Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#292: Brian & Ross Raitman (Raitman Art Galleries) (pt. 1 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part one of our interview with brothers Brian and Ross Raitman. Together they own Raitman Art Galleries in Breckenridge and Vail, Colorado, and also have a robust online gallery on their website.
They started with an 825 sq. foot gallery in 2007, and over the years have expanded to over 8,000 sq. feet of gallery space in their 3 locations. Many of their 50+ artists have national and international reputations, and have works featured in museums and Fortune 100 companies.
You won't want to miss this entertaining behind-the-scenes look at what it took to build a successful multi-showroom art gallery from the ground up!
https://www.raitmanart.com/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. We have Brian and Ross Reitman on the podcast today. They're brothers who own Reitman Art Galleries in Breckenridge and Vail, Colorado. They also have a robust online gallery on their website. They started with an 825-square-foot gallery in 2007, and over the years, have expanded to over 8,000 square feet of gallery space in their three locations. Many of their artists have national and international reputations and have works featured in museums and Fortune 100 companies. We'll have their website in the show notes so you can learn more about their showrooms, artists and art. Brian and Ross, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Brian Raitman:This is Brian, and thanks for having us, Nick. We really appreciate it. We're flattered to be here.
Nick Petrella:Are you happy too, Ross? Thanks for having us. Well, let's start. That was underwhelming, but let's start by having each of you tell us about yourselves and why you decided to start your gallery on a whim back in 2007.
Brian Raitman:Yeah, first of all, we're brothers. I think you said that already. We both grew up just outside of Philadelphia. Ross went to school in Boulder, I went to school in Philadelphia that's a short answer and then we met up out here in Breckenridge right after I graduated. He came up just a couple years later when he graduated and started a gallery.
Brian Raitman:As a family, really, we wanted to do something beautiful, found that throughout history, art is a respite for people as the world gets dark. It reminds us that humans are capable of creating real beauty with little more than our hands, and so we wanted to give people a place to come in and just be reminded of what we're capable of in terms of just. You know, one of the core competencies of being a human being is sharing beauty with people, and that, right there, is our mission. Um, that's great. We know that. We know, too, that great art it has such a minimal environmental impact. That's something that's big for me. Um, unlike mass-produced products, much of the art that we show is one of a kind, and therefore there's not a whole lot of material that goes into it. Beyond that, too, it lasts for multiple generations. It's something that gets passed on from family member to family member. Therefore, again, I love that it's something that is so beautiful and so kind to our planet.
Brian Raitman:As far as opening the gallery, too, our parents were kind of kicking around the idea it was nothing more than a retirement project for them. Ultimately, as it became more real, I became more and more interested in it. I was just about to graduate from college and I kept asking them questions about their business plan. They didn't have one. My degree was in advertising. I minored in business with a focus on entrepreneurship. I began brainstorming. I sat down with them and talked through it a bit and realized this is a career I'd really like to pursue. I found also that mountain communities were both a great place to open a gallery. They were here in Breckenridge, colorado. Is is exactly where I want to live, so I've been here now for 17 years.
Ross Raitman:we've had the gallery for 17 years great yeah, when we started the gallery, um, I was still in college, down at University of Colorado at Boulder, working towards a degree in architectural engineering.
Ross Raitman:I'd go up to Breck most weekends, whether to ski or hike, but I'd pop into the gallery from time to time and help out. Our parents had zero retail experience and Brian and I at least both had a little bit growing up in high school, so we'd pop in there and try to help out with sales a little bit. In 2009, I finished up my master's coursework on a civil engineering degree at CU but hadn't finished my thesis and the gallery wasn't doing so great Family needed a little bit of money, so our dad went back to work he's also an engineer so he moved to Boulder, took a job there, boulder, um took a job there and, rather than living in a small apartment with him, I moved up to his and our mom's basement in breckenridge and the plan was for me to finish my thesis, help out in the gallery a couple days a week, fill in some of the stuff that my dad was doing, like packing, shipping it, stuff.
Ross Raitman:You know the engineering side of things um and then you know, ski a few days a week. It was december, that's why we live in the mountains. Uh, instead it ended up being that brian and I really like working together. I loved being in the gallery, being surrounded by art um, it just makes me happy. And then we just kind of found a groove. Working together started making sales. My thesis kind of fell apart and we thought that we could make it work or at the very least be glorified ski bums. And we've been building the business up ever since.
Nick Petrella:Well, just be happy you had an arts plant to fall back on.
Brian Raitman:Yeah, absolutely. The glorified ski bums part of it was pretty huge for us. I was probably doomed to work for myself too. I started a punk band when I was a teenager and I found so much support and inspiration in that scene. The do-it-yourself ethics of the punk scene really encourages people to do what they want and I realized through that the only thing that can truly stop people is themselves. Funny story during one of our band practices my friend Quentin said I should stop running our band like a business and I should just manage artists. I remember that fight was in the entryway of our parents' house. I was probably 14 at the time.
Andy Heise:That's awesome. I can empathize with that. I was a bass player and band all through high school and stuff. I was always the guy who was mapping out the directions to the gigs and where we were going and where we were staying and making sure the bank account had money in it all those types of things.
Brian Raitman:It's funny that you're that young and doing something that's supposed to just be fun, but it also turns into something that's pretty serious pretty quickly. It's funny that you're that young and doing something that's supposed to just be fun, but it also turns into something that's pretty serious pretty quickly.
Nick Petrella:It's great. What do you play? What instrument do you play, Brian?
Brian Raitman:That was the screamer. I think it would be a total, total misnomer. Yeah, no, definitely the screamer.
Andy Heise:So, as Nick mentioned in the introduction, you've significantly grown the business over the last 15 years or so. Can you tell us about that? What did you see as the opportunity and how did you approach that growth?
Ross Raitman:Well, we ran the numbers and knew that even if we kept growing ourselves in our original breck location, there was no way to support a good life in an expensive ski town especially, and there's two of you right, there's two owners, so and our parents and your parents exactly.
Andy Heise:Yeah they're.
Ross Raitman:They're. You know they started together, they were working on it too, but, um, we kind of took over once I joined in gotcha. So, yeah, we got to support four of us. Yeah, but that's why our dad went back to work as an engineer, because it sure wasn't doing that. Um, and to reach that goal we knew that we needed to show more art and show more large pieces.
Ross Raitman:Um, thankfully we own the commercial condo our gallery was in and the space next to us while we were there had businesses just coming and going. I mean, there were four different or five different businesses in the first four years we were in that space. So we were able to work out a deal with the person who owned it and we were able to buy that space. And that was our first expansion. We combined the two spaces into one larger gallery, almost 1700 square feet.
Ross Raitman:But even after a year of having about double the space, we knew we still weren't going to hit our goals and actually be able to live somewhat comfortably and needed to expand again. And at that point we knew we knew we could sell in a ski town and that's where we knew we wanted to live. So we started looking at other ski towns here in Colorado, we end up finding a vacant space in Vail. It wasn't the ideal space. It was a little smaller than we wanted, but we figured we could try to make it work. At the time, brian was living in the house that he now owns and dating the woman who is now his wife, whereas I was single and still living in our parents' house. So I moved to Vail to run that space, gotcha.
Brian Raitman:And we really just wanted to show more artists. Our initial space was small 825 square feet you can't show a whole lot and we packed it in there. It wasn't the look that we wanted, but we were really volume-based at the time. We were open as a gift gallery and the business plan was to evolve into a fine art gallery, cast a wide net with a lot of clients with little sales. As you get that client base really start to grow the quality of the art and, in turn, the price point of the art we knew too. A sad reality of the art world is there are far more great artists than we can fit into our spaces. Our expansions were driven by the desire to be able to show and to work with more artists. One thing that was huge for us was our original location, because we own it, it's cost controlled and so that really allowed us to take some calculated risks into expanding it to the new locations.
Brian Raitman:Vail's, only 40 minutes away from Breckenridge. On a good day, on a great day, it's like three hours away because there's snow on the pass and you just live in a vortex up here. But yeah, on a good day it's only 40 minutes and it's a great art market. There's minimal crossover to Breckenridge, but it's usually easy to get between the two towns. So as a birthday present to myself in 2013, we signed a lease over in Vail. I believe Ross said that space wasn't super ideal either. Eventually, we'd expand that. Prior, we added a second space in Breckenridge in 2017 because that space had been a gallery at the time for something like 30 years. We'd always competed with it. We knew for ourselves there's art selling on the other end of a small downtown from us, and it has been for decades, so why not take those sales and make them our own? When that opportunity presented itself, we figured we'd take that, and then we moved into a much larger space in Vail the following year, so in 2018. That was one of the best decisions we ever made.
Brian Raitman:Not only did it give us a lot more space, we mentioned Rob right before we started really recording. He was an asset that came with the space too Really showed us what was possible. We were pushing our limits and then he came through and showed us this is what you can do from a sales side of things. That was great. Something I found important too a key component of being good at dealing art is also being good at real estate. Frankly, both the spaces that we've leased today were not on the market when we've when we came to occupy them. They came to us just through connections we have with people around our towns. That was a. That was a blessing, yeah.
Ross Raitman:Yeah, and building on what Brian said about having the second space in Breckenridge, because we get asked that all the time Like, why building what brian said about having the second space in breckenridge? Because we get asked that all the time like, why do you guys have two galleries in one location? Um, when we opened in breckenridge in 07 uh, by 09, when I joined um, we had about 18 or 19 galleries in breckenridge between fine art galleries, photography galleries, co-op galleries. Um, now there's what? Five.
Ross Raitman:I want to say so when, yeah, and so when our friend Jim retired, he ended up renting his space to a different gallery for a couple years and they just couldn't manage it from afar because they were based in San Diego and we really didn't want to see another space go from an art gallery to an ice cream shop or a shop or another ski shop like Breck's always been known for having some good, as a good-shirt shop, or another ski shop like breck's always been known for having some good, as a good arts destination, and a lot of towns like ours advertise like, come visit all our shops and galleries and and you know we wanted that, we grew up with that.
Ross Raitman:We would always go to galleries in every town or museums in any town that we went to. I mean, it's a big reason why we got into this. Our parents just raised raised us loving art and we didn't want to see another space go from an art gallery to something that wasn't so. It was a big impetus for us to be like all right, you know. A we want more space so we can show more artists and B, we want to keep another gallery in our cute little town.
Nick Petrella:How long did it take you to fully transition from art gallery slash gift shop to only focusing on an art gallery?
Brian Raitman:That's a great question. Several years really. Because when we opened it was full on just prints. We were selling a lot of prints. It wasn't what I had envisioned, necessarily. Again, when we opened, our parents had no business plan, but they had a relationship with an artist named Jeff Leedy I'm still friends with Jeff to this day and prints are his specialty and so we opened with a focus on his art and I just knew this isn't where we want to be. So, as we moved away from that, it probably took four or five years, I'm guessing. It was a slow transition, but a great one. Again, it really allowed us to just have a wide client base. People already knew who we were. We were making those easy sales and it just evolved into making those harder sales, really pretty organically, because it was always the plan. We never pushed it, but it came to us when it was supposed to.
Ross Raitman:I think around the expansion, because we started to sell bigger, higher-end pieces but we didn't have the space to show it. It was funny it was probably like 8, 30, 9 o'clock at night burning the midnight oil, trying to get some stuff done in the gallery and client came after dinner and I still had the gallery open because I was still there working and you know, we sold the big like I don't know, it was a 40 by 60 inch painting, it's probably like eight grand at the time or something off the front wall and it was like, all right, we can do this, but if we're actually going to make, make some money, we need to be more fine art than gift. How many $50 prints can you sell to actually make a living?
Brian Raitman:Exactly, yeah, what's 8,000 divided by 50? Don't ask me. I asked Ross.
Andy Heise:There's a four in there somewhere, yeah.
Brian Raitman:Ross had mentioned too with the new space in Breckenridge in there somewhere Ross had mentioned too, with the new space in Breckenridge it's not new anymore, but the second space in Breckenridge, jim, that owns that space. He's our landlord. He owned the gallery that was in there for like 25 years. He too didn't want to see it turn into something other than an art gallery, so he was pretty instrumental in A calling us when he knew that it was time to put a new gallery in there and, b helping us make it happen and offering some mentorship from time to time. I'll call him some questions to this day just to pick his brain. He's in his mid-70s now, I believe, and he retired from this industry. He opened about my age. I'm 41, Jim. I think he was in his low 40s when he opened the gallery and worked in that for 30 years or so until he could retire, which isn't everybody's goal, yeah, to have him as a resource.
Nick Petrella:having gone through many cycles, that's a huge benefit.
Brian Raitman:Yeah, it's interesting too. He retired in big part because the art world changed. Galleries were the only place to get art back in Jim's day and the Internet exploded through the course of his career, and so he saw that and stepped away from it in big part as a result of that, whereas it gives us a different window of time to operate and obviously a totally different business model in a way. So we like it.
Nick Petrella:So the idea of having you guys on the podcast came because my wife and I visited Breckenridge galleries, both of them earlier this summer. We were just really blown away by the art. Where do you find artists represent? And since we have all types of artists who listen to the podcast, do you entertain cold calls?
Ross Raitman:We were super flattered when Liz, one of our sales consultants, told us that you'd like to have us on a podcast. What about art galleries did you guys like? What made you want to reach out to us?
Nick Petrella:Well, so I had done some research beforehand, because whenever I go out to someplace I'll just research, right. And then I saw your galleries. Like you said, I saw about three or four other galleries there and I thought you know what I like what these guys are doing. It's welcoming, it was displayed, it looked like an art gallery. It didn't look, quite frankly, like a gift shop, right, and just the quality of the art and just reading about the artists I that's what I that's what attracted me Awesome, I really appreciate that.
Ross Raitman:When it comes to, you know, looking for artists or artists reaching out, we'll always take a look when artists reach out to us, but the reality is that being a successful gallery means that there are a lot of artists who want to join. We get literally hundreds of artists applications every year and unfortunately, there's only so much time to review them. On top of everything else we do, we own and manage three galleries. It's a sad reality that we can't always get to everyone.
Brian Raitman:We kind of suck and rarely find the time to even reply these days, but once in a blue moon, something really catches our eye. The timing is right and several of the artists who have reached out over the years have been given representation with this. When we're actively looking for art, we'll travel to museums, to art fairs around the country and to galleries as well, Pretty much any time I travel. Like Nick said, it sounds like looking at art is a priority for me. It drives my wife a little crazy.
Brian Raitman:This spring, I was in San Francisco to visit an art fair there, and then in Bentonville, Arkansas, I spent a couple of days at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art a wonderful place. I'm a total research nerd too, so I spend too much time browsing art online. I'll look at artists' websites, gallery websites, museum collections, and then my 10-year-old cousin taught me this phrase about a month ago the occasional doom scroll on Instagram, just scrolling through art. All the time it's my entire purpose on social media is to look through art, yeah it takes a lot for us to bring in a new artist.
Ross Raitman:Brian and I really need to agree. It'll be a good fit, and we always run new artists by our parents and our sales staff as well. If either of us aren't a strong believer in the work, then we'll pass, because it's got to be the perfect fit. Even with three galleries now, there's only so much wall space, so we've got to be really picky for what we're going to present to our collectors.
Brian Raitman:It's passion that sells art. So beyond ourselves, ross and I, we need our sales staff to be passionate about it too. We're sharing stories and resumes and all the beauty that these people create literally every single day of the week, and so we all have to be passionate about it. That's so important, yeah.
Andy Heise:Yeah, on your website you have an online gallery. What's the primary function of that online gallery? Are you trying to sell to a global audience or is there some other purpose to that online gallery?
Brian Raitman:We are selling globally. We're really fortunate that our towns attract an international clientele. We've shipped art all over the world probably Mexico, south America most prevalently, but then also the UK and Australia are big markets for us. Our online gallery is a great touchpoint for existing clients and it's a nice way to source new clients. In 2024, it, frankly, wouldn't make much sense to operate without a website. Most of our online sales are to people who have seen the artist work in person. It doesn't need to be the same painting that they're purchasing or sculpture that they're purchasing, but they've seen the artist in the real world, so they know the quality of the work and they also trust the reputation of our galleries. We're usually selling to repeat clients through the site. On occasion, though, we'll get that gift of a sale where somebody just saw the work elsewhere a gallery, a museum even and they'll come to the site to make their purchase. Sure.
Ross Raitman:Yeah, most of our collectors don't live full-time in your galleries, so having a strong online presence is a great way for them to keep up with what's new in the galleries. We're constantly selling work and getting new pieces in, so it really helps our client base stay up to date on our current inventory. In the grand scheme of things, only five percent of our gallery our sales come from the online gallery. Yeah, and typically the larger sales that we make through our website are collectors who've been in the galleries before and they decide they can't live without a piece. Um past year or so, we've definitely seen a little bit of an uptick in purchases from collectors who haven't physically been to our galleries yet, but most often it's somebody that has seen the work in our galleries and it's outside gallery hours and so they don't want to call or email and they just click the buy button.
Nick Petrella:So it's really just you're looking at it more as a point of sale, in a way.
Brian Raitman:Yeah, that's the purpose of the website. Effectively, when we're designing the website, that's what I look at it as. What do we want this to do? Sell art, Isn't that? Our entire mission really as a business is sell art. So, yeah, that is effectively what the website's all about. It's a nice way to share news and such with people who actually just are hiring a what's the word? Yeah, a writer Outsourcing that's what I was looking for. We're about to outsource a blog on our website to a writer. We've worked with a bunch over the years just to provide more content. Our SEO seems great, too, so that's pretty awesome. Shopify is a platform that we use. Ross is really good at pioneering new technology, literally right when Shopify came out I think it's a multi-billion dollar company now we were one of their first companies that they worked with.
Ross Raitman:Ross could correct me, if I'm wrong, not quite that early, but we were definitely an early adopter. We were not one of the first ones. They were growing quite a bit by the time we joined, but it was definitely closer to their infancy than what the giant corporation that they are now.
Andy Heise:Yeah, well, if somebody's been in, they've looked at something, this gives you an easy way to follow up with them and be like, you know, just take another look and if you really want it, you just click it right, um, rather than having them having to come back or whatever um to see it again. They can.
Ross Raitman:they can kind of be thinking about it sort of more passively yeah, and we're big about price transparency, so we list prices on just about everything on our website, unless an artist really says like, no, you can't do that, because so-and-so gallery over here is, you know, selling them for 20% more than you are. Yeah, but for 95% of our artists we have prices listed online.
Andy Heise:Yeah, and I know I know Nick's going to ask you about that here at some point.
Nick Petrella:So I'm just fascinated by pricing, artist pricing.
Andy Heise:I'm just fascinated about pricing artist pricing.
Nick Petrella:So before we get to that, I just want to talk a little bit about interior decorating, because I see you offer that as a service on your site. Do you get a lot of interest in that, and how frequently does?
Brian Raitman:it lead to a sale? That's an interesting question because it is such a small part of our business, but it leads to something galleries really struggle with. We try to stay in our lane where interior decorating is concerned and focus on the art the client is considering purchasing or has purchased and how it'll play in a space they're thinking about displaying it in. The intersection of interior design and fine art is also really interesting to me. Too often galleries have folks come in that feel the need to ask their interior designers for permission before purchasing a work of art. I'll occasionally jokingly ask if the designer pays their mortgage too. It doesn't make much sense to me for people to not trust their instincts and the expertise of our sales consultants and have them ask before they purchase something they love for their own home. They're the one that lives with it. Why do you need to go out and ask somebody if it'll work? You?
Andy Heise:need to make sure it matches the new throw pillows.
Brian Raitman:Yeah, or the couch, or what have you? The people that we do business with are extremely smart. They're successful. They should trust their own instincts. That's something we really encourage from the interior design side of things. Beyond that, about a third of the time Ross and I spend working these days is spent in our clients' homes. We do almost all the installations and what we call home shows ourselves. Ross and I can really focus on building the relationships with our clients. Obviously, if we're going to their house, they've bought art or are about to buy art. We found for Ross and I that spending the time with those people is super important. It's always an honor, first of all, to be invited into their homes, so we'll show them the art in any number of spaces they'd like to try it in and then make sure that they love where we hang it.
Ross Raitman:Yeah, it's funny. Like Brian said, we hang it, we are the installing crew. But it's funny because we didn't grow up being all that handy. But you know, as small business owners we've had to learn how to do everything ourselves. You know, as a fledgling gallery we couldn't afford to go hire a professional installed crew, so we showed up with what tools we thought we needed and tried to figure it out on the fly. And living up here in the mountains means there are a lot of stone fireplaces that people want to hang art on. So it was a real adventure learning how to hang a painting on stone in a multimillion dollar home.
Ross Raitman:We'll also move other pieces around for clients to make everything fit into the puzzle perfectly. When we were growing up, our folks were always collectors, buying stuff from galleries like what we're at now, and it was always fun that you know if they fell in love with the piece. Or we fell in love with the piece, we'd bring it home even though we didn't know where we'd hang it, and we'd play a little game where it's like all right, pick up the piece, walk around the house. Like all right, this piece should go here. Well, where's this piece go?
Ross Raitman:And then we move that one somewhere else and you know it was a fun little game and it was a great way to just keep building our collection, um, so we really focus on the art aspect of interior design and how different works can elevate the spaces our clients have, rather than the other side of things so do you guys carry a hammer drill?
Nick Petrella:I mean, what do you do when you have big stone fireplaces?
Ross Raitman:I'd be grateful for ross I literally have to go back to client houses that Brian will go to and install because he'll look at it and be like oh, I can't do that, it's for Ross. So literally yesterday actually it was one of the rare occasions Rob, one of our sales consultants, went and did a hang for somebody, but of course one of the two pieces they bought was going over a fireplace. So I spent an hour yesterday going to that client's house getting up on the big ladder, measuring out, drilling two concrete anchors into her stone fireplace and hanging a big you know roughly 60 by 48 painting.
Andy Heise:wow, yeah, yeah I would imagine the first time you did that, it was a little nerve-wracking it took us all day and we fell and it didn't work that was because of?
Brian Raitman:was that the ladies fireplace down in? Uh like evergreen yeah, that was the fireplace had one stone that was like eight inches, like deeper than all the other stones around it. So like you can't hang this here, and at the time we were a pretty young gallery and we really needed the sales- like I remember it was.
Brian Raitman:It is a 54 inch by 60 inch painting and it's heavy. Um, so we ended up going to home depot and buying, I think, more wire and ross based. Ross built climbing anchors into her wall so you could literally, like mountain, climb up the wall. But then we tied through picture wire, tied the painting to that while we let we leaned it on the fireplace because there was no other option. I mean, it's a small business man, it makes you think on your feet and just just get it done.
Ross Raitman:Um, again, I'm I'm grateful for ross, yeah, we didn't have a hammer drill, nor knew what a hammer drill was at the time. So, yeah, I was just drilling some eye hooks into the wall to tie the wire off, so the painting couldn't tip forward because she didn't even want to hang it because that stone was going to ruin it. Um, but yeah, I mean, we just sat there forever with the wrong drill, made too big of a hole, had to fill it with like super glue or epoxy just to hold the eye hook in there.
Ross Raitman:It was a nightmare it's amazing of course, now you're much more experienced and the installs are much smoother than that one, yeah back to the cake now, once I found out where I wanted to drill yesterday. It's that hammer drill the right bit. It's like butter, it just goes right through it. It's just one of those things. As a small business owner, you just got to learn. You got to do it all yourself. You know, eventually you can find people who do stuff better than you, but, um, as you're starting out, you just got to figure it out on your own.
Brian Raitman:Yeah but our toolkit now, like it, weighs a ton. Clients will offer to help carry things in for us. I'm like you don't, like. You don't want the tool bag. We broke it up into two different bags, even, and then they're blown away. When it's Ross and I that show up too, they kind of often assume that we've got our own install crew, but again it's Ross and I, in big part because we're not looking for one sale, we're looking to install art throughout the entire home. So Ross and I taking the time personally to go hang out with them and hang their art. Um, it's a good time for for us to get to know them better and them to get to know us better, and it leads to that six-figure relationship that we're looking for absolutely.
Nick Petrella:I mean, it's no different than a plumber who's coming in to fix something and then offers to do a free look around all the other valves and faucets and things like that.
Andy Heise:So you've alluded to it several times the art market in I forget what. You keep calling them mountain cities or mountain towns or something like that. But can you talk a little bit about what is the art market or what does the art market look like in Breckenridge or Vail?
Ross Raitman:Yeah, I mean Brian and I both have kind of alluded to this already, but we chose to operate in mountain towns first and foremost because it's where we want to live. It comes with the benefit of being a place that people from all over the world want to travel to, and you know, when they're on vacation, life slows down a little bit, so you actually have time to shop and enjoy the town. So people are coming into the galleries every day, all day especially. It's crazy. People think we're busier in the winter, but summer foot traffic is insane for us. You know, it's beautiful up here. People will just take a drive up from Denver just because it's incredible to be surrounded by all that beauty, just even on a drive, and then our towns are great, um, so you know, city galleries, on the other hand, they don't really seem to have that type of constant foot traffic like we have. So it definitely gives us a different gallery style in that regard, in terms of who we're reaching out to and who's coming in through our doors every day.
Ross Raitman:Our clients are typically in the 50 plus age demographic. A lot of them have multiple homes. We do ship about half the art we sell, so you know it's people who are here on vacation, on a ski trip or golf trip or hiking or biking. I mean there's so much to do up here, especially in the summer. So shipping work all over the world. It gives us penetration in so many different markets around the world. We also head down to denver, colorado springs, fort collins area almost once a week to deliver to our front range clients a lot of them are, you know, visiting the mountains just for the day or for a few days.
Ross Raitman:But they live down, you know, near the bigger cities and we'll go hang the work for them.
Brian Raitman:What's selling is always a bit harder to define than who's buying it. I mean who's buying it? You can put data together for that, but what's selling is tougher. Ross did allude a couple times already to how beautiful it is up here. So something we really like to do is bring the outdoors inside for people. I'll joke a lot If you're in Florida or Texas and you buy a snowy mountain landscape there's some air conditioning for you. We'll show ocean art in our galleries, even though we're far from the oceans, just so we can sit in the galleries and daydream. Art has that power to take you to a different place. I think that's pretty amazing.
Brian Raitman:Like most galleries, we specialize in certain types of art. Like I said, that natural kind of feel, being in the mountains and being passionate about the outdoors. Much of the art we show reflects our passion for this planet, its wild places and its wild beings. We show a lot of landscape, a lot of wildlife art. We really do want people to be reminded of how precious the environment is when they tour our galleries. Fortunately, that's the art that sells for us. Our top-selling artists have stayed pretty consistent the past several years. To name several Two Wild Doyle Hostetler, robert Moore, houston Liu, david Gonzalez, jeremy Bradshaw, michael Rosenveig and Krzysztof Kosmowski. They tend to always round out the very top of our collection, and they're all great people too.
Andy Heise:Is the Pareto's Law or Pareto's Rule, I can't remember which one. It's called the 80-20 thing. Does that apply to your sales? Is it always getting 80% of your sales from about 20% of your artists?
Ross Raitman:It's a little more of a mix for us, okay, I mean we're we're really specific about what we'll show and we have a threshold for what, um, what we need to be selling for an artist to keep giving them a prominent space in the gallery, okay, and that goes for everybody. So it's a really good mix. It's pretty fun. We use ArtCloud for our sales system and we can see what's selling in every gallery on one screen, so it's fun to watch what's selling. And it's always a great mix. And that's why we like to have a large stable of artists, but we always have all of them on the wall. We're not burying somebody in the back just because they're not selling. So, everybody, they need to be selling, they need to be displayed, and but we've got such a wide swath of what we show that it pretty much.
Ross Raitman:Everybody does pretty well. We definitely have, like I'd say, six or seven that probably lead the charge in terms of how much they're selling. But if somebody's on our wall they're still selling pretty well.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so you're constantly evaluating that If it's not selling, it's time to try something else. Move on.
Brian Raitman:We are loyal to a fault, though for sure.
Brian Raitman:Sure sure, sure, and I'll never understand this. I've been doing this for 17 years and it still doesn't make any sense to me. I'll never understand this. I've been doing this for 17 years and it still doesn't make any sense to me. Sell one painting for an artist, you're about to sell four more. It really goes in waves. I still don't understand that.
Brian Raitman:Kate McAvitt right now, we just sold, I think, six paintings for her in the last 10 days or so. These pieces are thousands of dollars to start, and they go up from there. I think the biggest sale for Kate was like 20 grand just this week. It's amazing. I don't know. You saw the one that you took the top off of the box, and here come a bunch more. It's pretty cool. Also, when we do a show for an artist, we do do what we consider solo shows, but the other artists are all hanging. We're different in that regard. I think a lot of galleries they'll have one artist on the wall for the duration of that show. Our spaces are big enough that we can show everybody all the time, and then, of course, the show is the focal point of the collection, though, and so that's going to elevate that artist's sales for that month, and that does make a difference for them, for sure.
Announcer:Thank you.
