GB Pictures - a non profit company, dedicated to empowering greater involvement in collecting and enjoying art

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 Your Own Brand

Introduction

The GB Pictures project as I am sure you are now aware, markets a range of brands, each having a unique identity and being supported by a team of brand coordinators. You can see the brands announced so far by selecting the Brands button on the left. The intention is that the number of brands will steadily increase over time.

Most artists, including photographic artists will find that they can work with one of the brands, while a very small number may feel that their work would be ideally promoted as a brand of its own. This page explains a little about running a brand.

The brand is in effect the publisher in this project.

How brands are promoted

The local team consultants (franchises) introduce work to clients of all types, as well as putting on exhibitions and promoting work locally. To make this possible and to keep them fully informed of what is available, coming out, and suggest ways to promote more, we have Brand Coordinators.

A Brand Coordinator covers a region, and the UK is split into 18 regions. Brand Coordinators for a brand come together once a month and also meet up with other brand coordinators across brands in their own region. While our first brands have a brand coordinator each, this will not necessarily always be the case, a brand coordinator therefore could look after the interests of several smaller brands.

Order processing goes through one company, and production, framing etc may also be commissioned, therefore you don't have to have production capability to become a brand.

The financial facts about being a brand

Brands play an important part of the overall structure, they select or have selected, work that is included in the brand, determine how quality production will occur, and other important information relating to the brand. At a financial level, the brand has what is left when everyone else has a had a bite of the pie, and all costs covered.

The tasks the brand has to organise and pay for relating to orders are

• cost of order processing, credit card processing, bank charges etc
• cost of delivery
• materials and production costs producing the art, framing, adding hanging systems and packing for dispatch
• Chips and chipping data entry
• An allowance for potential guarantee claims.
• Inspection and compliance charges (we all have to make sure our quality control is second to none)

Background costs and tasks include

• Selection of art
• Royalties to artists
• Possibly photography of original
• Testing each potential edition
• Sub web developments and keeping up to date.
• Part cost of general project promotion
• Part cost of recruitments of franchises, brand coordinators and others
• Part cost of all training
• Meeting of brand coordinators, someone to lead and more

There are other restrictions

• You cannot ever remainder off any edition
• You cannot increase the edition quantity
• You cannot produce a second edition of a work or another similar without approval, which is unlikely to be given
• You cannot reduce prices of any item.
• Editions cannot be marketed outside the local franchise teams
• Franchises cannot sell editions to anyone other than other franchises in the project at less than the trade price
• All editions must be produced to the highest quality
• You have to have arrangements in place to be able to deliver once orders are placed

Risk and Reward

There is a risk in becoming a brand that your combined costs of production etc and background cost may be greater than receipts, if not over the longer term this may happen to start, and you will need to be able to support the brand. If your brand does well the rewards could be considerable, but less well and it may cause you a loss. You cannot try and drop out, you have to commit for a period, as others like brand coordinators and franchises investing in stock have to be taken into account as well as art collectors.

Quality control

Our current brands are all high quality, and we have no plans to promote any brands at present that are of a lower grade. Obviously if you could market at art prices and produce disposable art, using substandard materials, not bother with archival materials, touch prints by hand, not worry about the drying/curing time and finish it with some parts of a rabbit cage and a piece of string, then this would be for a short period profitable, but would run the risk of diminishing the value clients will place on all other brands associated with this project. This has cost implications, but cannot be sacrificed, quality must always be achieved.

For the artists wishing to have their own brand this is not a problem as we have the manufacturing side sorted, so images are printed on colour managed systems, framed using archival materials and finished expertly. While you could get approval to undertake this yourself, you would need to agree a specification with us, and achieve and maintain the standard agreed. You can learn any of the skills that you are short of from Camera Images, see their training website at www.camera-images.co.uk  particularly look at the colour management, limited edition and framing courses. Our compliance and inspection routines will check that you have achieved the standard required and are maintaining it.

Existing art publishers

It is unlikely that your existing products will meet the stringent quality standards imposed as a part of this project, it is also unlikely that you would want to dump your existing direct sales or hand them over to franchises, although this is of course a possibility. If you wish to become involved you have two options, to bring all of your work up to the standard we require and put it all through the project or to continue your existing operation and in addition establish a separate new brand producing the higher quality work that is put through the GB Pictures operation. We would need to discuss with you how this would work in practice and what limitations was imposed. At this stage in the development of the project we have no interest in adding any brands representing disposable art.

Finally

While it may appear that becoming a brand is a very high risk, and have many restrictions placed upon them, it can also be very profitable and rewarding in other ways. Generally they will make far less on each edition sold than by conventional methods, but have larger sales and save on marketing and promotion costs.

It may however be wise for most artists to start to put their work through other brands, at least until they can see what level of orders are coming in and can cost out fully the implications and get a better understanding of the risk reward balance. If you wish to proceed then we suggest you start by spending a day or two with Camera Images, learning in detail exactly how to meet the standards required.

GB Pictures is a non profit company, a company limited by guarantee with no shareholders.

Registered in England Wales No: 05291147

Registered Office: Condale House, Eldon Road, Cheltenham GL52 6TU (Callers by appointment only)

Images on this website are from one of our brands - Camera-Images.