os160416  How much would it take? Estimating startup costs

  A visitor to the Mini Art Gallery preceding the coffee hour printmaking session asked the question, “How much would it take to start up?” - a general question about the Northwest Print Center Incubators. The author considers his immediate task, an empty space.

How much would it take?

This is the question put to me from a man who stepped into the gallery, listened to me extoll the scale of the market for miniature etching presses. He was a big man, and said that he dreamed of having a huge press at his disposal, powerful, like a locomotive.

I disagree, as my mantra is “small is beautiful,” which I got from a book titled, “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered,”  . . . a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase ‘Small Is Beautiful’ came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr. It is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies that are believed to empower people more, in contrast with phrases such as, ‘bigger is better’.

“First published in 1973, the book brought Schumacher's critiques of Western economics to a wider audience during the 1973 energy crisis and emergence of globalization. The Times Literary Supplement ranked Small Is Beautiful among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. A further edition with commentaries was published in 1999.” (Wikipedia)

The year 1973 was an important year for me because upon my return from my first study abroad, printmaking had a different appeal and meaning. I had visited some of the oldest living printmaking pioneers in Europe, and they conveyed a feeling of discovery and creativity to which our modern printmaking world owes its meaning.

But newness and discovery were no longer so alive in 1969, I felt. In fact, despite that printmaking was on the cusp of becoming a hugely profitable and collectible commodity in the art world, I thought its real potential lay in its being the ancestor of new technologies which, also, were just being explored in Seattle. Video art was the first of these I tackled. With my students we experimented and blended video with our printmaking

Then came computer graphics and by the early 1980s I was—and am—deeply committed to the “small is beautiful” idea. It takes the form of artists’ stamps, for example, and mini etching presses—kinds of appropriate art and technology for our times and for the future. This concept even meshes with the video games industry and, of interest to me as a teacher, MOOCs.

The visitor that day was, of course, unaware of all this history I experienced, and for his personal enjoyment he would like to be running a big press. I could point him to a big press for sale—several in fact—which had served their owners in those halcyon days when it seemed that bigger prints were better prints, and big presses were needed and viewed as a status symbol.

However, the biggest presses ever made to feed this idea have been broken down, shipped to Singapore, Japan, and Australia, and the prints that came from them are in their museums. The owner and developer of those oversized works of art, Ken Tyler, designer of the presses, also, discussed the change and the demise of the era in an article.

How much would it take?

Repeating the question he put to me returns. I answered, “That would depend on which element in the nineteen incubators a person wanted to develop.” Later I told him I was not interested in the press retail business, and my presses were well beyond the prototyping and market test stages. It is in the retail entertainment market that the best prospects lay.

He nodded, and I invited him to today’s Sip ‘N Print coffee session. He came, and we will take up the subject next week. That is, if he shows up. [He never did].

Linear process – the real estate development model

If the question becomes, “How much would it take to empty the space,” I consider it something like facing an undeveloped property. Imagine this: trees and undergrowth cover the grounds, raw, undeveloped land like a site chosen to build a mini mall; but really it’s merely 300 prime real estate in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood (also known as Uptown).

At this time it is crammed with my art, my tools, etching presses, materials and supplies for everything from website maintenance, packing and shipping, display items, computers and furniture. A developer sizing up the space for a daily Sip ‘N Print incubator would first inventory the items worth saving or donating, and then hire a two man crew to clear everything else out, throw it in a dumpster rented for the purpose.

Then an interior designer and fabricator would be called in, along with an attorney to work out the insurance and licensing needs. After three to six months, the spot would be a private Sip ‘N Print serving coffee in the morning and early afternoon, an after-school program in the afternoon, and a wine and beer session in the evening.

It would be the prototype for a franchise, and the period of incubation would be used to tie up all legal aspects (patents, trademarks, etc.) which would engage the usual legal matters of forming a franchise. Following considerable testing and proving the proprietary aspects, a multi-million dollar business would be a fact—not merely a dream of mine.