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Hi, I'm Paul Brent. I'm an artist who licenses my work,
and I'm here in my studio tonight.
I have a few products with me that I designed.
Here is the very first product that I ever designed
and it’s a series of bookmarks that I designed for Quality Artworks in 1988.
here is another mitt that I designed for Cyprus
a melamine tray,
and here's one of my tote bags for Sun and Sand.
People ask me how I began licensing
and I first began my art career when I was selling my art in
outdoor art shows and in galleries, and I decided that
I would start publishing my art work and I started attending
the publishing trade shows like Art Expo and
the ABC shows at that time - that stood for Art Buyers' Caravan.
So, at one of those shows, I believe it was one of the Atlanta ABC shows,
I was approached by Mr. John Harrison, who
is the President of Quality Artworks
to design a series of bookmarks for his company.
I really didn't know what licensing was at that time
but he gave me a contract and I had my lawyer look it over,
and I thought: Well, this is just another way to sell my art work.
From there, I soon heard about the SURTEX show, and thought,
if I'm going to be in licensing, I really need to go to that show,
so I went to the show and it was really the second show that SURTEX put on,
and I found out where I had my strengths and where I had my weaknesses.
Most artists who were there were selling their work for a flat-fee
and that included the copyright.
I really had to educate people about licensing.
I had hired a friend to help me in licensing in the position of Licensing Director
and so from there I just progressed one company at a time.
At the first show, I made contacts with
an insulated barware company and that turned out to be a very good project,
and the other company that I found at the very beginning was
Custom Designs which was a division of Springs Industry,
and I went on to design ten different bed linen sets for them.
People do ask me how did my career progress to what it is now,
and from that point I really found that my
unique style was desirable to manufacturers and at the next show,
I signed a contract actually for a flat-fee to design
one wallpaper border that was going to be marketed by Seabrook,
and on the strength of that, the following year,
I signed a contract to design an entire book for Seabrook,
and I went on to design eight full wallpaper books with Seabrook
and that really put me on the map with collections and "repeats"
that could go in to a lot of other industries.
People do ask me how I find time for everything.
My wife is my business person, and I have a Licensing Director who
has been with us for 13 years now,
and there are two graphic designers who work with me
and I have adapted from doing all of the artwork myself,
painting every single repeat,
painting every single element over and over again
and putting it in the right place to where I now have
two graphic designers who work with me who manipulate my work digitally
and put it into different formats for all sorts of different products.
People do ask me what is the major reason for my early success,
and I really do believe it’s that I had a unique style.
I could put things into repeat and there was definitely a need for
for coastal designs in the marketplace, so all of those three things together
really made for an early success that I was able to build my career around.
The categories that I've had the most success at are:
home, gift and stationery.
In the home category the strongest area is the bath.
I've designed everything for the bath that you can think of,
including wallpaper, tile, shower curtains, shower accessories,
and rugs -
just about anything that has even gone into the bath, I've designed.
After that, pool and patio is a great category for me.
Then the bedroom and the kitchen are also strong categories.
Right now, I'm working with Tara Reed
to give information to artists about licensing,
and we've had several teleseminars and a branding seminar
that are recorded and you can go and listen to these,
and you can also join us - free -
for our next lively teleseminar which
is going to happen on May 26th.
You can find out more information about that by going to
www.askpaulbrent.com
- hope to see you there. Bye.
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