We are here to let you know that we are in the process of creating a permanent online shop for selling our prints (and eventually other things) rather than continuing on with the limited and timed print release model. 

Ultimately, we want you to be able to buy a print of our work when it works well for you. If all goes as planned, this shop should be up and running this Spring/early Summer.  All of the pieces presented in this email will be our first additions to our online print shop.

 

THE WHY

Why we did the editioned/ timed print release model

Around the time we began thinking about selling prints of our work, a print company reached out to us and guided us through the best practices of selling prints online. We did not know what we were doing and felt overwhelmed, so we happily accepted their guidance. They educated us on ways to sell our art that would produce the best conversions, leading to a more profitable print release.  
The gist of this model is that the campaign is timed and once the time is up, the prints offered in those sizes are no longer available for purchase. Looking at this model from a business point of view, it does make sense. It creates a “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) feeling for a consumer. This puts urgency, and in our opinion, stress, on the customer. This high pressure strategy never sat well with us. 

 

Why this selling strategy didn’t feel right for us

We aren’t going to an art store and buying paint. We are traveling to small flower farms and people’s yards to collect our "paint". For instance, this September, we are roadtripping from our home in Colorado to San Juan Island off the coast of Washington State to work with Farm Luxe to create a print from the flowers they grow. 
The amount of forethought and effort that goes into each of our releases is more than a lot. The time it takes to collect the flowers for each piece is equal to or more than the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. Ultimately, this feels like a lot of effort to put into a piece of art that will only be available once, for five days.
Although this model generated revenue and excitement for those five days over the course of our print releases, once that rush was over, it ultimately left us feeling tired and drained. We realized that this was not a sustainable way for us to live nor was it a sustainable business model. Had we remained in this cycle of collection/creation/release, collection/creation/release, burnout would be our only accomplishment. 

 

Why we disliked the print release model for our customers

Naturally there is an ebb and flow to life; money comes and goes, design tastes change, homes change, moods change. Some may really like our work but may not be in an ideal financial place to spend the money on a print during that short stretch of time the piece is available for sale. We do not want to create a FOMO feeling for you. We want you to be excited for things we release, but have the ability to buy something for yourself or as a gift when the time is right. It is as simple as that.

 

 

THE FLOWER FARMS

Once we get our shop online, with each fiscal quarter, we will be giving a small percentage of revenue back to the farm where the flowers came from to create that piece. Our work would not exist without their dedication and time they put into the land to grow what they grow. The flowers that make up all of the pieces in this newsletter are from farms local to Denver, CO. They were sourced throughout the 2023 season from these farms: Blossom and Branch, Artemis, Little Hollow, Plume and Furrow, and Red Daisy.

ORIGINALS FOR SALE

The originals we will have for sale are the pieces found in this email - four pieces total as of now. We are still working on photographing them, making sure we get the best capture possible for prints. Once we finalize the prints, all of these will be listed for sale. We do have people that have expressed interest long ago and we will do our best to reach out to those people first. If you have an interest in any of these pieces as originals, feel free to get in touch. Please know that originals do fade over the years. Originals are sold as is and unframed. We all change as we age and originals will do the same.

 

As you may have gleaned, we have been putting a lot of thought into how we want to approach the release of our next body of work in order to better nurture our business so it can continue to creatively exist for years to come. It seems the older we get, the faster the time goes; loved ones are aging, getting sick or injured. We are aging and time continues to escape us. The most precious things we have are our health, the love in our lives, and our time. This being said, Keith and I would like to make sure we are using our time to nurture what feels important.  

We are all in the business of making money by nature of being alive, but we are also in the business of creating a life. We have been told over and over if we don’t do timed or limited print drops, our revenue will be 50-80% less. This may be true, but at least the weight and pressure to live up to a successful release will be released from us. We want to live simply and build upon skills to create beautiful designs and slow experiences for you and for us. 

We began this business in the most natural way possible and lately it has not felt natural at all. Our time to garden, forage, create, exercise, or talk about things non business related has been somewhat non-existent. It is time to get back to those things all the while not creating a FOMO feeling for you. A win-win in our book. We’ve come up with a lot of awesome prints so far and we want you to have them! So that’s what we are sorting through over here. 

If you made it to the end of this email, a sincere thank you. We do not want all our emails to be related to buying things. We want to share the stories of the farms we work with, and to show you where the inspiration for our designs actually came from. We want to share fun, upcoming projects with you. Our emails will still be few and far between because we want to be pretty darn intentional about them and what we put in them.

Once our print shop is up and running, we will send out an email to inform all of you of that happening.