Artaissance - One to Watch

Sometime last year a new art publishing company called Artaissance came on the market. Its debut tradeshow appearance was this year's ArtExpo. While news about a new publishing company launching is not always noteworthy, this would be one to watch by anyone's standards. Artaissance stands to be a formidable player in the art print market. That is as it should be when a new venture is launched and curated under the auspices of Larson-Juhl.

Larson-Juhl even prior to becoming wholly owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company was easily the largest picture framing company worldwide. The company is a marketing and sales juggernaut that commands attention with its every move. It was the first to fully realize the importance of the luxury buyer category to the fine art, wall decor and picture framing businesses. It embraced this knowledge with a long running series of branding ads in shelter books such as Metropolitan Home, Home & Garden and many others. It has gone on to promote its brand and custom picture framing and the art displayed therein as an important design component through home decor cable shows.

A news item in the Atlanta Daily Business news about an artist, Kim English Marks, newly signed by Artaissance. The article gives details on both companies and provides insights into how good networking techniques helped a deserving artist gain an audience that led to a publishing contract.

The important thing to learn here would be to never discount the value of who those you know happen to know. It's estimated the average person knows about 250 other people. If you can effectively tap into just 10 or 20 of those folks in your circle of friends and acquaintances, you might be quite surprised to find you are only one or two degrees of separation away from someone who can boost your career.

The business model used by Artaissance is important for other reasons besides its ownership. I'll get to those thoughts in a future post.