After the gift buying frenzy NZ Prints re-opens after the Xmas break

Xmas is always simply hectic. The sheer volume of gifts to be carefully packaged and dispatched on time not just in NZ but around the world makes it a real test of our systems. We make mistakes occasionally but our dispatch team will always try all alternatives to keep the customer (or gift recipient) happy if something has gone wrong. Xmas 2011 was Prints.co.nz's busiest ever with orders volumes up around twenty percent on 2010 albeit with a slightly lower average order amount meaning only a modest increase in print sales by dollar value.

After safely navigating through the Xmas gift season (our busiest time of the year) it was lovely to receive some complimentary emails that had been sent to our customer service team while New Zealand Fine Prints was closed for the Xmas/New Year holiday. Our favourite this year was the gift buyer who emailed us back "Thank you heaps. This picture brought tears of happiness to the recipient. Print is top quality, beautifully packaged with prompt delivery". Art is such a wonderful product to be selling - and to be spreading NZ's artistic culture onto walls everywhere with every print we sell is part of what gets us to work in the morning.

After a very eventful eighteen months in Christchurch with the ongoing earthquakes and our distribution and gallery moving from our home in Hereford St for nearly 50 years due to the quakes we look forward to 2012 being more benign for our staff and their families. This writer is looking forward to working on a series of NZ artist and print-maker profiles for NZ Art Print News (starting with controversial printmaker Lester Hall) and we are cataloguing our latest series of vintage NZ advertising posters, plus new prints from Dick Frizzell, Greg Straight, Fane Flaws and prints of landscape paintings by Wellington painter Ernest Papps.

And on a completely different note one of our staff snapped this incredible example of a NZ vernacular wooden picture frame while on holiday in the Marlborough Sounds. We are not sure if the framing style is one that would have a broad appeal in the framed wall art market today - but full marks for workmanship and dedication.

NZFP's gift voucher research results

When a newly married couple who had been given two $200 gift vouchers for their wedding present visited NZ Fine Prints to redeem their vouchers they happened to casually ask Ben what was the most common voucher value that we sold for wedding presents. It wasn't a statistic that we actively measured and it sparked a debate as to whether customers purchased vouchers of different amounts for different occasions - and what was the average value of the gift vouchers we sold anyway?

Customers have been able to buy email gift vouchers (pictured at left) through Prints.co.nz since the mid 1990s and traditional postal gift vouchers have been sold by NZ Fine Prints for longer than anyone working here now can remember (given that prints are the perfect arty gifts from NZ we have been delivering the physical prints as gifts since the 1960s).

It didn't take us long to realise that it was impossible to determine what gift occasion the vouchers were being purchased for - we might have been able to work this out for each separate voucher by analysing the messages sent to the gift recipient but A) We don't retain the gift message on file and B) this wasn't appropriate privacy wise as the information would not be collected for this particular purpose!

However we have worked out our most commonly given gift voucher/certificate is for $100 (although Stats 101 is a long a time ago for this writer we think this number is called the mode). The average amount over the last ten years has been a gift of just over $80, although we can see trend for higher value vouchers over this time - probably simply due to inflation or perhaps the higher value of prints that we now stock (our average sale amount has actually trebled over the past ten years). We sell the most gift vouchers in the two months leading up to Xmas, however January is also the season for weddings in NZ so the month after Xmas is also pretty close to pre-Xmas levels. As an aside paper is the traditional first wedding anniversary gift - something that we are yet to work out a good marketing campaign around (and we have been thinking about this gift buying occasion for years) but many newly weds are already aware of this tradition without our help! We think the neat thing about the couple's choosing a print as their first anniversary gift is that it is a purchase that can be made for both of them and the decision made together, it's an present they can choose together and give it to themselves so they can both enjoy it equally...

There is an almost even split between vouchers being delivered via email and by post. In fact over 2011 we have delivered around 60 postal gift vouchers for every 40 email ones, it seems an email voucher is great when you have left buying the gift to the last minute but a physical voucher through the mail (or at the presentation) is simply a more tangible gift.

And the answer to the question that we asked most often by people buying gift vouchers....the average time from delivery to redemption is just 15 days!

The annual Xmas gift-wrap debate at NZ Prints

The tyranny of choice...

Behind the scenes in late October one of the most important aesthetic decisions of the year takes place at NZ Fine Prints. Yes, we have to choose the colour of the gift-wrap that we are going to use for Christmas!  Our gift-wrap requirements are pretty special, it has to be light (because of the cost of delivering by airmail around the world when we are charged by weight), acid free (so it does not affect the paper the prints are printed on) and suit the festive occasion for which the buyer is giving.

This decision always creates a surprising amount of heat around the office.  In the conservative corner there are strong voices supporting green and red to be used as "traditional Xmas colours", the libertarians want the gift purchaser to choose at checkout time and the warehouse manager wants blue because it is his favourite colour! 

We also were faced with finding a new supplier for our gift wrap this Xmas season because the earthquakes in Christchurch closed down our normal source.   Thanks to the delightfully named "Gold Wing" packaging wholesalers in Auckland (with the rather charming company motto: "They are like trees growing beside a stream, trees that produce fruit in season") we have our 48 boxes of Christmas wrap on the courier to us today. And this Xmas gifts will be wrapped in …. gold!

List of sold out Tony Ogle editions since 2000

With an output of only 3-5 handmade editions annually Tony has not been very prolific despite a career spanning 30 years so far. We get lots of enquiries about whether particular Tony Ogle prints that no longer appear in Tony's collection at Prints.co.nz are still available.  Usually these are the result of people ogling (hee hee) a print they have seen that they would like to buy for themselves.  Unfortunately the answer is always no, because once an edition has sold out Tony never does another edition of the same print. Below is a summary for collectors by year of Tony's sold out editions from the last decade - it is safe to assume all prints dated before 2000 are sold out. 

2008
Fisherman's Cove

2007
Crimson Ridge
Matapouri Bach

2006
Tawharanui
Back Beach Bach
Days End

2005
Cathedral Cove Reserve

2004
Whale Bay Raglan
Red Couch' - Whangapoua Beach

2003
First Sight - Pohutukawa Point
Hahei Hideaway
Days End Te Henga
Kauwahaia Island & Erangi Pt O'Neills

2002
Rawhiti Coastline
Cabbage Trees - Waewaetoria Island
Hahei Pa & Islands

2001
Heaphy Track Nikau
Surf Check - Hot Water Beach
Ihumoana Island - Te Henga
Back to the Bach

2000
Great Barrier Summer
Century Agave
Piha Sunset

"Okiwi Crossing" Printmaker: Tony Ogle 600 x 360mm

All prints currently available from this talented NZ printmaker (including his latest releases in 2011) are listed in the Tony Ogle collection at NZ's specialist art print store.  The next edition to sell out will almost definitely be "Okiwi Crossing" (shown here), we have only two A/Ps (the rare artist proofs) left in stock today.

Robyn Kahukiwa receives Maori Arts Board award

Robyn Kahukiwa

The Māori Arts Board of Creative New Zealand holds the eponymous Te Waka Toi awards ceremony at Wellington Town Hall each year.

Last Saturday 3 September 2011 painter and printmaker Robyn Kahukiwa was awarded the prestigious Te Tohu Toi Ke award (the award for making a difference) for "challenging and broadening perceptions of Maori art". Her official citation lauded her 30 year career "challenging and broadening perceptions of Maori art" through the "creative innovation and international profiling of contemporary Maori art and issues ".  It's a recognition of Robyn's contribution to Maori art and New Zealand art generally and all of us here at New Zealand Fine Prints would like to congratulate her on this honour.

According to maorinews.com the annual Creative New Zealand Te Waka Toi Awards are the only national Maori arts awards to celebrate all art forms. Established in 1986, they recognise achievement in areas including writing, composition, oratory, performing, object and visual arts. Two scholarships are also awarded to emerging artists.

Te Waka Toi is the Māori Arts Board of Creative New Zealand. We read with some amusement on the Creative NZ website that the Maori Arts Board claim to be responsible for the "development of Māori art and artists in New Zealand" - apparently through its role in "investing in contestable funding" developing "initiatives" and the delivery of "tailored programmes".  We thought that the people responsible for the ongoing development of Maori art and artists in New Zealand were the collectors who purchased their artworks enabling them to keep being creative...