This article is re-printed from www.drewbrophy.com blog
Rick and Natalie Rietveld were heroes to us. We would visit their booth at trade shows where they marketed their clothing company.
Rick’s art was colorful and wild, like Drew’s but in a different style. We envied their family owned business, one that printed Rick’s art on high-end men’s shirts, tees and board shorts.
I would call Natalie every now and again and ask art business advice. She was a tough lady, and I admired that. She taught me what to expect out of clients and how to get it.
In 2001 Drew left Lost, a company that he painted clothing designs for. There was a large demand for Drew’s art, and now that it would no longer be available through Lost, we thought we’d follow the Rietveld’s influence and start our own label.
Son of the Sea, Inc. was born. It allowed us to fill the requests for Drew’s art on a variety of products: t-shirts, art prints and stickers. We planned to add more items to the line, but this was a good start.
In the first two years, the financial growth of the business was magical. We were selling to over 250 of the surf shops in the U.S. We hired sales reps and in-house employees. We rented a large warehouse. We took out advertising. We sent Drew to tour surf shops around the U.S. to meet his fans at retail stores, grass-roots style.
By year three, it was wearing down on us. Running a wholesale operation was taxing on us, because we weren’t cut out for this type of business.
We found that instead of doing the things we loved, we were doing things we hated; like dealing with employees that didn’t want to work; fighting with vendors that screwed up our orders. We lost money on surf shops that didn’t pay their bills.
And the worst result of it all – Drew wasn’t painting anymore. His time was spent on quality control, employee control, and inventory control.
The second worst thing – we couldn’t take vacations. You can’t leave for two weeks when you are growing a wholesale business.
We became grumpier and grumpier. Looking back, I remember that time period as being the unhappiest years of my life. I felt overwhelmed by all the weight on my shoulders of keeping the business growing and keep the employees happy. I wasted hours dialing for dollars to get surf shops to pay their bills.
The business was bad on our marriage – Drew and I never fought much before, but during these years, we had vicious arguments. We were stressed out and exhausted.
One day Drew came into the office looking somber. “You won’t believe what I just found out.” He said sadly. “Rick and Natalie are getting divorced.”
He sat by my desk and grabbed my hand. “If we don’t change what we’re doing, it could happen to us.”
Four years into the Son of the Sea, Inc., we shut down our wholesale division. We had already started licensing Drew’s art with success, so we decided to go in that direction entirely.
We fired our employees, said goodbye to our sales reps, moved out of the big warehouse and cut down our expenses.
We found peace and happiness in a small studio about a mile from our home. The space had an office for me and a showroom and a back room where Drew could paint. And paint. And paint!
Since then, we’ve focused entirely upon licensing and sales of original artwork, which frees us up to be able to travel and work wherever we are. Or not work at all.
And we went back to taking 8 weeks of vacation a year.
Do we regret our biggest mistake ever? No, we don’t. We learned valuable lessons during that time that we would never have learned otherwise. We understand what it takes to run a wholesale business, and we know that we will never go down that road again. We don’t care to have employees or to be chained to our business.
We prefer freedom. And Drew, well, all he wants to do is paint.
Maria xxoo
22 Responses
Excellent food for thought. The more time away from pursuing the passion of art and all it offers in the way of comfort, solitude, teaching, escaping, and just plain making you feel good, the worse off you become. It can be hard though to keep yourself behind the canvas, with lots of emails and events and people to talk to about your art. But it comes with the territory… keeping it balanced is key. 🙂
This is both enlightening and very frank blog, I love the comments the way that Maria took responsibility for realizing she didn’t regret starting son of the sea, because I’m sure she and hubby learned a ton. a great story…and having had a similar experience, it resonates with me! Love it!
Thanks for your comment! I made a lot of mistakes, and I try hard not to regret them and instead see them as lessons learned. Sometimes, those lessons cost me a lot financially, but I have somehow survived! I’d like to hear more about your experience along these lines – maybe you could share?
This post rocked, Maria.
I so agree with you when you use what you call what you did wrong as a mistakes as I do not believe they are mistakes for they are opportunities in disguise. There are so many things that can be accomplished at this stage.
Kenneth
What kind of person shares such personal and valuable info. Thanks
Life is a series of lessons. We learn as much from failure at as we do from success. Once we learn a lesson we get to move on for more lessons. If we don’t learn the lesson we’ll get another chance, and another, and another, until we learn what we needed to. As always thanks Maria.
Yep, just learned this lesson the hard way!
OK…I’m convinced! :0)
~ Katie Kenney
I was looking up Rick Rietveld on the internet and stumbled onto this write up. Wow! Very interesting read. I’m glad Drew and you are happier now with the route you’ve taken.
Hi, Maria!
Been doing my homework on how to become a successful freelancer and found you this morning. Thanks for sharing all this wealth of information!!
A fan!
Josep
Sure would love to know where my comment as of yesterday disappeared to.
Kenneth
Very good advice for all upcoming artists and veterans as well. Paint on Drew! Glad you found yourself and the proper path to happiness.
Maria,
I have been struggling with defining my new business model and this article spoke to me! Thank for your story, it helped me focus.
Linda
great story and useful information for many artists…