We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Justin Scholman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Justin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

As one of the founders of Crown and Press, we wanted to make Art more approachable in everyone’s daily life. Art Galleries may come off as intimidating and potentially unwelcome to certain crowds, and so we decided to combine an Art Gallery and Cafe into one. This helps people to meet art where they are at, to be able to enjoy it while working, meeting friends, or any other reason. By introducing it to the daily lives of everyone who walks in the door, it becomes much more approachable. The fact that we offer prints of all the artwork we have, means that we can meet customers where they are. Our goal is to be able to offer art in an approachable way that people can afford.

We often hear from people that we’ve created an open, inviting and calming atmosphere. We just want people to enjoy being at Crown and Press.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Justin Scholman and I grew up in the small farm town of Dunnville. I loved art from a young age and I always always sketching something. I ended up going to Redeemer University in Ancaster for my Bachelor of Fine Arts and History. I was lucky enough to marry Abigail Veenstra, the daughter of successful artist Julia Veenstra.

A few years ago during Covid, we were having a conversation with my in-laws and they asked what I wanted to do as a career. ” I want to run an Art Gallery” was my response. Julia had just closed her studio on James Street North, and was looking for a way to show her art somewhere, so this was a great combination. Abigail had the idea to add a coffee shop to the gallery and we never looked back.

We bought a building at 303 Ottawa Street North with another business, 905 Print. This just added more to our business model, as well sell prints and original artwork. I think the selling of prints really sets us apart, as it allows for a much easier and affordable option for anyone looking for art. Since our business model includes a coffee shop, it brings in more people than a regular gallery, and having prints for people who normally wouldn’t be able to spend money on art is an amazing option. The prints also help us support all of our Canadian Artists who may not have been able to do prints on their own.

We’re just so glad that we made a space that people want to spend time in and we really enjoying being a community hub in Hamilton.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We are pretty proud of our social media presence and we have to admit we can’t take all the credit for it. What really propelled our social media, specifically Instagram to the next level, would have to be the interior design of our space. We went for a really unique art deco design, and we have a really large space. Due to this, we get a lot of people sharing the space, their drinks, and the gallery’s artwork on their Instagram.

This really led to a snowballing affect for us that we didn’t anticipate at all. The more people that came into our space and shared their experience here, the more people that came in and did the same. We would constantly hear that they heard from their friends and their Instagram that they needed to come here. After being here themselves, they would also go and spread the word as well.

While we would love to take full credit for this, the only thing we can take credit for is the interior design. By creating a space and an atmosphere that people loved, these people propelled our business for us, further than we expected. Since a lot of our promotion came from word of mouth and social media of our customers, it felt more real and honest, instead of a commercial feeling ad campaign.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Starting a new business and dealing with all the hiccups that come from managing a team has been quite the learning experience. Especially in the first few months, we had a lot to learn when it came to delegating work. I personally have the issue of wanting to do all the work myself, and taking on more than I can handle, and it pretty quickly ended with me being burnt out. I needed to learn to pass some responsibilities off to my employees and it wasn’t easy to give up that. It’s something I still struggle with and have to work on. Luckily I have employees who want to help, and have been able to take some of that responsibility from me.

I think something that really helps with our team morale, is that everyone knows that the owner’s of Crown and Press would never ask them to do something that we wouldn’t do ourselves. We are working long hours with them and doing the same work as them, instead of leaving the “bad jobs” for our employees. After dealing with burnout in the first few months, I accepted I needed to have a good work-life balance, and so I can easily respect when employees need to set those boundaries as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: CrownandPress.com
• Instagram: crownandpressgallery
• Facebook: Crown and Press

Image Credits
Kay Richardson, @north.city.photo