We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mary Sussmann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mary below.

Mary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I believe it takes patience, trust and teamwork to be successful. For many years, I thought that I had to do it all, or only pass off a certain portion of my tasks as the business grew. After working with a business coach, I finally learned how to pass off almost all of the day to day tasks that I used to do. It has been a game changer because it gave me time to focus on getting the business more organized, creating new roles, and pivoting our goals to help us continue to grow after industry changes due to covid. Currently, we have 4 stellar women working remotely as employees, and over 40 women artists from all around the world submitting gorgeous artwork. It takes an amazing group of women to keep the daily flow going, making sure that all of our artists and clients feel taken care of. For Pink Light Studio, that is success.

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

I am the founder and original Creative Director and Agent at Pink Light Studio, which I started in 2009. I had been working in surface design, having started my career at Nordstrom, designing prints and patterns for children’s wear. After traveling to shows like Printsource and Surtex, I felt called to start my own studio, and began exhibiting my friends and my work at Surtex. Artists and clients were drawn to our fresh and bright studio and we slowly began to grow, year by year. It was so fun to bring on new artists along the way. They each bring their own special touch, some have very bold, fun characters, while some have softer, more sophisticated florals, and others are more gifted in lettering design. My favorite part of growing Pink Light was curating our artists and their styles so that we have a consistent aesthetic in the studio, while allowing each artist to shine in their own unique way. I believe that is one of the reasons we have been successful. Our clients know they can come to us for amazing, quality art, while also having a variety of incredible artist’s work to chose from. In addition to a variety of artists, we also offer a variety of themes, including: baby, juvenile, tween, boy, girl, sophisticated designs for home decor, whimsical, seasonal artwork, novelty, and trend. The third key to our success is customer service. We offer a variety of services for our clients. Our studio is unique in that we offer outright sales, custom designs and licensing. Our team works quickly and efficiently to make sure that our clients always have what they need for their presentations.

What I am most proud of is that so many of the artists on our team have been with Pink Light for over a decade, or even since the very beginning. I love seeing the growth in our artists work and how we have evolved over the years. Our current Licensing and Design Agent, Katie Yates-Isett brought a fresh perspective to the studio 5 years ago and we are continuing to grow our team and evolve with changes in design, culture and technology. We are excited to see where Pink Light will be in 5 more years and beyond. Having such a beautiful, strong, and creative group of women both running and creating artwork for Pink Light is a dream come true.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

What helped Pink Light build it’s reputation in the market are the amazing women who have been a part of the team and supported the team, as well as our positive, inspirational messaging and authenticity. From the beginning, we always had a strong group of women, whether they were family, friends, artists, interns, employees—everyone loved being part of our culture. The combination of our bright happy team members, our whimsical artwork, our cheerful color palettes, and our “Let your light shine” and “Do what you love” messaging, always brought people together and made them feel welcome. Those clients who had the same values were quickly drawn to us. Today, we still move forward with these values and authenticity and we continue to attract clients and artists who believe in and share these values as well.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Our most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been exhibiting at tradeshows with on-trend artwork, and providing outstanding customer service through consistency and patience. Post covid, tradeshows are a bit few and far between, but we keep participating in them as much as possible. Tradeshows are a big investment, but if you can connect with even a few new clients and really service them and be patient, it may take months, sometimes even years, but they can turn into outstanding partners. Licensing in particular requires a lot of patience. We have found that the best was to grow our licensing clientele is to constantly provide them with fresh, new, on-trend artwork. Eventually, a design will get attention and placement, and once you have an “in” with most clients, they will likely want to continue working with you and grow together. It isn’t always in a regular and consistent pattern, but if you remain consistent with submitting new work, it’s more likely for the connection to happen. In the early Pink Light years, one of our clients told me that I was relentless. I took that as a compliment that I was consistent and had a strong intuition that the partnership between us would be a great one. That particular business relationship ended up being the top performing royalty based client for Pink Light to date. That is why our strategy at Pink Light is consistency in submitting artwork and patience in waiting for the magic connection of art and product to happen, all while providing outstanding and timely customer service.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pinklightstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinklightstudio/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-beth-freet-sussmann/