We recently connected with Joseph Lednicky and have shared our conversation below.

Joseph, 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?

The art gallery business is very cyclical and is a good sign of the economy’s direction as art is often viewed as a luxury expenditure = when the economy is doing poorly, the sales of art decreases. When the economy does improve, art is one of the slowest retail business to improve. There are only so many gallery sales levers that can be adjusted to try and improve the art sales. For example, profit margins (lower the cost of the art), lower sales commissions, find more economical advertising, etc… However, all these levels ultimately affect the artist’s income and have long term detrimental effects that affect the gallery.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my career as an electrical engineer at NASA, supporting the space shuttle and mission control center. Along my 30+ career, I continued my higher education by obtaining a Master in Business (MBA) and partial credits in MS Computer Engineering (MSCE). My career journey included working in private industry where I worked on system designs and on semiconductors and a sprinkling of high-tech start-up companies where I got to combine my engineering background with business pursuits.

In 2017, a family tragedy made me the primary caretaker for my cognitively impaired parents. As anyone who cares for Dementia and Alzheimer’s loved ones knows, the care for such is time-consuming, financially draining, very stressful (some experts compare the stress to that of dealing with a ‘prolonged’ death of a loved one) and essentially forced me to reduce my efforts and commitment to my high tech career.

I observed how art and music impacted cognitively impared patients positively. It was amazing to see patients in wheelchairs who could barely move or speak lighten up, even if it was ever so briefly when presented with music or visual arts images. I give a lot of credit to the social workers who would arrange visual art sessions by bringing coloring instruments, crayons, or paint/brushes and canvases/paper for the cognitively impaired patients to work with. Sometimes, volunteer artists would attend. I would sometimes help those who had limited mobility or were in hospice care, and it would brighten my day when I would see them smile at the images we were trying to create.

During the latter 2 years of providing care, I decided to build a gallery to support the arts and local artists and provide a facility where I could help sell estate items for clients needing the money to pay bills. Building the gallery, in its own way, brought me back to applying my engineering and business training as I had to design and develop the gallery at the least cost. To do so, I used many free reclaimed materials I found on places like Craigslist or Social Marketplaces. The vision for the gallery was a very simple exterior, but when people walked in, they were surrounded by the best local art and fine art pieces from estates.

The grand opening was in May 2022, with a dozen participating artists exhibiting at the gallery. The gallery grew rapidly and now boasts a healthy mix of over 70+ established and up-and-coming participating artists. In addition, the gallery also offers rare and hard-to-find estate and gift items that are sold at discounted prices. This makes the gallery unique: a very simple and non-discrete exterior that houses fabulous art and gift items in a chill and fun atmosphere.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

The art gallery is self funded from over 20 years of saving and investing. I considered getting a small business loan. However, tax implications of such can get complex and loans introduce complexities that I describe later on. Early on, I had set a goal to retire early from the stressful high tech career and save enough money to start a new business. I wasn’t sure what the new business would be, which would dictate how much money to save. However, about 10 years ago, I decided to start a business that would capitalize on real estate growth (i.e. build my own retail building) and embark on a 3 year plan, with the hopes that by year two, the business would start breaking even. I felt this was a safe strategy so that even if the retial business fails, at a minimum, the sale of the appreciated value of the building would recover any transpired loses. I obviously don’t recommend this strategy to everyone. This strategy will only work if you are a hard core saver and investor so that the end goal of being self reliant is not dependent on other’s dictating how you should run your business and maximize ROI only to their liking.

How did you build your audience on social media?

As everyone knows, marketing is a key ingredient to retail business success. Social media marketing helps, but for the four wall gallery business, not to the perceived degree most expect. For example, for the retail art business located in a particular location, having less social media followers (e.g. a few hundred) that are real customers is more profitable than having a huge social media influencer presence with hundreds of thousands of followers. Let me explain why: Since I sell art out of a retail building, clients need to come in personally to complete the purchase. Unless the social media followers are within traveling distance of the retail business location, having multiple “likes” on social media does not translate into sales. Therefore the paradym is how to target the customers on social media that can afford to invest in a luxury art piece. And the simple answer to this is “time”. As you generate social media content, experiment with various elements that will help you collect the information needed to help you target particular consumers, build up your roster with customers that will help spread the word about your business in the localized area and overtime you will learn who your real paying customers are. For example, given a set marketing budget, I would choose to target particular social media ‘groups’ that invest in art as opposed to ‘boosting’ advertising on general larger social media population whose followers will probably never travel to your area and make an art purchase.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.primalgallery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primalgalleryllc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090781482628
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU6Lsek3Qh4j6yOUIOMykrw