Alright, here’s the ‘big’ announcement.  I’m going to start selling prints at those pop up art fair type things.  I’ll use this to document the whole process, my thoughts, options, and choices.

The first two decisions are in the works — picking the first round of images for sale and picking a state to incorporate, as well as finding a way to reliably make prints.

Picking a State for Incorporation

For the state, the decision is really between 3: Texas, Wyoming, and my home state.

Why not Delaware, aren’t they the go-to for this sort of thing?  While yes, they used to be the go-to, recent actions by some insane judges in Delaware say that I want nothing to do with that state.  Texas and Wyoming have really stepped up, with Wyoming having some amazing privacy laws.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use the state I live in.  If I registered elsewhere, I would need to file as a foreign LLC in my home state.  I’ve been assured this isn’t difficult and if I needed to rehome in the future it is a 1 page document.

Selecting the First Set of Images

This one is a bit more difficult.  And as I go through the selection process I can see that some images would be more appropriate for different locations — a beach event probably doesn’t want snow capped mountains, but images from Hawaii are a good idea.

More on this later, I’m sure.

And lastly:

Finding a High Quality Printing Lab to Work With

At this stage, it isn’t practical for me to print everything myself at home.  I’m not sure that would save much anyways.

I’m trying to find a place that will not only handle the prints, but also lets me send someone a link and they can buy it and have it shipped to their address.  Ideally I can go to an art show and issue a time-limited discount code as well.  I would like to ensure that the same quality they buy from me at a show can be purchased from a website — using high end lab #1 at shows and local pharmacy lab for the website purchases would not be a good experience.  It also let’s me have a QR code on the images so they can be ordered for shipping if an image runs out or the person simply doesn’t want to carry it around.  It also makes sales tax collection easier for me.

I’m aware of the big ones, like MPix and Bay Photo.  Bay would be expensive, possibly too expensive.  Their 8×10 images cost about $23 to print and most people on the internet have these for sale for about $35.  I don’t see that working.  I’ve begun to explore a company that I can use to build a store and handle prints for me.  More to come.

For metal prints, I have picked a printer I like, but this is an ‘in the future’ sort of thing that I hope to be able to offer in 2026.  I found a company that does these years ago and have been wanting to find an excuse to use them ever since – Pure Art Printers in St. George Utah.

Let’s see where this goes.

-Brad