FLAAR learns about giclee business success by visiting the leading giclee ateliers around the world.

Many giclee businesses are funded by the savings of the individuals creating the giclee studio. But other giclee partners need to take out a bank loan. Either way, you need a meaningful Business Plan (no bank will loan you a penny without a good Business Plan).

Fortunately, if you are clever, you can draft a giclee business plan yourself. There are thousands of web sites that offer a fill-in-the-blanks kind of business plan form. But since none of these standard Internet business plan websites have experience with the real world of giclee, you will need to learn some of the jargon and the reality of a giclee business.

Or you may prefer to do giclee as a hobby: if you make money that’s nice, but not all giclee studios have profit as the primary motive. Many artists feel proud when others want their paintings enough to buy them (and it imay be a lot easier to sell 100 prints of your masterpiece than paint 100 original masterpieces).

The artist who created the world giclee in the 1990’s still has his giclee atelier. I have spent hours at his giclee studio to understand his workflow. Jack Duganne is a gracious host as well as the world’s best known giclee workshop.

Giclee is most popular (and most financially successful) in the US, but in other countries you can actually make more profit precisely because there are so few giclee studios outside the US. This photograph is taken in Turkey.

In the US I visit the two leading giclee ateliers on a routine basis: Squirt Printing on the West Coast and Fine Art Impressions on the East Coast.

The one giclee atelier that I do not have photographs of is a company that invested about a quarter of a million dollars in buying the absolute best giclee digitization and production equipment, but made one fatal mistake. This company went bankrupt within the first year. The FLAAR Reports are being updated to document where this company went wrong.

Actually they could have saved themselves and not gotten so deep into trouble if they had just understood color management better. To help you understand color management jargon, FLAAR provides a color management glossary at no charge.

Since there are over a thousand web sites interested in selling you a Business Plan, but not more than two or three that know anything about giclee, what FLAAR offers is a head start with the knowledge about giclee that you need to comprehend before, during, and after you draft your Business Plan. The money aspects of a Business Plan only you can know, because every country, every state, and every city has a different business climate. Since the FLAAR Reports are read in over 73 countries around the world, we offer the basic core information about the reality of a giclee business.

Obviously your giclee business will be easier to start if you speak with Dr Hellmuth in advance directly. In many cases giclee partners fly Nicholas to their city (anywhere in the world; Dr Hellmuth is at home in almost every country on earth). But since it is obviously unrealistic for all our thousands of readers to bring Nicholas to their home city, we try to offer as much information as possible directly in the FLAAR Reports.

What kind of giclee studio do you wish to become?

Many artists with to produce giclee for profit. Other artists are content to produce giclee for their family, friends, and business associates.

One giclee studio that I was a consultant for intended to open giclee ateliers around the world.
Probably half the giclee startups are by people over 50 who are retired or who run their giclee as a second-business.

Some companies are already printing signage and would like to add giclee as an additional profit center.

Many are mom and pop endeavors. Others are strictly business partnerships. Many giclee endeavors are initiated by individuals with no partners (neither a spouce nor another business person as a partner).

BEFORE you start writing your Business Plan, be sure to fully understand the giclee workflow.

The giclee workflow is the series of pre-production and production steps that you will go through to take an original painting and (about 12 steps later) have a sellable giclee print for your eager clients.

Color management is one crucial anchor of any giclee workflow so be sure to understand ICC color profiles, RIP software and related aspects.

First posted January 2, 2009.