To continue our new video series called “Business Chat With”, we’re pleased to introduce our next guest – George O’Hanlon, Director at NaturalPigments.com.
Natural Pigments is a company based in northern California, that manufactures and distributes rare and hard-to-find materials for fine artists and decorators.
How the global art world is responding to the COVID-19 lockdown
Art will survive through every disaster and people will survive along with it. The energy of creation will never exhaust, and it is what helps to balance during the time of destruction. Coronavirus gave birth to countless maybe-not-professional but wonderful artworks.
You can be an artist if you have a story to tell. COVID-19 is a new experience for all of us and every “survivor” has something to say. The majority of people were convinced they are not skillful enough to create an artwork and frightened to fail what they haven’t even tried. But lots discovered their hidden talents owing to work shut down and thus unexpected spare time.
Thus, companies from this industry are starting to benefit from one effect of the coronavirus.
In view of the above, it’s a great experience to have a chat with a person, has been manufacturing and distributing hard-to-find materials for fine artists for 17 years.
What this business chat is about?
- George’s story on how his business originally started in a garage roughly 17 years ago. And how his different careers and solid expertise in fine art, chemistry, and marketing came together into an interest in manufacturing painting materials;
- What did eCommerce look like 17 years ago? How the guy who worked for the US government as a nuclear arms inspector, put together the entire eCommerce platform for selling art materials;
- Why George chooses an online stand-alone store as the only channel of doing and organizes it in a very different way with a focus on the high brand image. Why he believes that using discounts and any form of price competition is likely to be the ways of degrading your overall brand;
- COVID impact:
– an uptick in business to some extent;
– getting new people from all over the world, attending their online teaching webinars;
– a lot of issues with courier companies at the early stages of COVID;
- Marketing channels company uses, with initial off-page SEO, classic advertising, attending trade shows among them. Why social media is good for brand awareness but quite limited for this industry in comparison with the most powerful tool – e-newsletters;
- Advantages of being a small company. How the company with only 10 employees is becoming a multi-country business (USA, Canada, Germany, and big plans to enter the Australian market next year);
- George’s own philosophy and attitude towards the marketplace as a key to success and why to understand and feel the change is important for every business;
- And now for the icing on the cake, George gives three business advice to inspire young eCommerce entrepreneurs.
What-George-said
“…the vision is very key because products come and go all the time … company has a vision and develop the product that serves that vision…”
“… people went to art schools and but they didn’t learn how to draw, now things are changing, young people want to learn how to draw… “
“… the internet made this kind of niche (art materials) business really possible…”
“… vision about how consumers are dealing with things is a key to success…”
Are you intrigued? Then, watch the video ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Thanks for watching! I hope, you will find this talk useful and get something out of it for your business or at least for yourself. ?
BTW, in case you accidentally missed our previous chats:
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