Should I Discount my Fine Art?
“Should I discount the price of my art?” Uhmmmm. Let me think about that. Ah, HELL NO! Original works of fine art are a luxury item. And discounting your luxury product is the very best way to shoot yourself directly in the foot. And when you do this that bullet ricochets and can hit the entire art market. So, if you’re discounting: Cut it out! Or stop complaining that you don’t make enough money.
Oh, I can hear it now. “I have to discount. We are experiencing a deep recession, don’t you know?” “Yes, I do.”
I recently attended a presentation sponsored by the San Francisco Luxury Marketing Council reviewing current luxury market data and trends. I almost jumped out of my chair with glee when the presenter confirmed that the one category of luxury where sales have actually increased during the current recession is, you guessed it, fine art.
So there. You have no excuses to discount your luxury product, besides a lack of marketing and negotiating skills. So let me offer you a couple of useful tips. If you maintain a range of offerings, at different price points, you can often redirect your prospects to the choices that work within their budget. My price points currently range from $5 to $39,000 and everything in between. If you don’t have $5 to spend on my art, then I can’t help you. And I can live with that.
If redirecting a prospect doesn’t work and they press me for a discount, I maintain a handy reply. “My prices are about to be adjusted upward, so now is actually a good time to buy.” The looks on their faces, “priceless.” No pun intended.
My former art rep in LA confirmed that those artists who she represented, who did not discount, consistently experienced a significantly higher sales volume.
So take your power back! Build your brand. Don’t discount it.
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Tags: discounting fine art, pricing art, San Francisco Luxury Marketing Council
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Comments (8)
Kris Finfer
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Yes! Yes! Yes! Couldn’t agree more. I went to Chicago this summer and it was a frenzy of buying in The American Girl store. In my view, buying a $100 doll plus $200 of accessories for a 6-8 year old is a luxury item , however, the store was packed–lines out the door. I thought when I came home to my small town that is hit with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country that no one would have these dolls. Turns out everyone of my daughter’s friends have one!! Sure income is tight, but if there is enough money for a doll–there sure as HELL is enough money to pay full fine art prices for a unique piece that changes and uplifts the energy of the space it exists. Yes, fine art is in the thousands not the hundreds–but it’s not the price as the decision-maker—it’s the mind set of I have to have it. .
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Jean M. Judd
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As usual, Ann you are spot on. Discounting and having sales can really hurt yourself, your collectors and your future. Giving a SMALL discount to a collector who has been purchasing from you for a number of years is perfectly fine, but when doing an art show and having people come up who have never purchased your work, absolutely not.
The ones that REALLY irritate me and I would love to shake some sense into, are the artists who put up a sign the last couple of hours of a fine art show and offer a discount “so they don’t have to pack it up”. This is not a flea market or garage sale (or so I would hope).
Always enjoy your posts.
Jean M. Judd, Textile Artist
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Linda Peckel
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I’m so glad to hear you say this. I’m a writer, not a painter, but I have also worked at a gallery selling high end art work, and it was very frustrating to spend a lot of time promoting an artist to discover they were offering a different price for similar pieces elsewhere. It’s easy to understand how fine artists may feel that they can’t let their work pile up and they may need the money, and maybe space becomes an issue as well, but if the artist doesn’t place a high value on their own work, how can they expect anyone else to?
Once you have begun to sell your work, if you reduce prices, you devalue the work that has already sold. This will certainly kill resales to the same patrons who already appreciated your work once, and it’s very easy for word to get around. There’s an environment out there where everybody now believes that everything is negotiable. What that means is that you have to work harded to educate buyers to the value of the work–you don’t have to get sucked in to the notion of drastically dropping prices. And a bargain bin? Many novelists produce serial novels in genres like mysteries, churning them out faster than they can their mainstream novels–but they do it under another name, called a pen name. Maybe artists need a brush name for that work they’re willing to discount. At least then you can protect the reputation of your main “brand”.
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Ann Rea
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Thank you for your comments Linda.
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Kadira
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I think as artists we need to be reminded loudly and often that what we do is valuable, that in fact it is ‘priceless’ work, and that it does impact peoples lives .
A painting I buy and hang on my wall gives me pleasure for many many years, and I believe that is something people don’t take into account when they start thinking about how much paintings cost.
Lynn Bridge just had a great post on her blog about this very topic also, not discounting but the value that is intrinsicially contained in an art work. Here is a link to that article if anyone would like to check it out https://lynnbridge.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/doc-whats-my-bill/
This was a great post – thank you Ann
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Dionna Conniff
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I have a question for the group – I need to get an offsite data backup service. Anyone have a good referral?
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Ann Rea
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I use Mozy….
https://mozy.com/home?ref=3f9a896b&kbid=57253&m=13&i=69
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Julyan Davis
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Well said. I always tell artists about how Manolo Blahnik sells his shoes, particularly in the early days. By making them highly unavailable!
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