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July 9, 2007

House of glass

A chat with Daniel Kany, founder of Daniel Kany Gallery in Portland.
Founded: November 2006
Employees: Kany, plus one full-time and one part-time
Startup costs: $20,000
Projected revenue, year one: $250,000
Projected revenue, year two: $250,000-$275,000
Contact: 514-7475
89 Exchange St., Portland 04101
www.kany.net

When did you open?
November 24th, the day after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally the kickoff for the holiday shopping season. So it wasn't by chance. It was a five-to-eight business day, if you will. Unlike a lot of other businesses, when I open, it's a party. We drank champagne and family and friends and art people that I'd known for a long time were here. We didn't do anything, in terms of sales of work, before the New Year.

Why is that?
The artists that I have more experience working with are very high-end. Their work starts at around $4,000 and it goes up to $80,000. I primarily focus on glass art. But because of when I decided to open, we didn't have inventory yet from the more affordable artists. So there's a continuum right now from $50 to $50,000 in the gallery. Painting, sculpture, goblets. We have goblets for $50.

What were you doing before?
I was a director of two major galleries in Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho. William Traver Gallery [in Seattle] ˆ— I worked there for five years. It's the biggest glass gallery in Seattle.

What brought you to Maine?
I'm from Waterville. I came to Maine to see my family and friends, so because of that, I would stop in to see the two galleries that I always came to see, Greenhut and the [now-closed glass gallery] Stein Gallery.

Before we came here, I spent 2006 researching where I thought would make the most sense to go, and I started to think that Kansas City made the most sense. There's a ton of money, there's a ton of people, there's a history of the arts. But my wife put the kibosh on that because the quality of life was critical. She gave me a list of places where she would like to most live, and Portland, Maine, was at the top. So when I heard that Stein closed, it was obvious. Stein Gallery spent 20 years introducing a clientele to glass art.

When did you realize that you wanted to open your own place?
I had a reputation as an expert in glass art because I had worked at William Traver Gallery and I'm trained as an art historian. So a lot of the clients at the gallery that I was working at were my clients, they weren't the gallery's clients. When you're selling $400,000-$500,000 worth of glass art a year to other people, suddenly it becomes pretty clear that you could actually do reasonably well on your own.

I was fortunate [because] I had been selling artists that I knew I would be able to work with. I had over 60 artists say to me, "If you ever opened your own place, I want to work with you." These are heavily published artists whose shows are getting a lot of critical attention. So it's a good way for people who don't know me to feel good about this gallery. I can sell expensive works sight unseen, using photographs and the Internet to collectors [in] places like Texas and Florida. I'd say about 10% of our sales are the local sales.

Do you do a lot of marketing?
We do a ton of marketing. People don't know me locally. I've advertised in Portland magazine, I'm advertising in Port City Life, we post press releases on our website. We took an ad out in the Companion, the gay lifestyle paper here. And every month for every show we host parties. So my advertising budget this year is about $10,000.

How does payment work out between you and the artists?
The vast majority of what we do is 50-50. Shipping is an issue. You have to pay to ship the piece to the gallery, and pay to ship it [out]. You have a seven-foot-tall caustic painting and you're gonna ship that to Florida, you're gonna build a climate-controlled crate for it. The shipping of a piece like that can be over $1,000. When you add in marketing and handling it starts to cut down pretty quickly.
Interview by Kerry Elson


New Entrepreneurs profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to kelson@mainebiz.biz.

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