|
Owning a fine arts supply store in London "isn't dreamland," says Bijan Ghalehpardaz.
"But then there is the satisfaction, talking art all day with my customers -- that's heaven," he adds.
Ghalehpardaz has reason to be somewhat ambivalent about Bijan's Art Studio, the art-supply, framing shop and general arts community drop-in centre he runs at 673 Richmond St. (Actually, the store's on Mill Street, just west of Richmond).
"Really, this store was not supposed to happen," he says.
He came to Canada 19 years ago, an artist-sculptor with art degrees from college and the University of Iran and some years' experience as an art instructor in his Iranian homeland. And when he arrived in London in 1995, he simply wanted to rent studio space.
"Most of the places I looked were too expensive. Finally, I found a little place at Dundas and Adelaide (streets) and started painting there. The studio became better known and people came in looking for art supplies."
Ghalehpardaz found himself getting more and more involved in the art-supply business and, after a short series of moves, found a home on Mill Street almost seven years ago.
"The business has had its ups and downs. Sometimes I felt like leaving -- the banks wouldn't lend me money, I had to do everything, I was working 18 hours a day.
"Then business started picking up. People realized I was an artist and knew what I was talking about."
Meanwhile, Ghalehpardaz completed a masters art degree at the University of Western Ontario and was working as an art instructor and at the store while trying to keep up with his own painting.
"I couldn't catch up with my own work -- I have at least one show a year," he says. "So after 28 years teaching in Iran and Canada, I retired myself from the teaching game."
But, with family help, he kept the art store going. "There's no other way for an artist to survive (without a stable income), but there isn't tons of money. This is no dreamland."
However, Ghalehpardaz had made some astute moves during those years of long hours. He had framing experience and started a framing business (he now employs two part-time framers in a fully-equipped workshop behind his retail outlet) and he made a practice of hiring front-counter staff with a passion for art.
"Everybody who works here has an art degree," he says. "This is basically a rare store where the owner, the people who help and the customers all practise art."
It helps that London has a large, organized arts community, a growing number of retirees who have taken up art as a hobby -- "especially doing watercolours, which are clean but also most difficult" -- and a lively student art community.
"The schools are more involved in our town and the teachers are better trained. There's a huge difference from the way it was 30 years ago."
There's also a huge amount of money involved. Nova Scotia's arts and crafts industry, for example, is estimated to contribute $450 million a year to the province's economy.
Mercury is a venerable name in London when it comes to art supplies. For years, it operated out of an L-shaped location at York and Wellington streets, and for the past 16 has been known as Mercury Arts and Crafts Supershop at 332 Wellington.
Mercury has had to change shape and focus over the years, mainly because of a sudden avalanche of competition, a flood of cheap goods from China, the appearance of "dollar stores" and the muscling into the arts and crafts field of big chain stores such as Wal-Mart, Chapters and Canadian Tire, says ownership partner Jeff Oliver.
"When we moved out here, there was no Michaels, no Lewiscraft, no Wal-Mart," Oliver says. But by 2006, the savage competition had killed Lewiscraft, a 90-year-old, 35-store Canadian operation (with one outlet in London), and driven the giant Texas-based, 1,000-store Michaels operation to seek bankruptcy protection.
Michaels is North America's top-ranked retail outlet in the arts and crafts sector, its stores averaging about 1,670 square metres and carrying more than 40,000 items each. In 2006, the chain reported sales of US$3.86 billion.
On top of that, "dollar stores wreaked havoc, selling completely finished craft products at extremely low prices. At gift shops now, it's cheaper to buy the finished product than to buy the materials and make it," Oliver says.
"There's been a lot of change in the crafts industry, but right now, it looks like they're running out of ideas," he observes.
So Mercury sought a "better niche -- not as trendy," but "more upscale, with crafts pushing towards fine arts," he says. Out went the skeins of wool yarn. The appearance of personal computers and inkjet printers pushed Mercury out of commercial art supplies and ended the era when Mercury's calligraphers would hand-letter names on Canada Trust certificates at $2 a pop.
"But we still seem to be viable," says Oliver, who has a staff of five.
In deep south London, Barbara Kennedy is marking her 44th year as founder and guiding hand of Krafty Kennedys, an arts 'n' crafts supply business that started in her home and now strains the confines of a barn, custom-built in 1993, at 2711 Dingman Dr.
"I started it because I was a young mother with kids and not a lot of money and a truck-drivin' husband who wasn't home a lot," she says.
"We used to do everything (in terms of art and craft supplies). At one time, we had 11 employees; now, most of the time, there's just me. That's mainly why we downsized now that I've become a senior," says the dynamo, whose store was open every business day until one recent Friday when her husband, John, went in for heart surgery.
Now Krafty Kennedys focuses on selling art supplies, materials for paper tole and offering a framing service. Most of her customers are into decorative and folk art.
"I love art," she announces. "And I love to teach." She's been running a daily art class with six to eight aspiring artists. Her cast of instructors includes two tutors certified in the Bob Ross school of painting. (Ross was the well-known host of the PBS TV series The Joy of Painting, which ran from 1983 until shortly before his death of lymphoma in 1995.)
One of Barabra's certified instructors is her son, David, who also runs the framing business.
And a third generation of Kennedys lends a hand, too. "My a 14-year-old granddaughter helps out behind the counter," she says.
Kennedy may have pulled back to a smaller niche, but she still goes full throttle with what she does offer: "If one of my suppliers carries 101 colours, I carry them all, and that includes four or five brands of acrylics, to say nothing of all the oils and watercolours."
Over at 1090 Hyde Park Rd., Jodie Nuhn and Scrapbook Memories didn't just happen -- it seemed more like fate.
When Nuhn spotted a newspaper ad in 2004 for a job at what was then called the Scrapbook Studio, she thought it was right up her alley.
"I'd taken a fashion merchandising course at Fanshawe College and an interior decorating course at Westervelt College," she says. "Besides, I'd always been a crafty sort of person."
Nuhn took to the business like epoxy to paper. "I liked it so much that I bought the store (with help from family) six months ago."
Since then, Nuhn has changed the name to Scrapbook Memories to better reflect the nostalgic nature of "scrapbooking" -- the hand-crafting of personal scrapbooks that's now the third-biggest craft hobby in the United States, where supplying "scrappers" is a US$1.5 billion-a-year business.
Nuhn's store carries a wide inventory that has drawn cust-omers from as far away as Toronto, Sarnia and Owen Sound.
"Most of my advertising is by word of mouth," she says.
And crafty people is what Nuhn finds herself serving, hobbyists really into creating their own personalized greeting cards for Christmas or other occasions. The typical card or scrapbook display usually has a layered, three-dimensional quality "that makes it jump off the page," Nuhn says.
"A lot of kids are into it -- it's not just an adult thing. Years ago, people would create a scrapbook with, say, a day-at-the-farm motif. Now hobbyists are working photos into it. It has become much more creative."
Buttons, "stick-ons" -- small adhesive designs or pictures (often of animals or flowers) or patterned border strips and other decorative items -- are all grist for the hobbyist's creative mill, Nuhn says.
Often larger creations are framed and used as wall art, she says, so she also carries a wide range of stencils and framing materials.
