Doing $5 Million A Year With Three Employees: FineArtAmerica CEO Sean Broihier (Part 3)

Sramana: You rely on search engine optimization to provide a supply of customers through organic search. You rely on word of mouth to entice artists and photographers to sell their work through your site.

Sean Broihier: I designed the entire site to be fully automated. It gives artists the sales and marketing tools they need to be successful. By doing so, the artists become a sales and marketing force not only for their own artwork but for FineArtAmerica as well. I built a capability that I would compare to ConstantContact into FineArtAmerica. It allows the artists to create attractive HTML newsletters through FineArtAmerica.

When you join our site as a member, you get a profile. You can load all of your images into the site and offer them for sale. With a few simple clicks, you can drag images into your newsletter, load in your email list, and send out a great newsletter. Artists love it because it is free and allows them to do email campaigns. They can track and see who opens their notes. When people click on the image link, it takes them to FineArtAmerica. That brings in benefits for FineArtAmerica and the artist as well.

Sramana: So, you rely on that to drive a viral effect and bring a wide range of customers to FineArtAmerica?

Sean Broihier: That is correct. The artists are happy and willing to send traffic to FineArtAmerica because we are their order fulfillment partner. I have written plenty of newsletters to artist and photographers explaining why they need an order fulfillment partner. It is very difficult to try and do this on your own. If you want to be able to sell your own prints from your home with custom matting and framing, you need a custom printer. You then have to stock a lot of materials, deal with customers, frame the products, manage shipping, and deal with returns. It is a nightmare.

All artists and photographers need an online fulfillment partner and that is the role we serve. We become their online store, and they are happy to have us work in that role. They post online links to us from their Twitter, Facebook, and social media accounts.

We give artists display tools on their websites. They can have their images scroll through and link back to FineArtAmerica. We provide them with a Facebook shopping cart. We give the artists a tool that allows them to embed a FineArtAmerica shopping cart on the Facebook fan page. This provides them a new tab on the bottom that says ‘shop.’ When people click on it, they see all of their artwork for sale.

Sramana: There are significant logistics to your business. Would you explain how you manage that piece?

Sean Broihier: We are currently partnered with three different fulfillment companies around the U.S. They are located in North Carolina, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The entire system is fully automated. I will not do anything unless it is automated because I have such a small staff. The whole process of uploading images and setting prices is accomplished by the artists. The minute an order comes in a, FineArtAmerica staff member quickly reviews each order, examines the images, and makes sure everything is correct. Photographs are not an issue; they get approved and sent off to fulfillment immediately. Paintings are a little tricky because sometimes painters are not the best photographers. Sometimes the pictures they upload are blurry or are not cropped correctly. There is potential there could be an issue with the image. As soon as our staff member confirms that the images look good, they submit the order.

Processing the credit card is fully automated. The order details are instantly transferred to one of our fulfillment centers. Each center handles a different product. Greeting cards are handled in Atlanta. Framed prints are handled in North Carolina. Our code knows where the send the orders. Those companies handle the printing, framing, packaging, and shipping. Their system is tied into ours, so as soon as they ship an order the details come back to us. We send out the email confirmation to the buyer, and that is it.

Our volume is large enough that we have a dedicated group of people at each site who handle the FineArtAmerica orders every day. As far as the buyer is concerned, it is a seamless process. If they are not happy with the product, they ship it back to FineArtAmerica directly.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Doing $5 Million A Year With Three Employees: FineArtAmerica CEO Sean Broihier
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