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When the founder of Qoro Fine Art Services in New Castle, Delaware named his new business, he combined the letter “Q” for quality with the Spanish word for gold. But according to one satisfied client, the name Qoro could also be an acronym for “Quality of Reproduction-Outstanding!”
And while Qoro does have the high-resolution camera, color-management expertise, and wide-format printing equipment needed to make excellent reproductions of original art, the firm offers much more than gold-quality printmaking. As its owners Frank Davis and Kathy Griffith have interacted with galleries, museum curators, art publishers, and art schools and investigated the potential for selling art online, they have gained insights that can help artists with every facet of their careers. They freely share some of these insights online and through consultations with each artist they work with.
Davis and Griffith have worked with enough artists to understand that no two artists are alike, and each has different goals, aspirations, and levels of knowledge and experience. Qoro gladly provides personalized, high-quality printmaking services to all artists—whether they are just starting out after graduation, pursuing an art career after retiring from another job, or are already selling originals for thousands of dollars each.
“I care about every piece of art that comes through our doors,” says Davis, who is an artist himself.
Qoro has made prints for hundreds of artists, including works by masters such as N.C. Wyeth. They also help institutions such as the Delaware Art Museum and Delaware Historical Society supplement their revenues by offering reproductions of selected works of painters such as Edward Hopper and illustrator Howard Pyle. Qoro has also reproduced paintings so that each heir of an estate can have a high-quality replica of a treasured family heirloom art.
Advising Pigment Ink Developers: One facet of Qoro’s history that sets it apart from other printmakers is that the staff provided insights to some of the chemists and researchers who were developing some of the pigment ink technology that has enabled inkjet printing to gain widespread acceptance in fine-art publishing.
Qoro co-owner Kathy Griffith takes pride in helping all types of artists succeed. Qoro’s full-replacement guarantee helps make buyers comfortable enough to display their art wherever they want with the confidence that it will always remain as beautiful as it was the day they purchased it. (www.qoro.com)
Qoro’s founder Bill Jensen was a frame-shop owner, whose friends included chemists who were working with inkjet printer manufacturers on pigment inksets that would provide both the wide color gamuts and long print life that art publishers, galleries, and collectors would expect. So Jensen started Qoro as a printing business in the late 1990s and started exploring how inkjet printing could be used to reproduce paintings and fulfill orders for art sold online.
Although Jensen has since retired, Davis and Griffith have both been with Qoro since 2000. They recall talking at length with ink chemists and color scientists about how inkjet-printing technology could be improved to meet the expectations of potential producers and buyers of art prints. During these consulting sessions, Davis and Griffith gained extensive firsthand knowledge about some of the chemistry and color science behind print permanence and image quality.
Today, Griffith and Davis are so confident in the quality of the inks, substrates, and protective coatings that they use in their printmaking that they offer Qoro customers a full replacement guarantee.
High-Quality Equipment and Materials: For image capture, Davis uses a PhaseOne large-format camera. It has enough resolution to give printed reproductions the illusion of a three-dimensional surface. For printing, he currently uses a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF 8100 printer with Onyx RIP software.
Many of the art papers and canvases Qoro uses come from LexJet. “LexJet has been a godsend for us,” says Davis. “As a company they have the same idea that we have—that the customer comes first. When I call my salesperson Dustin Flowers, he treats me as if I’m the biggest account out there.” Davis first started buying from LexJet five years ago after he had tried a number of different canvases: “We’d find a good product, and then the company would go under. When we got to LexJet, everything stabilized. There isn’t much variation among their Sunset canvases, and where there is a problem, it is resolved immediately. If LexJet is aware of the problem, they’ll ship out a new roll immediately.”
Along with the Sunset Select Matte Canvas, Davis uses either Sunset Gloss or Matte Coatings, depending on which look a client prefers. He likes the fact that the coating doesn’t run as he applies it with his sprayer.
New Opportunities through Social Networking: In addition to working one-on-one with each artist, Davis and Griffith have started sharing ideas with the many artists who follow Qoro on Facebook and Twitter. Davis has already learned that social networking can lead to some surprising opportunities. For example, he connected with a professional home stager who wanted to temporarily rent framed art from Qoro to display in a home that a real-estate agent was trying to sell.
Qoro also works to educate galleries and museums about how selling art prints can help them increase their total sales. Plus, Davis serves on the board of a local art college. This helps him better understand what artists are being taught about business and how to market their work after graduation.
I hope that in the next 5 to 10 years, the art world undergoes the same type of transformation and expansion that has occurred in the wine market,” says Davis. “Thirty years ago, wine was reserved only for those with educated palates. The average person was afraid to go into a wine shop and reveal how little they understood about different varieties and vintages.”Now that a greater variety of wines is being sold at a wider variety of price points, almost anyone feels comfortable enough to go into a wine store and buy whatever appeals to them, without waiting for someone to tell them what’s good and what isn't
As companies such as Qoro help make more art more available at a wider range of prices, perhaps more people will feel more comfortable buying whatever art they happen to like.