The second CP Shindig in the history of the world took place last Thursday on June 9th, 2011, and it was a hell of a lotta fun as expected! We knew that this was an important opportunity @ CP so we made sure to put in the effort that would make it a splash within the community. We brought the best of what we could offer to The Shay Cafe including our art, artists, and of course, our plain old positive vibes.  The opening reception went off and it was a hit! Seeing all these great people from around the community, mingling between artists and art lovers was an incredibly enlightening experience.  I am learning more and more about the art world everyday and what part I want to play within it.  I am a student of the arts: visual; wearable; and performance.  And my curiosity makes it a very excited journey learning what works and what doesn't work as well as refining our mission here @ CP. 

Lets take a moment to walk down memory lane to the first ever CP Shindig over a year ago @ Musica in Akron when us at College Pikasso still hadn't committed to any focused approach on doing business within the art world. The idea was their but the execution was lacking.  We lined up a few of Musica's dining tables with the majority of our hodge podge art collection laid out on it- plus a few framed items hanging on the wall. Looking back, I can laugh at how utterly pathetic it was!  I think we had a few small prints in bad frames, and a couple loose leaf sketches as well.  The art itself was good but the presentation of it and the quantity of it was embarrassing.  And I say this not to get down on myself or the rest of the CP crew, but more so to point out how far we have come in a relatively short time.  At the first event, we spent more time booking the musical acts instead of focusing on the visual or wearable arts.  I think there was even a cover charge and no free food or drinks.  So it was a pretty terrible event.  But the point is that we learn so much from just jumping in and doing the things we want to. I think we improved by at least 500% between or 1st show and our 2nd show and we never would be doing this if we had been too scared to hit the ground running - even though for all practical purposes we really don't know what the hell we are doing.  But we are figuring that out day by day too.  And It will be exciting to see how our 3rd show/party plays out....

The Shay Cafe is a great venue for us and Andy Shay is the gregarious owner of it. Shay's grandma made some delicious brownies and the rest of the Shay crew created and provided a few pitchers of refreshing non-alcoholic beverages (gotta stay hydrated) and some other light snacks, including the infamous chips and salsa action and a delicious cottage cheese and fruit dish crafted by Mary Shay, the sister of Andy who also happens to be a damn good artist herself.  And even though she is extremely shy about her talent, we'll be showing her stuff at the cafe too (it'll be going up within the next week).  We figure it only makes sense to display some cool art made within the Shay family, right?

Also, The Shay Cafe arranged to have a friend play guitar and sing outside which was the cherry on top of this Shindig.  All in all, I love the Shay family and The Shay Cafe in general.  Good people and a cool atmosphere make it unparalleled to any other place like it in the area - and their customer service is IMPECCABLE.  Shay's food is good AND healthy and it has a very reasonable price, and is made quickly which makes The Shay Cafe a triple threat of all things that I look for in a great cafe.  And no, I am not getting paid to advertise for them (although maybe I'll consider proposing that to Andy).  But in all seriousness, I encourage all of my local friends, fans and family to check it out.

 One thing about the CP Shindig that made it especially interesting from the CP side of things (myselfand the artists), is that we threw it all together in the last week pretty much and didn't get done setting everything up until minutes before the opening began.  Even the jewelry was not priced or displayed at the beginning of the event as I was unprepared to be in charge of about 50 pieces of various types of jewelry.  We procrastinated a bit because we didn't really know what to do since this was the first legitimate art show we've ever planned at CP and figured we'd learn as it went along.  And we did.  It has been one big lesson to be learned!   So needless to say there is a bunch of stuff we realize we could have done better.  Next time of course it will be much better.  And their are pros and cons of doing the last minute type of execution.  One of the pro's was that since this was the first at least partially legitimate art show opening I was very excited.  The artists and I ran around throwing it together all day which gave all of us adrenaline rushes and we made some sales right off the bat which is fantastic and we expect many more throughout the upcoming days, weeks, and months. 

It looks like for now CP is going be the sole supplier of art at The Shay Cafe- which is a dream come true.  We are displaying photographs, paintings, posters, t shirts, and jewelery. Andy Shay and I have also decided to throw a promotional event every Saturday with food and drink specials as well as an art special (like $20 "print of the weeks") so we at CP are working on creating our first print right now and it will be ready for this upcoming Saturday.  So, expect to see me up @ The Shay Cafe promoting half price food/drink specials as well as the CP "Print of the Week" this Saturday- which will be of Sid Puri's work.  Plus every month we are going to do a mass switch out of our art, out with the old and in with the new. And luckily Shay had an old bakers case laying around that doubles as a great jewelry and t-shirt display.  So we will constantly be displaying our Wearables too! The case is attached to the far end of the Shay counter next to the coffee.  So we are considering this current showing a work in progress and I am working by myself and with the artists in order to improve it in various ways.  Including: the amount of work shown; the diversity of art; the labeling of it; and the signage and promo stuff that lets people know about CP more.

Mingling at the 2nd ever CP Shindig opening was great. I met J Hudson, the manager of the Hudson Farmer's Market, who is also a fellow art promoter and a cool dude in general.  With all we had in common I was excited to make the connection with J plus his girlfriend, Lisa Madel, a local floral bouquet owner that supplies The Shay Cafe with fresh and beautiful flowers on all of their tables. Her business is Backyard Bouquets, and I believe we are going to help her get a website up here in the near future.  I also mingled with a few other local art patrons who dazzled me with great suggestions, feedback, and life stories.  So all in all, I met some really cool people of all ages who had some shared interests with College Pikasso and are eager to provide their feedback and/or help, which is priceless and greatly appreciated.  I especially enjoyed bonding with Justin Roberts (our painter) and Sid Puri (our photographer) throughout the day while throwing the whole opening reception together.  I picked Sid up from Cleveland around 1 PM, 4 hours before the opening and Justin met us @ The Shay Cafe around 1PM.  We hung out, talked, put all the art up, made labels for the pieces, made promo material for CP, and in general, had a fun and interesting time.  It felt nice being immersed in the local art scene - a feeling I want to prolong forever.   Having a beer and a mid day smoke with a couple of the most talented young artists in the local scene plus an art show at night with tons of cool people makes for an incredibly fulfilling time.

So, to summarize before moving on,  The Shay Cafe art show opening/CP promotional activity was a success.  Moving on.  I have also been working with another retailer out of Beachwood @ the Eaton Mall. Coincidentally, the Eaton Mall is the upscale retail outlet where I first picked up on the idea that has become College Pikasso. 

Coincidence or not? Listen to this story, and decide for yourself....

The retailer's name is Barbara Smoloff and I was first introduced to her because of her son, Eric.  Eric is a 20 year old local rapper that goes by the stage name E Smallz.  He goes to school @ OSU but grew up in Solon, Ohio.  And his Mom, Barbara has been doing everything she can to help E Smallz' career take off like paying a so called Bone Thugs N-Harmony DJ/Producer every single time he appears on stage with Erik.  When she got in touch with me, she was wanting to do her son a last favor by paying for a website .  She found me through a Craigslist ad I had posted for my side job as a freelance web designer (I am "The Simple Website Guy") www.thesimplewebsiteguy.com.  She seemed pretty desperate for an affordable and quick solution to her son's website needs as she understands the importance of having this online presence.  So, since I needed the money and it seemed like an interesting job, I took the gig and started working with this extremely quirky and cooky, but endearing older jewish woman and her extremely grateful son, rapper, E Smallz.  Its been a pleasure working with him and through the process becoming friends with his mom, Barbara. 

So how does all of this relate to CP you may be asking?  Or you might not be asking, but I will tell you irregardless.  She runs a gallery @ the Eaton Mall and has contracted me to build a website for her, help her run the gallery, and in return, show my College Pikasso stuff and gain priceless experience in doing so.  We are working on setting up our first show @ Barbara's space which will most likely be early to mid July.  We will probably move a lot of the stuff currently at The Shay Cafe to Barbara's gallery @ the Eaton Mall and move some new stuff into The Shay Cafe.  So I am now pleased to announce that we have 2 retail spaces in which we are showing and selling our CP wares at and that one of the retail spaces is where the original idea of CP was conceived in the first place on a fateful afternoon shopping with my parents.  It feels good to be in the brick n mortar world as this internet stuff can get a little lonely - and one day it will be time for College Pikasso to gets its very own brick n mortar store.  For now though, these shows are great way to show our stuff to the offline world, network with like minded people, learn as much as possible, and have a plain old good time in general!  Good art, good food, and making new friends - what is better? 

        In the short term I look forward to experimenting further with prints and working on this week's $20 dollar print with Sid Puri.  I also look forward to working with the kids behind our t-shirts on the 2nd batch up t's, all made of 100% organic cotton (which makes for a much softer, breezy, and comfortable fit) and also our first batch of posters.  The t-shirts will come in a variety of colors, sizes, and designs for both genders.  We are figuring out our next order right now so we'd love any feedback on desired colors, sizes, and designs- you can see some of our original batch here.  PLUS, I just sealed a deal with an anonymous investor (my dad) for a $500 investment into a batch of high-quality CP company t's.  I am stoked to get these, wear them, give them out to the artists and see who else wants one.  They will be simple, sleek, understated, and comfortable as hell. Comfort is key with the t-shirts.  So we are producing two batches of t-shirts right now, one is a CP company t-shirt (complete with our logo and verbage) and the other is a unique brand of t's started by artist Connor Kundtz and myself called HPM.  You can see the latter here.  The last batch of HPM shirts sold out before we got pictures of all the different variations.  So realize that we will be making both guys and girls t's, v-neck and regular, with a variety of colors, sizes and the original designs on our t-shirt page.

And I don't know if you noticed earlier, but I also said "posters".  What does this even mean?  It means real posters.  Like big, 2ft by 3ft visual art on glossy paper for an extremely affordable price.  The first batch of posters will be of the three designs we are using for the HPM t's and we'll be distributing them through our online and offline channels hopefully for $10 (we are looking for a good and cheap poster print house at the moment).

So that's what we're working on.  We are creating and selling prints, posters, and t-shirts.  And I cannot forget to mention our jewelry as it has been the single biggest seller of CP's to date.  Our jewelry maker, Margot Osmundsen is extremely talented - and I'm not just saying that because she is my girlfriend.  I truly mean it.  Her style is really cool "stylish" , with some European/Mediterranean themes- and that is the style I personally dig.  22 year old Margot has connections in the industry, through her job @ Cambridge Jewelers in Hudson, Ohio, taking classes @ the premiere gemology school (The Gemological Institute of America), and industry conventions that allow her to buy genuine stones at wholesale price and in turn sell it at an extremely competitive price- woman love her stuff and men should learn to love it too as they can buy their woman something very special at a price you can't find elsewhere.  And Margot wants to begin creating more pieces for guys - so we'll be on the lookout for that.  We'll continue to sell Margot's stuff online and offline - helping to spread her bling around the world and make a pretty penny at the same time.

And I just started experimenting with advertising using Google AdSense recently as you can notice on this website site.  Every time somebody clicks one of these ads, we get anywhere from $.30 to $1.50 so it can be a pretty lucrative thing and I figured we are at the point where enough people are coming every day to browse, buy and see whats new that CP can start making advertising revenue.  However I do want to keep the advertising very tasteful so I'll be trying different setups in the upcoming days, weeks, and months.  Its cool to be able to earn some money by advertising, however, its not cool to advertise for something shitty or completely out of context - so I am looking into different advertising opportunities, like affiliate or referral programs where we can earn a little cash every time somebody links to another site and buys something online.

    I know that a key to our success is having actual brick n mortar retail presence with our jewelry, t-shirts, posters, prints, paintings, and photographs.  Its important especially in the beginning to help get more traffic to our site and also do some "market research" (AKA figure out what works and what doesn't work, what people like, etc...).  So we will continue to have fun with various venues as well as pursue our internet presence at an ever increasing rate.  Big things are coming both in our product selection, our website, the ordering process, and the of course, the CP Shindigs.  We are developing at an incredible rate and I am proud of what we have done so far.  I know that we are not some sort of silicon valley internet start-up that goes from nothing to mega millions over night, but we are doing well.  We can easily be making a couple hundred a week without too much effort.  But since we are consistently putting fourth effort, I bet we will be making $1,000 a week within the next few months.  And once that happens, we at CP have carved ourselves quite a job.  And we'll have a ton of fun with this job- there is so much we want to do!  I definitely want to continue our artist interview series with all of the artists on CP that we haven't given an interview yet, like Margot, A.K, Sid Puri, Mike Cunniff, & Ian Iott and also do a second interview with Justin Roberts.  So look out for those soon. But for now, I need go to bed.  A few drinks with the HPM t-shirt and poster guys and a little smoking has made my eyelids turn against me in this battle to stay up and finish writing.  But my eyelids want rest and so do I.  But its good to be back on the blog and I am happy to have the chance to catch up on the current happenings @ CP. 

Yours in renaissance,
Mike Vecchio, Co-Founder & Lead Tember
College Pikasso

 P.S. Displayed throughout the post were pictures of CP art - we invite you to stop on in sometime soon to check them out in person @ the Shay Cafe.  Shay's hours are Mon - Thurs 5:00am - 9:30pm Fri 5:00am - 8:00pm Sat & Sun 7:00am - 6:00pm.  And remember some crazy good promotions are going on every Saturday from 1-6PM with half-priced food and drink combos along with a "Print of the Week" provided by yours truly.  Enjoy.

    Today's post is dedicated to people that are at the core of College Pikasso, its mission, its culture, and its success.  I'm talking about the artists. Ever since we started to hit the ground running 6 months ago with the website, its been our main goal to find very talented and interesting artists in order to stock our virtual shelves with the best stuff around.  We wanted to get to this point and then begin sharing it with people.  And now, that's exactly what we 're doing.  So how did we get to the point where we have 7 published artists, our virtual shelves full of great art, and getting local media play?  Let me tell you.
    Well, it started off with my girlfriend, Margot Osmundsen (our resident jeweler).  She introduced me to a guy named Justin Roberts (sick artist) at one of his live paintings for the Lorax Tree in Cleveland.  Apparently this guy was some kind of legend around the area.  She kept telling me that Justin and I needed to meet! She said he was a really talented painter and drawer.  Turns out, like most other things, she was right - Justin and I hit it off immediately.  I saw the live painting at that concert then checked out his facebook page afterward to see his art.  A little while later we published about 60 of his paintings ranging from inches to feet and tens of dollars to hundreds.
    After getting Justin on board, everything kind of snow balled as I prompted him for some referrals to artists he'd recommend.  He gave me a list of names and I followed up on them.  One of those names was Kevin Smalley.  Smalley ended up being the first person to sell a piece of art to a random customer (not a family member or friend) on College Pikasso.  Smalley also designed our first real marketing material which was called "We Want You" a parody of the old army recruitment campaign where instead of Uncle Sam, Smalley drew Pablo Picasso pointing out to the viewer telling them "We Want You!" to sell art College Pikasso.  We paid him $100 in cash for his much appreciated efforts.  I interviewed Smalley early on for the video series and he made it known to me that he was willing to help out the College Pikasso cause in other ways besides just being one of our featured artists.  And so the ball kept rolling. 
    Smalley referred us to Aaron Kyle (or at least thats what I think his name is - we are not really sure as he goes by different aliases all the time).  Roberts, Smalley, & Kyle all went to the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) together so they all knew of one another.  Although Roberts and Kyle didn't really know each other, Smalley and kyle did.  CCAD must be a great school because all three of these guys are alumni and are also very talented. These guys are legit artists, very devoted to their craft and now they were all on College Pikasso. Exciting....  And the ball kept rolling.
    About a year earlier while College Pikasso was still pretty much an idea, I was taking classes at the nearby University of Akron and one of them was "an introduction to acting: acting 101".  I was and am still training in the craft of acting, which sounds way too serious, but moving on. I met a fellow acting student, Taylor.  Taylor was a 19 year old from Cleveland.  We hit it off pretty quickly as I thought his acting was hilarious and definitely the most entertaining in the class, and we had some shared interests (smoking the reefer).  Besides being a hilarious actor and fellow toker, Taylor and I talked about College Pikasso a little bit and it turned out that he draws and paints, and was taking classes making art too.  Since that semester, we have stayed in touch.  I interviewed him one time out at a dorm in Akron, he helped me hand out and post up flyers at 3 separate schools in Cleveland, resulting in 2 more new artists.  We also recruited at the University of Akron together.    We used the campaign poster that Smalley drew up for us. Taylor also came to a local concert that we were promoting in Akron, Ohio for our friends: Throne Gone Down (which is a band I used to sing for during the summer of 2010). He set up a table with his sketches and also sat down and sketched in a big notebook live to the music.   It was a fun time although it wasn't very productive at all considering all of my friends who were there already knew about College Pikasso.  This is the point I realized: stop doing unproductive bullshit.  Time to focus on more effective marketing techniques...  Hence, blogging, and developing relationships with cool media people.
    But to put an end to the whole artist topic for today, here is what I have to say.  We will continue to accept new artist submissions and maybe only actively recruit artists if we catch wind of some incredible talent.  We  look forward to an ever increasing amount of submissions.  It has proven to be a difficult and challenging task to get in touch with artists let alone getting them to trust in my vision and put fourth a little effort.  The stereotypical perception of artists as being reclusive, anti-commerce, etc, is often somewhat true. Some artists were very hard to get on board the CP bandwagon and were generally not the quickest moving individuals on earth . I have had to call some people many many times without ever getting a call back.  Asking for pictures, prices, descriptions, etc for their art takes time.  Some people communicate only through email. Other people communicate only through facebook.  Some people hardly communicate in general.  Communication itself with our artists has definitely been a process.  And most of the time these days, I am appreciated the good ol' fashioned phone calls than anything else because I see how much quicker things can get done over the phone rather than through some online medium.  Instead of emailing, texting, or messaging each other back and fourth for weeks, phone calls rule.  Unless you write extremely effective emails (which I am working on).  I have also learned that persistence pays off too.  Without it, we wouldn't have any art on the site besides my shitty sketches and photography (i'm not trained).  And one of the main lessons I have learned through this process is that people who don't call you back are usually a.) disorganized, b.) forgetful, c.) lazy procrastinators, or d.) generally unaware of how great what you have to offer them really is.  So instead of taking it personally when you have to call multiple times before finally getting a call back, take it as a part of the job - because it is.  And this is for any job or anything that you really, really want, you may have to make a few calls.  So stay persistent, stay hungry for what you want, and don't take things so personally.  Call/email persistently until you get an answer.  Force people to make decisions instead of dragging them out for months and allowing procrastination to hold up the development of your product.  In our case the product was a diverse collection of art. We needed artists to play along with us for awhile and trust us while setting it all up. We came up with a "artist incentive program" to encourage our artists to lead us to other great artists. An existing artist may receive 5% more of the sale price for each artist they refer to us who in turn ends up selling art with us.  This program has been a major success for us thus far.  Margot Osmundsen, our first artist now only pays out 20% commission to us instead of the original 30% because she received 5% for each person she directly refers and 2.5% for each artist she indirectly recruits (i.e. an artist she referred refers us to another artist).  And a few other artists take a bigger cut of their commissions because of this referral incentive.
     I also realized something else recently that is interesting.  For the entire process of starting this company, I have, for the most part, been alone in a sense. In the sense that there was nobody else actively working on College Pikasso but myself.  There haven't really been any meetings, shared work spaces, or dialogue between team members. Just me.  But I did realize something that made me feel comforted recently.  This was the realization that all the artists are my team members.  They are the people who's happiness and success my company depends on.  They are the people whom I support, appreciate, and learn from.  I want to make all of them a lot of money.  I also hope to give them a ton of exposure. Some things we do on the site for our artists are: creating a profile page for each artist with a mini bio, links to connect on social media sites, a picture, and their artist interview if we have done one.  Speaking of interviews, doing them was a blast!  I plan on doing them more frequently from here on out.  They give me a good opportunity to just relax and get to know the people with whom are of great interest to me and college pikasso friends, fans and families.  I'll write a post soon expanding on the subject of interviewing artists.  This post is long enough already.  But back to my sappy statement of having the artists as team members, I truly do mean it and appreciate their support of my vision and putting up with me for the past several months.  Good times are ahead and I look forward to them. Its been fun these first few months focusing on following artist referrals.  Its been an exhilarating experience celebrating each new artist who joined us.  However, as fun as its been, I do look forward to the upcoming months where more and more artists will be coming to us and seeking us out.  The problem I then look forward to is having to curate more.  There will be sooo much art coming in that we'll need to work hard to sift through it all and find the best.  It seems like a great "problem" to have!  I suppose that this is the journey of a business going from completely unknown and gradually working up the ladder of being very known and sought after.  The journey is intoxicating.  Here is to working up the ladder....
Cheers!
-Mike, Co-Founder & Lead Team Member @ College Pikasso