new company, Totally Local Art.
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