NEW YORK - If you’ve ever walked into a professional framers, you’ll be familiar with a sense of confused outrage. At first glance, it isn’t clear why buying a small frame at Target should cost US$9 (S$11.80) and buying the same frame at a custom framers should cost as much as a Louis Vuitton handbag. The knee-jerk response is to assume that you are being ripped off. You are one of the few people too smart to fall for that kind of scam. Corruption must lie at the heart of the framing profession.
So began my investigation. On behalf of befuddled consumers, I met a range of framers to better understand how the business works and why they charge what they do. Framing is no different from any other business: You get what you pay for.
A series of talented people are “handcrafting to your specifications something that is unique”, said Mr Adam Collignon, 43, who runs Greenpoint Frames in New York. “This should be valuable; this should be expensive.”
Mr Collignon was an artist who made high-end furniture before taking over the business in 2008 from a couple who were retiring. He used to worry that he might be taking advantage of people. The longer he’s been in the business, the more he has appreciated that he is not wealthy. Framing is a labour-intensive job – Mr Collignon said that a frame could take two days’ worth of work – and there are numerous costs to consider. At Greenpoint, you could pay US$2,000 for a 46cm-by-60cm hand-carved, water-gilded frame with “optium museum acrylic”, the trademark name for a deluxe type of anti-reflective protection from UV rays favoured by museums.
But that cost could rise or fall, depending on where you go. It’s not just about how a frame is made, but where it is made and how much profit a framing shop expects to generate. Mr Collignon said there are framers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that charge three times as much as he does because they are in the neighbourhood with the densest population of millionaires in the US. He wants to make a decent living but avoid feeling inaccessible to the community. “If I have to say no to someone who doesn’t have enough money to frame their grandmother’s kindergarten report card, it’s just not interesting to me.”
As soon as a customer wants something bespoke, regardless of geography, they will incur labour costs. “If we’re making you a frame, we’re making you a piece of furniture,” said Mr John Brooks, 71, who runs Isis Creative Framing in Oxford, England.
And every single step costs money: The photo or artwork needs to be brought in, stored and logged; the framer will need to purchase materials, cut, join, wrap. Mouldings, the wood that most people consider the frame, can cost US$2 to US$50 a metre; four sheets of 122cm-by-92cm museum-grade glass can be around US$1,266 a pack.
Isis bought two electronic mount cutters that would cost more than US$100,000 to replace. Over the last few years, its insurance has tripled. “I don’t know that you’ll find many picture framers driving a Rolls-Royce,” Mr Brooks said. “Now, what that tells you is a lot of what we do is pretty much for the fun of it.”
Upselling is part of the business: Mr Antonio Yepes, 40, who runs Thou Art Framing in north-west London, deliberately shows customers a thicker mount at first, rather than the cheapest on offer. He said he knows a man who developed pricing software for picture framers who says that if more than 75 per cent of people say yes to your price, you’re not charging enough.
Frontispiece is based in east London and has framed a photo for King Charles, and one of Madonna’s bras.
“It’s never gonna be about the money with us because we ain’t expensive,” said Ms Julie Clark, 61, who works there. She and owner Reginald Beer think that nearby businesses charge three times as much as they do. “That’s why we’re poor, and they’re rich,” Ms Clark quipped. Mr Beer, who is 79, takes home US$1,267 a month, which he halves with his wife; Ms Clark earns “over US$760 a week”, according to Mr Beer.
Mr Yepes said that his full-time staff members earn between US$31,000 and US$38,000 a year. He thinks that after all his deductions, he might profit around US$38 on a US$114 frame. His wife tells him to raise his prices, but he worries about being compared unfavourably with other framers. (While customers might not know how much it costs to make a frame, diligent ones will know how much rival businesses are charging.) If Mr Yepes’ materials start costing more, he might increase his prices but not his mark-ups.
At Thou Art Framing, a good-quality, 38cm-by-48cm black wooden frame with the kind of 2mm glass you would find in any department store would cost US$164 (US$202 with UV anti-reflective glass). Mr Yepes shows me on his customer database that Rowan Atkinson, the actor best known for his character, Mr Bean, has visited on various occasions, spending US$386 here and US$443 there.
In the end, I learnt that framing is like any other service or goods that range from bargain-basement to high-end luxury. As Mr Collignon said, we don’t question the amount of money that bankers earn, but we think there is something suspicious about craftspeople like framers making lots of profit. Why are the services of a good framer underestimated?
“What you’re paying for with the frame is not only the frame itself,” Mr Collignon said. “You’re paying for the ability to enjoy that artwork for the rest of your life.”
Much like a work of art changes drastically according to how it is framed figuratively, understanding the world of framing relies on having the right context. It’s not that it’s necessarily expensive; it just depends on how you frame it. NYTIMES
