Hey guys,
Apparently I had a miscommunication with the fellow I did the Lee Majors head for. I was under the impression he did not require a period of exclusivity for this head, thats why I was offering a few copies here. This turns out not to be what his understanding was. He thought he had sole rights to sell the head in any form, in perpetuity. Although I thought I had made things clear, I will accept responsibility for the miscommunication. As most of you know, I'm pretty darn easy to work with, and I only want what's best for my clients, so this is the direction I must take in order to rectify the situation.
What I charge for a private commission is artificially low. I do this to make the kind of quality I offer affordable to the average collector who wants to privately commission a head. As you know, it takes many many hours of very hard work to sculpt one of these 1/6 heads with any sort of quality. Time is money. When I do a head for a Toy company, the customary charge can be from $1000.00 to $1800.00. Heck, I was charging $1800.00 per head to Toy Biz 10 years ago.
This is what I do for a living. It's how I feed my family. So how can I work for $3.00 or $4.00 an hour? Impossible. I wouldn't ask any one else to do so, either.
So, eventually I have to try to make up the difference between what I charged for the commission and what the true cost of it is. I do this by, at some point, selling copies of my work. And it can take a long time to make up the difference, believe me. But I do it this way because, otherwise, you won't be able to find this quality anywhere in a private commission at an affordable price for an individual. The alternative is to charge full price or not offer private commissions at all. I may have to go this route.
Usually, I grant a period of exclusivity where the client has sole rights to sell the head while I bide my time until I can start selling it, too. This is where our communication broke down. He intends on selling full figures on eBay. To the best of my recollection I said I would then only offer a few here as loose heads (and I offered to share the profits which he declined). I didn't want to compete. Apparently I didn't make clear that this is what I was doing. I thought I had his agreement to this arrangement. He made it very VERY clear today that this was not his understanding.
In fact, he suggested that I was deliberately being underhanded and was trying to pull a fast one on him. Those of you who have dealt with me know that this is simply not the case. In fact, I do offer the exclusive period and I promote my clients in an effort to help them make back their investment and then profit. And it's not as if I was sneaking around selling heads from the inside of my coat. It was open, above board, in a public forum. Not exactly trying to hide my tracks. I had no idea it would elicit the response I got.
Part of the reason I'm here at all is in response to another sculptor, who shall remain nameless, who does engage in this sort of behavior, turning around and under cutting the client on eBay behind their back.
Anyway, I just wanted to clear the air and let everyone know what was going on and to say I will not be offering any more Lee Majors heads for the time being.
Frankly, this kind of experience and some other unpleasantries I've been subjected to make me question whether or not I should just finish up my current crop of commissions and go back to working for the corporations. Sorry to be depressing, but it can be very upsetting. I certainly don't want to have to do that, but sometimes I wonder if I should. What's the point if it's not fun, anymore? I can make more money at not having fun working for the corporations.
Thanks for your attention.
Details to follow later.
