North Texas PPFA Chapter

The North Texas Chapter of PPFA met at Frame Destination, owned and operated by Mark Rogers, on May 18^th.  The chapter would like to thank Mark for the excellent program on his internet based framing business. After a short social time,  which always includes food, Mark walked us through his business from inception to present with a slide show and then completed the program with a tour of his plant. Mark told us about a few humorous  things that happened in the course of building the business,  like the home owners association meeting that turned out to be about him, the saw that was way too big to fit through the existing doors and the mat cutter that caused  major electrical problems.

Mark’s background is in electrical engineering. As an ammeter photographer he found that he could not find an inexpensive mat and frame source for his photographs.  About the time that he was looking for frames for his work, he began to be interested in starting a business of his own. Being an engineer and detail oriented kind of guy, Mark began to do some research on how to open and operate a business. He continued working as an engineer while he did his research and planned how he would go about  opening his own business. Mark set up his website and Frame Destination was born.  The actual framing operation began in Mark’s garage in 2003.  Mark told us that he showed Debbie Leus, who at the time was with Nielsen Baninbridge, his business plan. She liked the plan and talked with her company about allowing Mark to order materials in less than minimum required quantities. He continued working as an engineer in the early stages of his business.  After work he would go home, check his website and start the process of putting together the frame orders that he had received from the website that day and shipped them  out as quickly as he could possibly manage. Mark was able to keep the turnaround time short by offering only a few choices in the frame styles and mat colors. This allowed him to keep enough stock on hand to complete the orders. As his business has grown he has increased choices of frame styles, mat colors  and designs.

The goals for Frame Destination include:

1.       Help the customer – including sending them to a competitor if it is not profitable to meet the customers need.

2.       Help his employees

3.     Maintain cash flow

4         Efficiency –

A.  he does not want to pay people to wait, walk, set up, or redo.
B.   continually improve his equipment.
C.  decrease scrap

5.  Improve margins – figure out where he is losing money and stop the loss

6.  Reduce cost of goods sold.

To keep his business growing Mark says that he is always looking for a new product and new marketing  avenues ; i.e. face book, photo contest, etc.  He feels that it is important to know your market, keep your focus and do only what you do best.

The Larson-Juhl office in Farmers Branch was the site of the October 12th meeting of the NTPPFA Chapter. We would like to thank them for their hospitality. The program was presented by Paula Jackson, who is a designer for Larson Juhl. Paula presented a slide show detailing decorating trends from last year and this year. Included in this was  information on how moulding designs are conceived and brought to market. For those of us who thought that moulding designs happened within a few months, Paula explained that it could take up to two years for a moulding to make it to production. Try thinking two years ahead of the trends! Probably not an easy task,  I would say.

We gained one new member who is a photographer. We saw some members who had not been to a meeting for awhile  and the regulars. For those of you who were not there, we missed you. Hope to see you at the next meeting.

Thank you sponsors for the usual wonderful door prizes.Nearly everyone took home something.

Mary Dunn