You would be better off going thru Galleries than Furniture retailers, unless your planning to mass produce your pieces. Galleries usually work on consignment though. A furniture retailer is not going to buy your furniture unless, you have a known brand or name or your stuff is dirt cheap. Approx 80% of furniture sold in stores to day is imported. It sells for what wholesale is on the US made furn.
I would suggest you search out Galleries and look at some of the furniture they carry and compare to your pieces, this wil, if your honest with yourself, tell you if you have something that’s marketable and will sell.
And $2000 retail is somewhere between $750 and $1000 wholesale, usually. Although some Galleries use a smaller markup on big ticket items like furniture.
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thanks for the information....i appreciate the idea of going through a gallery.
one idea I had was once I figured out if there was a market for my pieces (i actually just posted a couple pics in the Galleries forum)...i thought I'd go to furniture manufacturers (smaller customer shops) and see if i could commission them to actually make the pieces, while I sold them to the furniture shops. Assuming i had the numbers needed to actually make it worth their while.
I come from a marketing background so preparing a brochure and collection is not hard, it is just a matter of keeping up my designing (which I quite enjoy), and seeing what the market is like.
Do you know if smaller furniture makers accept designs from out siders and make pieces for them to sell...assuming of course you can provide the numbers needed to make it worth their while to construct the furniture?
Edited 9/28/2005 3:30 pm ET by steamboat
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Galleries tend to get 50%. You might also find the http://www.craftsreport.com Also http://americancraft.com/ if your stuff is more studio furniture. Then there is the the http://www.furnituresociety.org
If you can sell with the training you have go for it. The marketing skills are probably as valuable. I've seen some mediocre artists who are better at marketing than their art and are selling. Being technically proficient doesn't guarantee sales. The third element would be a sense of design. Marketing and craft can be taught but design would be one of those things you have or don't.
Thanks Rick...appreciate those links. If you wanted to see a couple pics of my stuff, i'd appreciate any feedbback....under the gallery forum caller Furniture pics, bench and coffee table...
I don't mean this as an unwaranted negative, but your uploads in the Gallery are all but impossible to view as they are so large they can't be seen as one image and the image quality is fuzzy as a result. Too poor to showcase nice work. Anything that doesn't fit on one screen is too large. Try to shrink those pictures and you'll get better responses.
Jimma,
Thanks for the tip, i posted some resized pictures that are a little better....
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