Business update - April 2017

good evening this is what what printmaker Dave for speaking to our fans and supporters from our shop here in Osaka in Tokyo when I first became a solo print maker back in the 1980s I learned that it was very important to be active on social media at the time I never sold prints individually but made a living by having subscribers to my work people waited for the new one to arrive every month but just a minute did I say social media in the late 1980s well there was of course no Facebook and YouTube back then for me social media took the form of a paper newsletter that I produced and sent to subscribers four times a year it performed exactly the same function that Facebook does these days it kept my subscribers and fans informed about what I was doing and what was happening in my world I included interviews with craftsmen I talked about the work itself and I even featured interviews with some of the collectors too no joke this was real and interactive social media I made it a habit every year to include an annual report for my supporters this had information on recent media coverage how the annual exhibition gone and included a complete financial statement for the previous year I always felt that it was important to keep my subscribers and supporters both aware and involved in how things were going for me during both up years and down years and there were plenty of both along the way I started that first subscription series back in 1989 and here's a graph showing the overall income since then the numbers on these graphs and charts by the way are in yen for a quick mental switch to US dollars just think of the values as thousands when you see fifty on this graph that's roughly fifty thousand dollars it's been quite a ride the blue sections of this graph from where I was making friends completely by myself carving and printing everything and mending everything out to subscribers the first ten years of it here was the long 100 poet series started on a shoestring but making a nice living by the end this was followed by a number of different projects some more successful than others now here in 2006 where this green color appears marks the beginning of the mocha Hong Kong project where I began to publish prints together with hired craftsmen and sold them through an online website 2012 here this is the beginning of the collaboration with Jade Henry the uqa heroes project both single prints that's the red areas here and subscriptions the yellowish area and then a couple years later 2014 saw the opening of the Asarco shop colored here in purple these past few years have been so much fun we're making tons of beautiful prints and spreading them literally all around the world there are now 18 people working here not all of them full-time but for most of them it's the most important part of their income the wonderful work we've done together with Jen is finding its way into major museum collections and every month hundreds of people laughed their way out of this building after having a print party I have no way to quantify the amount of smiles and happiness we are bringing to the world and a very strong argument can be made that we're the ones responsible for bringing this entire craft back to life up to five years ago it was very nearly moribund but now with every other publisher in town having jumped onto the pop culture bus lukio a bandwagon every craftsman town is busy that paper makers are drowning in orders and things are looking pretty good for traditional woodblock print making here in Japan but it with all this we here at moko Honka now have reached the kind of crisis point and the problem is me and how I'm using my time if you have watched a bunch of our videos this series on the great wave or making you queue a hose print you're probably thinking of me as a carver and printer I wish these days my life is very very different let me count the ways our daily weekly and monthly bookkeeping I do it all loser pro for the yearly tax returns only our web work the shopping cart the online print catalog updating I do it all writing and maintaining the complete suite of custom software we used to run our business both on the Mac and for our back-end management system it's all done by me the sizing work for preparing our printmaking paper that's me although good news lisanne is one of our staffers has now taken over making a blank wood blocks it's a great help for me all the staff planning which prints to work on which printers for job makes you the block say arranging the paper that's me whatever training of the printers that's getting done here it's of course coming for me although not much of this recently monthly payroll processing that's me all of the communication with each and every customer about each and every print order and party reservation that's me print parties mother stuff keiko-san and callous on there assisting with this but I've done myself more than 130 of them this year the subscription planning what prints to make the hunched of the tracing the preparation the color separation that's me videos it's all me planning writing sitting in front of the camera there's nobody behind the camera there's a clicker it's all me including the editing the Facebook page the blog the social media this is all my job running the business over all the product planning what to publish who to hire how to allocate resources what can we spend money on did I forget anything probably now if we had a bean-counter type coming in here to advisors and what to do I know exactly what you would say Dave hire people to do a bunch of those routine jobs and get busy with the work that only you can do get carving get back to your bench and finish that damn octopus then get busy with the next one the next one he would tell me to make more in better videos this is something I really bring value to us with and of course I could get back to working that project to make high-quality carving tools so we started up a few years ago that's what his advice would be so why haven't I done this why haven't I hired people to do these daily routine jobs because I just can't afford you my bank account runs to zero each and every month just getting our prints made and paying everybody and keeping the shop in operation and the killer is because I myself don't take a salary I have priced all those jobs in that list I just gave you I've priced all the things I do at the zero cost I have kind of trained this organization to get all that work for free our profit last year the money left over after expenses which is a smidgen below five percent which i think is probably not bad the from that I paid my income taxes and medical insurance I got my food and the rest was just plowed straight back in now I'm convinced that this place is viable it's just that I'm in that catch-22 if I could just get away from my damn computer and get back to my real work that carving in video I could create tons more revenue but without that revenue here first I can't hire those people to cut B loose to get back you see where I am so let's try and string this together our business is fine we're making you selling lots of prints and people who want to support us are doing so that way but we have no access to funding that would help us move the organization to a more stable and profitable level but there are plenty people out there who would love to help us with this there's an obvious approach staring me in the face it's clearly time for me to consider setting up a patreon account over the last few days I've been thinking working and how best to do that another one I'm really torn about this I'm kind of running out of options right now so I'm going to take the plunge and give this a try I have created a page on the patron website which outlines how small amounts of fan support can provide a specific path for me to get back to that carving I hope that enough if you will find it worthwhile looking over there and then perhaps participating at even the smallest of levels and feeling kind of optimistic about this I've already began a search for the first staff member that I would hire under this financing program if these things do indeed come together my days of long hours at the keyboard might be behind me excuse me I think I'll head back to my bench back there do some dusting and then sharpen the rust off my chisels thank you again and I'll see you real soon with a real video next time

Channel: David Bull

Views: 121,616

Rating: 4.9584079 out of 5

Keywords: woodblock printmaking, mokuhankan, Japanese prints, Japanese printmaking, Patreon

Id: MdRcaZtXRDk

Length: 8min 53sec (533 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/rargar]

David Bull is a wonderful artist and makes great content. I am definitely going to support him even though i can only help a small amount. I hope others do as well!

[u/Sixty-to-Zero]

What a wonderfully well spoken man. Him and Bob Ross would have probably had a ball with their own show together. Though towards the end it's an ad but it's still a good video.

Good post OP.

[u/girlhassocks]

Sure this isn't one of his making something videos. But he is truly a great artist that has been dedicated to the craft for a long time. On top of that he has been living in another country. He didn't mention how he likely has to navigate the Japanese system of business management and the stressors of that, due he's been there for some time. He also appears to do business in English and Japanese which must be a challenge as well.

I'm proud to support him, as someone who studied Japanese art and lived in the region for some time. Share his channel and bring him more viewers! He deserves it.

[u/broadcasthenet]

I mean this is nice and all but does this belong here? It doesn't have any of the content that this reddit requires.