How to Start an Art Supplies & Teaching Business

Could you find a small building that you could stock well with art supplies and make enough room for classes that you could teach? If your answer is yes, you could start and own a very enjoyable business of your own and enjoy the profits.

There are millions of people that enjoy artistic hobbies and crafts. If you are an artist yourself, you also know how hard it is to find a good art store that carries everything you want or need. Even better is a friendly store that also offers classes in different arts and crafts skills.

Since you will be opening a store of this type, as long as you offer different classes in many different hobby fields, you should be able to generate enough interest and money in your store's classes, and arts and crafts supplies.

The people signing up and taking your classes will need to buy the supplies from you thus generating sales. You could choose to charge a fee for your classes or offer the classes free as long as the customers buy the supplies for the classes from you.

You don't have to start with a huge store or building, just a practical size. If the store does well you can always grow with the business as it grows. Don't invest in a huge building that you may not be able to pay for and regret because it cost too much and eats up all of your profits. Make sure that you have enough room to stock the needed products and teach classes of around 10 people at a time, or so.

Try to offer classes in drawing, painting, sculpting, welding metal sculptures, jewelry making, children's art classes, and anything else you know and that your community might have an interest in learning.

This type of business may require a large investment at first, possibly in the range of about $25,000 or so, since you will need to stock shelves with products and secure a suitable business front. Your profit potential is promising as long as there are no other similar types of stores within 50 miles of the one you will open.

In carrying art supplies, you should be able to make a good profit because you can mark up your art supplies at least a 100% over what you will pay wholesale for them. This mark-up will help you with profit making sales.

If you are very industrious you can also come up with items to sell that are not typically found in other arts and crafts stores, especially the chain stores that are found all over the country.

Don't carry only the typical generic supplies; search out other brands and products that are harder to find. This will help you compete against the generic stores. Serious artists and crafts people will choose to bring their business to you also because they will build a loyalty with you, while enjoying personal care and interest from a local business owner and friend.

If you are able to offer a "delivery" plan, it may prove to be beneficial to your business and customers also. It would be similar to offering a 'pizza delivery' to your customers but you won't need to cook anything.

Artists can often run out of something when they are in the middle of a project and hate having to drop everything to run an errand to pick up something they need right away. Search for a student that could use the extra money or see if a friend or family member might be able make these deliveries for you.

Charge an extra $5-$10 for the delivery service and give the fee to the delivery person. Your customers will enjoy this optional service and this will set you apart from other art stores too!.