SeattlePrintmakersCenter

141015 Market for printmaking presses 

Market size is important to Seattle Printmakers Center 

Bill Ritchie: 

For ten years I collected buyers of etching presses as a collaborative venture. I put the art, craft and design before profits. I was rewarded with a list of about 150 people, and almost every one of these buyers (some of whom bought two presses) gave me information about their hopes, their background and preferences.

I was building my customer base one customer at time; I also exchanged emails with them, not only on printmaking and how to use and maintain their press, but on ideas for building businesses that utiilize their printmaking and people skills.

At a point about halfway through the decade (between 2004 and 2014) I made an analysis and the mathematics I used suggested that about a million people in the USA would buy one of my presses if, one, they knew about the halfwood presses and, two, if we could produce the halfwoods in quantity and maintain quality and customer support.

By the end of the decade (this year) I had changed my assumption that a hand printing press is for production. I realized a press is for an experience, and I transformed the meaning of printmaking. Printmaking is as much—or more—about experience than it is about producing prints.

Compare the printmaking experience to a blend of performance art and visual art. I found allies in this philosophy in a handful of musicians. This shift was triggered when these musicians bought my press. Renowned bluegrass artist, Peter Rowan, for example, bought two Mini Halfwood Presses—the well-received Legacy model and the new Pram model. He also bought a printmaker chest.

My work at the university had shown me and some of the students that the sharing by a group of a single piece of equipment—whether a printing press, table saw or a video camera—sometimes leads to creative collaborations. Also, live performers are aware that they need an audience; printmakers are used to making multiples to have enough art to go around, something like having a live audience. The painter, on the other hand, has an audience of one owner of his or her painting.

Therefore, the market size for the halfwood presses—these presses being one of the main sources of sustained operating costs for the Seattle Printmakers Center programs—can be examined from both the production side and the experience/performance side.