Flash Back Friday / Old Employers

 

A friend I worked with in college back in the 80's sent me an e-mail last week with pages from a 1934 Wards Catalog. He and I worked together at Montgomery Wards in Denton Texas while going to school.  Before posting the images above I went on a search for the images on-line so I could do a proper credit link. I think they came from this post: http://www.shangralafamilyfun.com/wishbook.html.  I also found a really cool site called wishbookweb.com that contains pics from many old Department store catalogs.

My Old Employers:
Retail ... I am out of it however my first and last job outside of my home studio were in retail. I worked in Juniors clothing at Wards, did visual merchandising for Neiman Marcus, worked at a small pet boutique selling gourmet biscuits, had a brief stint at a one hour photo processing store, I worked at Macy's, and was a stock and display manager at the Container Store for about 5 years. I learned a lot about customer service during my 2 decades of retail work, and I learned a lot about selling, both through developing people skills and through the art of presentation.  I know I would not be as successful today in my art career if I had not paid my dues, standing on my feet for long hours selling other people's product. I know so many artists that are shy about selling their work. Some are scared to succeed in my opinion, and will not do the work they need to do to market themselves. I work really hard at marketing because I would much rather sell my own artwork than other people's product and with a fine arts degree those are really my 2 options. I have been self employed for over 15 years now.  I seldom look back.