We recently connected with Carrie Everitt and have shared our conversation below.
Carrie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?
I sometimes wish I had started my business sooner, but I have no regrets about prioritizing my family. I taught high school art for 13 years and then decided to stay at home with my children for the last 11. While raising my kids, I took on a few commissioned pieces and taught private art classes, never really considering other avenues like merchandising my work.
Living in the suburbs of Augusta, the Masters is like a season here. I was chosen to display my golf artwork at Augusta regional airport a few years ago and received more inquiries for custom art than I could handle. That led me to create art prints, which quickly grew beyond just a few of my designs. Before I knew it, my art was being seen not just locally, but requested nationally, opening doors I hadn’t even imagined. In hindsight, I wish something as simple as making prints of my work would’ve occurred to me years ago. Although many of my clients tend to initially contact me because they are lovers of my golf art, I retain a lot of these customers as clients for future commissioned pieces. I’ve painted everything from cars and pets, to vacation destination paintings. Now, when I create an art piece, I visualize what it would look like as a print, or on a product of some sort so that more people could enjoy the piece.
Carrie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am from Wisconsin, graduating from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee with a Bachelor of fine arts degree. I have always loved art so decided to become an art teacher. I taught high school art for 13 years in which, during that time I was still trying to develop my own personal style. Then about 5 years in, I started experimenting more with a very colorful color palette. I painted from black-and-white photos, thus interpreting the light through my own colors. This colorful painting style captivates viewers and sets me apart from other artists.
Although I’m not strictly a golf artist, it has been what people come to me the most for. Being that I live in the Augusta area, I sell products out of my home from November until April. I sell many golf art prints and products with my art on them. I have some products made with my art printed upon them like pillow covers, coasters, totes, purses, and coffee cups. I am currently busy hand painting hats, glassware and decanters, making earrings, ornaments, and oyster shell dishes.
Many artists in this area sell their products in stores, but I tend to refrain from that so I can keep my price point lower and obtain a personal relationship with my clients. For me it’s not all about the money, I want all my customers to feel like they are getting a quality product for a good price. I stand behind my products and I like to help them each individually. I also have a variety of my art hanging up, which opens up dialogue giving many clients ideas to have commissioned pieces made in the future.
I’m proud to be able to offer clients so many options for their artistic needs. I specialize in all 2D medias yet also work in mixed media, wood building, and glass/tile mosaic art.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
In terms of art prints I had artist proofs made from a few sources and was not overly thrilled with them. I then started looking into Giclee printing companies since they are a higher quality print. Ideally I’d like to invest in my own printer but I’m not quite at the print volume for it to make sense to purchase one yet. While I was in the search for a company, the place I always went to for my photography needs started offering giclee printing services. I ordered some prints and was very happy with the result, for my other products I have experimented with many different vendors, some not as good as others. The lesson I learned is to always only print a couple products the first round. I have had a couple bad runs where I thought I would look great so I ordered a bunch and the product came back looking terrible. This happened with a clothing product and towels. Needless to say I have a lot of expensive art rags!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Funding my business was initially the most difficult thing I had to deal with mentally. I did not want to invest in a lot of inventory that would impact our family financially.
Once I made the decision to start branching out, I started setting aside profits from my commissioned paintings. With those funds, I had to creatively and strategically order products starting with low inventory to see how they would sell. Thankfully the art prints I chose ended up selling very well, so I could utilize those profits to buy more inventory. I’ve only been doing this three years and have expanded into over a dozen popular art prints, and my art printed on a variety of home decor products.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://zstudioart.weebly.com
- Instagram: @zeitlereveritt
- Facebook: Z Studio, Artwork by Carrie
