ONLINE STORE INFORMATION AND TIPS
SKU #s
Please submit all items individually on the inventory submission form! This generates individual SKU numbers for each variation and they become separate items in the online store. The only exception to this is if you have multiple of the same style/size/color item. If the items in question are different enough that a customer would have to choose between them, submit them separately!
JEWELERS
We ask that you fold your stickers over a thread that loops onto your jewelry and is easy to remove and replace. You can do this by hand, or find inexpensive pre-threaded jewelry tags on Amazon. The gallery will have a limited number of these tags available in house, but we ask you to purchase your own and come to the gallery prepared with the blank tags already attached to your jewelry. See sample here: https://www.amazon.com/White-Tags-Marking-Writable-Products/dp/B08TBV8TKQ/
If you insist on using the stickers directly on your jewelry, please do not press price stickers tightly to surfaces! This makes it very difficult to take them off for photos, and leaves a sticky residue that invariably shows up in the shots and looks shabby. Customers have also complained about sticker residue on their purchases.
2D Artists
Send us crisp, high resolution images of your paintings, prints, or photographs (no glass or cello sleeve) to prioritize your work being listed in the online store. Please email these directly to [email protected].
CHOOSING YOUR WORK
We would like a selection of your work that is visually cohesive, varied in price point, contrasts/complements other current work in the online store, and is likely to move based on your gallery sales and the season’s trends and holidays.
We ask that any items that have been listed for you in the online store remain in inventory for the full 6 month period. Please do not remove these items from inventory before their 6 month rotation is up! If you do, we may not be able to replace it with your new work for several months. There will always be another artist who has nothing in the store yet, and our obligation is to give everyone a chance before switching out your work early.
If your work is larger than will fit in a USPS Large Flat Rate box, it will not be eligible for shipping in the online store. It WILL be available for local pickup. Obviously, this reduces its chances of selling online, so we suggest prioritizing items that will fit in USPS Flat Rate boxes.
We ask that you choose 5-10 of your newest inventory submissions and submit the Description form linked above for each of them. You will be required to submit the information for at least 5 items to complete the form, and optional up to 10. We recommend choosing items priced at $50 or over (retail) whenever possible. While we are asking you to preemptively choose what you want listed in the online store, the final choices are at the discretion of the staff and we hope you understand and respect the decisions we make. No one gets special treatment, and no one gets purposely excluded.
CRITICISM
We understand that there will be differences of opinion and criticism on how items are presented in the online store. It is a Herculean task to photograph, write descriptions, curate collections and manage the overall presentation of an online store with over 100 artists, while keeping inventory fresh and promoting everyone as equitably as possible.
Please be kind to staff members when offering criticism. Each of us has a very long to-do list which covers the daily operations of the gallery, customer relations, and troubleshooting technology issues, as well as working on the online store on any given day. We all do a lot of invisible labor on your behalf, and are doing the best job we can for all of our success in the gallery.
Please submit all items individually on the inventory submission form! This generates individual SKU numbers for each variation and they become separate items in the online store. The only exception to this is if you have multiple of the same style/size/color item. If the items in question are different enough that a customer would have to choose between them, submit them separately!
JEWELERS
We ask that you fold your stickers over a thread that loops onto your jewelry and is easy to remove and replace. You can do this by hand, or find inexpensive pre-threaded jewelry tags on Amazon. The gallery will have a limited number of these tags available in house, but we ask you to purchase your own and come to the gallery prepared with the blank tags already attached to your jewelry. See sample here: https://www.amazon.com/White-Tags-Marking-Writable-Products/dp/B08TBV8TKQ/
If you insist on using the stickers directly on your jewelry, please do not press price stickers tightly to surfaces! This makes it very difficult to take them off for photos, and leaves a sticky residue that invariably shows up in the shots and looks shabby. Customers have also complained about sticker residue on their purchases.
2D Artists
Send us crisp, high resolution images of your paintings, prints, or photographs (no glass or cello sleeve) to prioritize your work being listed in the online store. Please email these directly to [email protected].
CHOOSING YOUR WORK
We would like a selection of your work that is visually cohesive, varied in price point, contrasts/complements other current work in the online store, and is likely to move based on your gallery sales and the season’s trends and holidays.
We ask that any items that have been listed for you in the online store remain in inventory for the full 6 month period. Please do not remove these items from inventory before their 6 month rotation is up! If you do, we may not be able to replace it with your new work for several months. There will always be another artist who has nothing in the store yet, and our obligation is to give everyone a chance before switching out your work early.
If your work is larger than will fit in a USPS Large Flat Rate box, it will not be eligible for shipping in the online store. It WILL be available for local pickup. Obviously, this reduces its chances of selling online, so we suggest prioritizing items that will fit in USPS Flat Rate boxes.
We ask that you choose 5-10 of your newest inventory submissions and submit the Description form linked above for each of them. You will be required to submit the information for at least 5 items to complete the form, and optional up to 10. We recommend choosing items priced at $50 or over (retail) whenever possible. While we are asking you to preemptively choose what you want listed in the online store, the final choices are at the discretion of the staff and we hope you understand and respect the decisions we make. No one gets special treatment, and no one gets purposely excluded.
CRITICISM
We understand that there will be differences of opinion and criticism on how items are presented in the online store. It is a Herculean task to photograph, write descriptions, curate collections and manage the overall presentation of an online store with over 100 artists, while keeping inventory fresh and promoting everyone as equitably as possible.
Please be kind to staff members when offering criticism. Each of us has a very long to-do list which covers the daily operations of the gallery, customer relations, and troubleshooting technology issues, as well as working on the online store on any given day. We all do a lot of invisible labor on your behalf, and are doing the best job we can for all of our success in the gallery.
MORE DETAILS
What is the process we’ve undertaken for selecting, photographing, and listing your work? There are a lot of considerations we juggle in order to present your work esthetically, fairly, and in harmony with all other artists’ work in the gallery. We have some limitations to work with (not the least of which is available staff hours and physical resources for photographing).
We’ve attempted to prioritize inclusion by:
SPECIFIC NOTES
- Items must be small to moderately sized to photograph* in our 24” x 24” lightbox
- Items fit in and can be shipped safely in USPS flat rate boxes
- Items translate well in photographs (i.e. not too many angles, odd or awkward compositions)
- Items show up clearly on white/light background
- Items display a variety of price points, colors, styles, uses
- Items display a cohesive presentation for the gallery’s brand (i.e. same style background, shooting angles)
We’ve attempted to prioritize inclusion by:
- Beginning with Active members
- Members who do not have their own online store
- Rotating through members in a balanced sequence of media
- Example: Each week 2-3 artists are photographed and listed. We try to choose artists in different media, and the following week choose artists in three new media.
- This prioritization is just an outline. It is not hard and fast, and we have made exceptions in order to keep a balanced and interesting selection of new work, just like the display committee does each month in the gallery.
SPECIFIC NOTES
- Jewelry is PARTICULARLY challenging to photograph. We have jewelry in a very wide range of colors, media and styles. Some pieces are easier to capture in photographs than others. Colorful or high contrast metal jewelry tends to look best. Unfortunately we just don’t have the time or resources to optimize each artist’s jewelry with special backgrounds, lighting, or fine tuning in Photoshop. Professional jewelry photography is a highly specialized field and costly in time and money. We’re providing this service to you as a complimentary perk of your membership in the cooperative, with all work undertaken by staff and paid for with our hourly wages. We’ve built the online store for the success of the gallery as a whole; it’s not meant to take the place of your own website, brand, or online shopping presence.
- Due to the time it takes to photograph and list a single item in the online store, we give priority to items that: a) are multiples in a series, such as 4 purple mugs (b) are replicable, such as Lucinda’s earrings or Itsuko’s rice bowls, or (c) have a retail price over $50. This ensures that if one of the items sells (online or in the gallery) we can leave it in the online store until the series has sold out or the artist brings more of them to the gallery. For example, selling a one of a kind item for $50 retail online does not always cover the gallery’s cost of photographing and listing it in the store. That being said, some artists’ work simply does not fit a, b, or c. In this case, we still list a collection of their work in the store and hope for the best.
- 2D Art is also very challenging to incorporate in the online store. We cannot currently photograph paintings or prints that are larger than 16” due to the dimensions of our lightbox. Glass-framed work and prints in plastic sleeves cannot be photographed without reflections or glare. For this reason, we ask that you send us your own high resolution photographs, scans or .jpg files of your 2D art so that we can upload these directly to the online store. Image files need to be saved in RGB mode for their truest color representation in Shopify. This saves us a huge amount of time and we will be able to get your work up quickly. We also need the title, media, dimensions, quantity in inventory, and any other pertinent information about the work in an email so that we can easily build your listings. This is equally important for greeting cards!