While framing technology continually advances.

While framing technology continually advances, and tendency s change, and with competition for customers who want everything from shadowboxes to acid-free mats, it's difficult for framers to distinguish themselves from the tranquillity But carving out your allow niche is vital in ensuring a able to endure business and customer base. If you become known for doing undivided thing especially well, your customers advance to depend on you and will hold fast coming back for more. This month Framing Business moderns catches up with several framers who have done just that.

Almost all of the framers interviewed for this story said that providing prime customer service is the guide to finding one's niche in the framing world. That means knowing one's neighbors: who they are, what they are interested in, what names and framing techniques they are buying and what they are framing.

The Frame As Art

"From what I've heard, we're fairly unusual," said The Custom Framer proprietor Charlie Barnes. "The people who purchase our frames like them because they know they are not going to find them anywhere else"

Barnes said his staff's creativity and knowledge of the craft places The Custom Framer apart from other framers in the greater Chicago area. When he and his wife Mari lay opened The Custom Framer in 1984 they combined her retail experience and his artistic abilities with the goal of providing top-quality framing. They continue to take that mission seriously almost 20 years later.

The store is known for its detailed hand-painted mats, a production made possible by his staff's artistic backgrounds, said Barnes. single in kind employee has experience doing lines and washed panels upon mats. Another employee's background is in painting. couple others attended the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Everybody who works for me has an art background," Barnes said. "We'll take raw timber-land and come up with ideas opposite the tops of our heads. We've taken bills and painted the frame to be a continuation of the bill One time, we took more [i]or[/i] less botanical prints, and two of my stays framed them using their hold personal techniques. One did a wide crackle frame and attached ligneous twigs to the border to give it a custom look"

The gang at The Custom Framer believes that the frame is and should be seen as a continuation of the art. They're detail oriented and knowledgeable about the artwork they are framing. Their craftsmanship present to views in the details, from hiding the nail dens to twisting the wire and finishing the back of each picture, because they believe the back of the frame should expect just as good as the front

The Custom Framer has establish its niche in providing the pair creative frames and excellent customer service--Barnes put forwards a lifetime guarantee on all framing. He said that by way of selling a unique, finely crafted work he has found a customer base that pitch upons long-lasting quality to slashed prices and quick fixes.

Finding the Right `Recipe'

"Geography has a allotment to do with it," explained Peter Lampros, proprietor of Frame Craft/Lampros Gallery in The Woodlands, Texas. "In more [i]or[/i] less areas, communities are older, and they have a risk pattern to the designs that are popular. We happen to be in a extremely diverse area, so knowing that our customers' tastes are actual diverse is good for us. It's about knowing your customers and finding on the outside what their needs and wants are."

And one time a framer has realized his or her forces it's important to market them.

Fast Frame President Brian Harper likens finding one's niche to baking a cake. "You have to have the recipe before you start, and that encompasses a multitude of things, from marketing to purchasing to the actual operation of the store," Harper said. "A hap of framers tend to secure into the business because they like art or they like working with their hands. Unfortunately, they sometimes forget it's also a business.

individual recent addition to Fast Frame's recipe for succes is it's strange 30-day guarantee on frame design, he said. "Not alone do we have a lifetime guarantee forward craftsmanship, but we will redesign unrestrained of charge for 30 days as prolonged as it's a similarly priced product"

Shadowbox Specialization

Beveled intensity Owner Phyllis Iseman found her niche in shadowboxes 17 years ago. Today, pair walls of her Richmond, Va., custom frame workshop are filled with examples, or "idea pieces," that inspire customers and point out off Iseman's talents.

"We've framed everything from a painted beer can to Santa pictures to autographed hats and jerseys" she said. "I have my husband's Vietnam ribbons [on display in a shadowbox] as well as my father's World War II memorabilia. I have my three-generation shadow driver's seat framed: my mother with baby pictures and baby shoe me with pictures and shoe and my son's baby pictures and shoe We approach it as an heirloom piece. We treat it with just as a great deal respect, if not more, than any extremely limited edition that we've had in our shop"

Her advice to would-be lucky shadow box framers is to be stirred your customers out. Iseman sum ups the story of a man who came into the Beveled intensity with a piece of his guild basketball court that his alma matter was selling to raise coin for the school. Iseman asked the former basketball player if he had any other mementos of his community glory days that she could add.