On the inside: a peek into the giclee market.

Many retail and commercial imaging labs are offering giclees--inkjet prints made from original pieces of fine art. While some artists are finicky customers, providing them with giclees of their work can be a profitable niche.

Dan's Camera City, Allentown, Pa. (www.danscamera.com), has been making giclee prints for about 5 years. "We wanted to get into it because our machinery could do it, and we've always had a really strong business with artists," says Steve Olock, director of imaging services. "I already had those customers in my store, bringing in their artwork for copy slides. I already had a storage system in place for handling mounted and canvas stretched prints and fragile originals. It didn't take much to decide to get into doing giclees."

A tough customer

The only real stumbling block, Olock says, is meeting the expectations of giclee customers.

"I won't say they're hard to please; but in my opinion, you earn every dollar you make in giclee," he notes.

Bill Johnson, president of Robin Imaging, Cincinnati, Ohio (www.robin imaging.com), echoes this sentiment.

"It can be a difficult market. It's not a golden hen that sits there and lays eggs. You have to work for your money," he says. "You have to have an understanding of artists and the way they think, because they can try your patience. But we have dealt with artists for more than 20 years, and they are not strange beings to us."

He adds, however, "Getting into this market takes a tremendous amount of effort. There is a steep learning curve if you want to do it right."

Matching the original is what makes meeting the artist's expectations so difficult.

Olock explains, "The artist might have chosen a color that my printer just can't do. My printer is not working with a palette of 200 different tubes of paint, which can all be blended. I'm going to work with six or seven colors. She may have chosen a color like fluorescent green, and the machine just doesn't have that ability. I'm going to fall short with any combination in that range. It's not just a matter of sticking a print in the machine and out comes an exact copy."

To deal with this problem, most labs offer giclee customers a test print.

"We'll do a 4-inch strip of her print and show her the problem places," Olock says. "You have to be willing to go through two or three renditions of a test print; or you have to get so good at knowing what your printer can do and how to explain it to your salespeople that they can anticipate problems with the original. They know what colors are really tough, or what problems can arise from the artist doing mixed media. The artist may have thrown little metallic bits in there or a 3-D object. How do you print in ink a brass screw head in some piece of mixed media artwork? The real challenge is becoming so knowledgeable you eliminate the need for lots of test prints."

Pricing it right

The many variables involved in producing giclees can make it tough to price them appropriately.

"We've learned to be flexible with it because some people are very demanding and others are easy to please," Johnson says. "We have three different levels of service. On the high end, we have our deluxe, which includes a proofing step. The artist comes in and marks up the proof, and we make the corrections. Then we have a basic level, where we do the proofing, make the corrections, and get it as close to the original as we can. We also have the economy service, where the customer sets it up and we run it like they give it to us."

Robin Imaging has clearly found success with giclee services, which have grown to 15 percent of the pro lab business.

"There is a profit involved with giclees," Johnson states. "We have the facility here, and we have to do something if we're going to continue to make a living. A lot of the easy work has dried up. When that happens to your existing markets, you have to seek out new ones that are most in line with your experience and capabilities. Every now and then we do get very lucrative jobs with it. We've have $4,000-$5,000 giclee jobs."

Going with the flow

Because making giclee prints can be such an involved process, it can create workflow issues.

John Hesketh, director of artists services at Photomation, Anaheim, Calif. (www .photomation.com), says he had to find a way to fit giclee prints into production without slowing down the rest of the lab.

"By identifying those people and giving them a different process, we were able to address the needs of the fine art photographers and the watercolor and oil painters," Hesketh says. "Most of our other work is set up on a 2-day to 5-day turnaround. But a fine art customer wants to sit down with you and have a collaborative experience. Then there is going to be a test, and another test, and another test. If you don't have the systems in place to support that, it's going to get lost in the melee."

Offering giclees "was a natural progression for us, and the market is really growing," he comments. "But one of the nicest things about it is, people recognize we do this work with artists, and it elevates their perception of our expertise."

Spreading the word

That leads to good word-of-mouth advertising, both among artists and the general community.

"Our giclee business is 90 percent word-of-mouth," Johnson says. "We've been known in the art community in Cincinnati for a long time for doing copy work, so we've become specialists in the region on that. But we also go out and speak to art clubs to promote it. We have samples in the lobby; so when people come in to get copy work, they see what else we can do."

Bill Crofton, owner of Moto Photo, Wilmette, Ill. (www.motophoto.com/ wilmette), says he has not had to market his giclee services at all.

"It's been all word-of-mouth. The artists I have worked with are in art guilds, and they all know each other. Once one person starts using you, it spreads like wildfire," he says. "They tell everybody to come to you. I haven't had to do any advertising at all.

"The market for this could be very large if I went after it, because there is a lot of demand," Crofton adds. "But I have not pursued it much, because of all the time giclees take."

Nailing that initial print is the key, he says.

"We can vary the colors a lot, but the problem is matching them. They just don't reproduce the same once you scan or shoot the image. Then, you have to work off your monitor and, from there, get into a physical print," Crofton states. "There are lots of variables. Matching that to what the artist wants is the tricky part. But once you get over that hurdle, it's a piece of cake. If the artist is productive, they will keep coming back and ordering more. That's the beauty of it. They will order additional prints in large sizes and small sizes, cards and many different things. But on those jobs where the art gremlins sneak in, I wonder if it's worth all the work."

Olock has a similar take. "Is it worth it? No, not by itself--not for the worst one. But it's worth it to keep that customer. If you look at the overall picture, I please most of my giclee customers with a home run from my first test print," he says. "The toughest ones aren't worth it; but fortunately, only about 10 percent of my giclee customers fit into that category. I would never say it's a loss leader. It's a moneymaker for us. It's a good business--if you don't mind working hard for it."

Fine art reproduction at DIMA 2007

DIMA 2007, to be held March 6-7, 2007, at the Los Vegas Convention Center, Los Vegas, Nev., just prior to PMA 07, will offer some great insights into the fine art reproduction arena with a full day tutorial and other sessions.

Led by Randy Hufford of Limited Editions Maui Inc., Kula, Hawaii, the day-long tutorial promises to give attendees the big picture of fine art reproduction, covering the entire process. The day will begin with capture and color management, move into file prep, then cover printing using various inks and media.

The second part of the day will focus on various finishing techniques, including methods and benefits of hand tearing prints, mounting solutions for water color prints, gallery wrap versus standard stretcher bar, and art coatings--brush on, spray on, and roll on.

A second session, entitled "Artsy Fartsy Customers--Dealing with and Charging for Fine Art Reproduction," will teach attendees to develop the local artist market, control the artist ego, handle the transaction, and charge for every service along the way. John Hesketh of Photomation, Anaheim, Calif., and Kathy Bauer of Fine Print, Fort Collins, Colo., will share their first-band advice, based on years of experience.

DIMA 2007 will close with a very special event: a Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Graham Nash and R. Mac Halbert, who, in 1990, conceived Nash Editions, Manhattan Beach, Calif., to develop methods of outputting Nash's digitally manipulated black-and-white photographs. Since then, the two innovators have developed new technologies and techniques to advance the world of fine art reproductions to incredibly high standards. Their philosophy is to bring the sensibilities of traditional fine art printmaking together with the world of digital imaging. They see the magic in the art rather than the technology, and they view their process only as a means to integrate and enhance other artistic mediums in the creation of new originals. Nosh Editions is now considered a world premier digital fine art printmaking house, and the two partners are still pushing the envelopes of art and technology.

There will also be a fine art reproduction exhibit on the PMA 07 Trade Show floor, with dozens of examples of giclee reproductions and an exhaustive list of equipment used for each step of the production process.

Giclees sell well at Saper Galleries

Roy Saper, owner of Saper Galleries, East Lansing, Mich. (www.sapergalleries.com), wants to delight every customer. Because he was concerned about quality and longevity issues associated with giclee prints, he was very hesitant to offer them. He only began selling giclees after thorough research convinced him those issues were resolved.

"As there have been advances in the giclee product, we've found the colors are as bright as the original. They are certainly as bright as the colors one would get by mixing inks for a silkscreen or a serigraph," Saper says.

Not one to just accept assurances of quality, Saper has conducted his own tests on giclee prints.

"I have taken a giclee and put it outside for several days, masking parts of it, to see how it holds up--and it holds up. Lots of improvements have been made," he notes.

That said, Saper warns against assuming all giclees will make the grade.

"It depends very much on who's producing them and the combination of inks and substrates. I've had some printers tell me how great their giclees are, that they will last forever--and that's not been true at all. By virtue of that experience, I will never buy anything from those printers again," he states. "I don't take what printers tell me at face value, unless I have had a successful record of working with them. We want to see technical documentation of independent lab tests, not a story that this is going to last for hundreds of years. Anybody can say anything. I want to see evidence."

By selling only the highest-quality prints, Saper has built a large and growing giclee business. "We were very slow to bring them in; but once we did, people loved the images. Frankly, if you put an acrylic painting on the wall with a giclee and a silkscreen next to it, most people will not be able to tell the difference," he says.

Customers for giclees are people who buy a print simply because they like the image, he comments. "I don't think people care if it's a giclee or a silkscreen or some other medium. They are buying an image without regard to how it's created. Nobody comes in and says, 'I want a giclee. Can you show me what you have?'"

While Saper Galleries almost always works directly with artists or art publishers to acquire a giclee, Saper says he still wants information about the lab that made it.

"I want to know where it was printed and who did it. I want to talk to them and ask them questions. I want to know these prints are actually tested," he says. "The major issue for giclees is longevity. No gallery wants to sell a work of art and have the client come back in a year and say, 'Where is it? I see the matte and glass and frame, but I don't see the artwork.'"

With several Certified Picture Framers on staff, Saper Galleries frames almost every item it sells--always using UV filtering glass--but Saper recognizes not everyone is going to do that.

"It would not be fair for an artist or a lab to expect people to frame the print under UV filtering glass. That's not reasonable. The art itself must have longevity," he says. "Our standards and quality are extraordinarily high, because that's what our clients expect. We will not sell a print that doesn't meet our standards."