Crafts Gallery Joins The Virtual Parade
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday November 29, 1999
The database of clients is a wooden filing box in the corner of the room and, as few of the artists Caroline Smith represents have computers, she has to print off copies of the Web site and post it to them for approval.
Csportfolio.com.au, a virtual gallery specialising in corporate gifts, does not accept credit card payments online Ms Smith prefers to speak to someone on the phone, or have the number faxed through.
But from her Bowral home, Ms Smith is conducting all her business through the Internet.
A 1998 Australian Bureau of Statistics report found Australia's commercial galleries were scraping by on a meagre 3.5 per cent profit margin, as rent and transport ate into commissions.
Ms Smith, who has previously worked for Craft Australia and set up department store David Jones' craft store, believes the Web is the answer.
This week she is packing an order of 225 bowls for a Texan investment firm that found her online.
Set up two years ago and the first to be accredited by Craft Australia, csportfolio.com.au features ceramics, blown glass, silverware and turned wooden containers, ranging in price from a couple of hundred dollars to $1,500.
Ms Smith continues to make trips to Sydney to show work in corporate boardrooms but says once the gallery established a relationship with new clients or collectors they will order online.
``People are much more comfortable now with going straight to the Web," says Ms Smith.
The big disadvantage of a running a virtual gallery is missing out on that most old-fashioned kind of ``browser". ``I don't have people coming into the gallery and picking up a piece of work and loving it," she says.
An annual Yellow Pages survey in June found a third of small businesses in NSW expect to sell products over the Internet in the next year but only 12 per cent did now.
The sector is being hotly chased by the likes of Telstra and IBM, marketing packaged technology ``solutions" as a way to sell Internet connections, personal computers or software.
But Ms Smith says that although e-commerce represents a more cost-effective solution for her than a traditional gallery, it does not come cheap.
``I pay a monthly fee to have the Web site and pay a fee every time someone looks at it," she says. Each time the site is updated to feature new work, or marketing e-mails are sent to regular buyers, she pays again.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald