We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emma Sadler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emma, appreciate you joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
A lot of artists start with custom work. You can charge more for it being bespoke. The issue with this is that growth becomes limited and building a brand is what helps a company stick for the long term.
The biggest challenge with custom work is the time required. It can also be artist based, you-the artist, must be the one to create it. You can not just hand over the order to someone else. I was personally hired once, as my style was similar to an artist at this company, and for the holidays her turn around was too slow. After a trial run I was let go as the interpretation their customers were used to what not a 1-to-1 with how I drew.
The profitability isn’t in the custom work it’s self, it is the exposure to your art style and then expanding your brand and business to replaceable works or styles people can purchase.
Yes based on COGs, cost of goods, on paper you would be making a lot more with a custom piece but the time can be variable with custom works. Some pieces might take you an hour another might take you 4. So pricing to include this as a brand is very dificult. The ideal for the profitability comes down to reducing the time needed to be spent per piece.
Emma, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Emma and I am the artist, designer and owner of Taleology. We make accessible custom portraits for the modern pet parent. Taleology was born by solving my own need; finding tangible pet portraits I could carry with me everywhere that were not colored. I thought back to the time when I would go to souvenir shops and try to find my name, but never could. I was having the same issue with finding items that looked my dogs or had meaning to me.
I wanted to build something that was artistan driven and not just a photograph sandwiched between 2 pieces of plastic. As a child I always loved fires and would build them every summer at a house we renting in NH. Wood was a natural draw to me as a base material to work with. It is filled with challenges, learnings, and nostalgia.
We just recently launched our newest Pet Portraits out of layered wood which I am super proud of as we typically have smaller bespoke items but I wanted to try making larger items as we scale. Keeping to our core values or artistan driven and natural materials as we explore and branch off to new items.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
A mix of pop-ups and live events plus social media. Social media can be a tricky game to play but it is one you must play as a business or an artist. If people don’t know about you, they won’t purchase from you. Live events and markets are a really great way and typically ensure repeat customers as well as they get to meet you in person. Connection is huge when building the brand whether to the product, the mission or the founder.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Customer experience. You can have the prettiest product in the world, the best marketing, and the best functioning but if your customer service and experience is not good people will only tolerate it for so long. We offer a 30-day replacement which is unheard of in our industry and make sure to respond promptly to all inquires.
Contact Info:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-sadler/
