Had Enough Yet?

Of the several business models available for contract picture framers, the “outsourcing” model is the one that seems to have produced more problems and ill-will than any other. Unlike other fields, “outsourcing” has been around in our industry forever and still exists today. Briefly, the traditional “outsourcing” model I’m referring to involves a gallery owner with a contract framing job buying the materials and dropping them off at the “framer’s”, often a lone picture framer working out of his garage. A wrinkle on this model is when the gallery owner takes materials for a single job to two or three different lone picture framers all working out of their garages. Usually, the picture framers do the outsourced work in their time off from another framing job. It’s tough making a living from your garage.

Of course, nowadays, “outsourcing” has a much broader meaning, involving jobs produced at another factory, perhaps “offshore” from the US. The “offshore” location that gets the most press today seems to be China, so I’ll use that as my “offshore” example.

But the fact is, regardless of whether a gallery owner “outsources” a framing job down the street or half-way around the world, it really doesn’t make any difference. The issues are the same.

The first issue is quality.

When I walk the factory floor at our facility in Dallas, it doesn’t take me long to figure out how things are going. The questions are obvious. How’s the moulding cutting? Any glitches with the (computerized) mat cutters? Are the “drops” being collected so they can be used as the mat on the bathroom piece? How many staples are going into the back of the big pictures, anyway? What’s being done with the moulding “shorts”? Is the chopper realizing the yield we need while being careful to cut around any blemishes? How big are the crates we’re filling at the end of the production line? Will the on-site staff be able to move the entire crate, without unloading it, to the floor where the art’s needed? When i’ve got workers I’ve trained, who work for Art Dallas and who know I know each of them, I don’t usually find many surprises when it comes to quality. My employees take a lot of pride in their work and would be very embarassed to have someone find anything they’ve produced of questionable quality. What was it Ford said when they were trying to change their image? Something like “quality is job 1″. At Art Dallas, that’s where it starts and I can monitor it throughout the production process. When I outsource the job, whether it’s down the street or around the world, I lose that ability.

The second issue is reliability.

When Art Dallas was doing all the display work for all the Hard Rock Cafes in the world, no matter where it was, at the agreed-upon time, a truck would pull up to an urban storefront location, offload two to five 4′X4′X8′ crates onto the sidewalk and drive away. A team of installers which might have arrived a few hours earlier, would meet the truck, unscrew the top and front of each crate and begin unpacking (screws, not nails on the front and top, please. Easier and faster to unload, knock down and ship back). The street and sidewalk would be clear in a few hours at most. For eleven years, thousands and thousands of unique pieces of rock ‘n roll memorabilia went through our factory. In all that time, only one piece “disappeared”, a small slip of paper with somebody’s signature on it. When I produce product at my own factory, I have personnel who’ve been there for ever and who guard our stuff as if it were their own and a crating and shipping department I can control directly. I know it’s more reliable (and secure) than it could be if I relied on someone (anyone) else.

The third issue is price.

This is where the argument for “outsourcing” comes into its own. I recently got a bid from a Chinese source for suite art, delivered to my door that would cost a little more than half of what my cost was if I made the same thing in Dallas. Obviously, it was tempting. All I had to do was send off a sample and they’d send back a sample showing what all 7,000 pieces would look like. I must admit I didn’t do it — or at least I haven’t yet. Art Dallas has very good Chinese connections and if price is your main concern, this might just be the way to go. However, I’ve heard absolute horror stories of whole shipments of art that simply had nothing to do with the original even though the “sample” the factory supplied was pretty good.

A lot of what differentiates my factory in Dallas and a similar factory in China is the degree to which the employees are empowered to affect production. In China, the individual workers are rewarded if they keep production going even though things “on the line” might not be right. At my factory in Dallas, I want to know when things aren’t going right, so I’ve had jobs stopped to verify a worker’s understanding of a detail or to check the dimension of moulding from a different “run” to see if it would match (exactly) frames made from a prior run. It’s not cheap, but it avoids mistakes getting out the door. When i’ve asked, my Chinese sources have told me this is not realistic within the Chinese business model. There, the worker population is trained to do, not think and “automation” means more bodies on the line, not more (or better) equipment.

But we all think of “price” too narrowly if we think of it as just the unit price of the artwork. Unless you calculate the cost of the art CORRECTLY INSTALLED at the project site, then you’re apt to be in for a surprise. Take hanging hardware, for instance, installed on the back of every piece of art. One of the many arguments against using multiple, independent “garage” framers instead of a single, well-organized factory is the fact that each of those framers probably has a different idea of where the hanging hardware goes. This means little until it comes time to install it. Then, instead of just putting up a single template on the wall to mark where the screw-holes need to go, the installer has to install each piece as if it were a single. Measure the hardware on the back of the picture. Transfer that to the wall. Install the wall hardware and HOPE you measured correctly. Do that a few thousand times and any savings realized through cheaper art is soon offset by cost of the longest installation in hotel history. In a similar vein, hospitality venues have an alarmingly wide array of on-site facilities to handle freight. Sending a 4′X4′X8′ crate to a hotel with a 6′ elevator is simply asking for trouble.

The object is to get the art from the truck to the room without damaging the art. Sounds simple enough. But it’s not. Any time the art has to be uncrated on the receiving dock, damage goes up a lot. It’s not that the handlers are being less than “attentive” when single, unwrapped pieces of art have to be moved up to the 20th floor, it’s that they’re hurrying, carrying more than a couple of pieces and trying different ways to make the job go faster. Inevitably, art gets to the floor with enough dings, dents and scratches that people wonder who on earth did such a lousy job of framing the art. So, our designers are taught to ask what facilities are available at the site and we work out packaging that allows the art to be brought to the floor IN THE CRATE it was shipped in. Typically, we design our (wooden) crates so two normal guys can carry it loaded onto a normal people elevator and deliver it to the floor without opening it. We’ve had very good results using this approach, but we’ve been told that our goods from China can only be packed in cardboard.

Obviously, there’s more to the price of art than what appears on the invoice. Obviously, there’s a place for out-sourcing art and/or framing for large, multi-piece jobs with tight budgets. As I said, Art Dallas has great Chinese connections and we can easily outsource a job through those connections. Is it a good solution for every job? I don’t think so. Is it something you might consider as an option? You bet.