Alley Gallery Background
Tucked in the alleys behind Saville Flowers on Sherman avenue is Alley Gallery, an independent custom framing and fine arts shop. Because of its inconspicuous location, it has an air of mysteriousness and intrigue. When we walked into the store, we were immediately greeted by its “old world charm” and the shop’s lovely parrot Jessica with an exuberant “Hello.” Jessica has been in the store since the 80s when it first opened, and has become a critical part of the shop.
The space consists of a storefront at the entrance, a storage room in the middle, a wood shop in the back, a mini gallery on the side, and multiple workrooms scattered around for the artists who work there. Though the main business of Alley Gallery is the sale of wooden frames, it also sells posters and fine prints. The storefront is filled with sample frames and large poster displays, making the business immediately obvious to customers. For those who just wandered into the store, the gallery on the side makes for a great space for relaxation and art appreciation.
The staff of the place are extremely welcoming. The co-owners Darren Oberto and Ross Martens and the staff members Avram Eisen and Chris Greene make customers feel at home and are always happy to help with any needs. Alley Gallery is not just a business with purely profit-seeking motives, it is a lifestyle business for those who work there. Multiple members of the staff are artists and they split their time between making frames and producing art. Working at Alley Gallery not only provides them with the financial security they need but also empowers them to pursuit their artistic endeavors.
Since 1985 when the shop was founded by the late Chris Molloy, the shop has had the philosophy of “[providing] museum quality custom framing and [having] fun doing it.” Over the years, the shop became a place where local artists could work and sustain themselves. Chris made a point to make work schedules as flexible as possible in order to accommodate for the artists’ auditions or shows. Several members of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre started their careers while working at Alley Gallery. The shop has an integral role with the local community.
You Don’t Have to Win but You Should Find Your Place
As we learned in the class, entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily about being the biggest player in the space who can devour all the other competitors. It isn’t about the amount of capital one can raise to buy out or out-compete competitors. Instead, it is about finding your place. As we learned from the hustler Carolyn Hagler, competition is not necessarily bad. In fact, competition is needed. In her case, as an AirBnB host, she needs local competition in order to foster a community and to bring customer attention to the area. She learns from her competitors and they learn from her. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Similarly, from the women who started Hewn Bakery, we learned that competitors are sometimes your best friends. When Hewn accidentally lost its yeast, it was precisely their competitors who lent out a helping hand and gave them some of their own yeast. Competition isn’t just hostility, it’s also about helping others in the industry.
In the case of Alley Gallery, Chris never had the intention to make his store the biggest, most profitable framing shop in the region. Instead, he just wanted to find a role in the Evanston community. As previously mentioned, the shop became a place that supported struggling artists and provided them with a means to generate income while pursuing their creative endeavors. This not only gave them a suite of passionate employees, but also helped grow and nurture the local artistic community, which would then feed back into their business as those artists’ pieces would use Alley Gallery’s frames. This was an unintentional long term investment for the shop. As artists gathered to the gallery, the shop gained notoriety among the local community and formed partnerships with local artists. For instance, many of Northwestern’s buildings and departments use Alley Gallery’s frames.
The addition of the gallery space within the shop has further consolidated the shop’s role in the community. With the new space, exhibitions would be held that showcased various artists’ works. This created a chain word-of-mouth effect and brought in even more artists, thereby creating even more demand for the shop. Simultaneously, this helped artists gain more exposure and possibilities to sell their art pieces. The shop’s space has also been used in other ways to engage with the local community. For instance, a Northwestern cellist once held a mini-concert in the shop for the local community. These small moves helped the Alley Gallery develop a regular customer base. While we were there, Darren was able to greet every single customer by their first names.
Another interesting part of Alley Gallery’s role in the community is its symbiotic relationship with the bookstore across from it. The store used to be an antique bookstore and now has become Bookends and Beginnings. The frame shop and the bookstore actually exist in the same building and are simply been separated by a wall. Thus, the two businesses would interact with one another and lend each other their spaces. Unlike regular partnerships that involve large amounts of paperwork and contracts, this partnership was formed on but a single handshake and a tight friendship that developed over the years.
You Don’t Have to be Big but You Should Be Sustainable
One of the key themes of our class has been that business doesn’t always need to be about chasing profit margins. It can have a greater purpose that it puts forward. It could be driven by a grander mission, like that of Yvon Chouinard, founder of earth-friendly clothing brand Patagonia—about whom we took brief takeaways from in an article about his book Let My People Go Surfing—who sought to reshape consumer culture. Or it could be something of a more humble, but nonetheless meaningful, vision, such as we learned through reading about the rising gig-economy and heard from successful AirBnB side-hustler Carolyn Hagler. We live in a world where building part of a livelihood can spring from pursuing things we enjoy and can have passion in. But as our readings on the history of “activist entrepreneurship” from told us, the biz with a mission can only serve that mission for so long if it cannot survive.
Awakened to the idea of an enterprise with possibly low-profit and high-social-value—but unmistakably profitable—the Alley Gallery was a remarkable example. As Darren relayed the story, it was never really about making money for the founding Chris Molloy. For him, it was simply about quality custom framing and having fun doing it. On the way, despite not being a trained artist himself, Mr. Molloy became a mentor to artists, designers, engineers, craftspersons, and even actors and fashioned his shop into a studio space for them to learn a craft and make a smattering of side cash.
Darren described to us that in years when the shop did have a sizeable profit, he spent it on sending his whole staff on a trip to Italy for a trade show. As we pursued details on why, we learned that Mr. Molloy was a Vietnam War veteran—notably a conscientious objector who instead was a photographer— exposed to Agent Orange and allotted a sizeable pension. The thing was, because of this pension, any profit from the Gallery would subtract from it anyway. Indignant towards conscription, the issues that engulfed the war, and the damage the government left on him he was determined to strip the government the sum he was promised in its entirety as a “F U” that would last until he passed away. So anything that was gained he invested in his people, both because to spread around the good when the goings were good but also to continue his silent rebellion. We were surprised by this story as it aligned well with another lesson from class about how positive, social efforts or missions sometimes are conceived by circumstance, necessity, or other unrelated reasons, not just virtue, and that’s fine.
The Alley Gallery had done generally well in its over three-decade-long history but it hasn’t been without its existential threats. As with the rest of the country, the Great Recession had also hit them very hard and had them accumulating immense debt to stay afloat. In addition, with Mr. Molloy’s retirement and eventual passing in 2010, the gallery faced immense struggles. As we learned through Basecamp CEO Jason Fried’s article on the power of profitability, having a sustained margin offers freedom, flexibility as well as security against tumultuous times. So while profit need not be the driving motive, prioritizing enough to be free from liabilities and the threat of mortality is an important balance to achieve so that the dream or mission may continue. According to Darren, he and the two other senior employees bought the shop from Mr. Molloy for just $100 and took on all the debt. After Mr. Molloy died in 2010, business picked back up and the trio payed back the loans and returned to profitability. Since then, Darren describes that profits had maintained a steady growth much of which he attributes to what we described in the previous section in how they reinvigorated their place.
You Don’t Need Investors but You Do Need Customers
Another core topic of our class was that enterprise doesn’t need to follow the Silicon Valley valuation craze and chase investor hype to start a business. However, a business with a meaning big or small must serve the needs or wants of a base of real people. As we discussed in class based on Tim Berry’s blog on the benefits of being unbound by investors, while investments can be affirming and supportive in a lot of ways, it can also be restricting and incentivizes your business to serve them not your customers. Perhaps it’s one of those obvious ideas that get lost in the everyday mechanics of life but customers, your end users, should probably be a central force in shaping the business.
Like mentioned above, The Alley Gallery was fortunate to have stayed independent with Mr. Molloy and also continued through today by Darren Oberto and Ross Martens. For a while Mr. Molloy’s circumstances buoyed a low-profit model but with his passing and the economic crisis that forced the business to be beholden to survive for a few years the new young co-owners have changed in some ways and protected the original ethos of the gallery.
In many ways Darren and Ross did all the supposedly “wrong” and “outdated” things, such as staying in back alley with low visibility or generally ignoring social media marketing. They stood fast in an ostensibly nonsensical location and even protected the Gallery against efforts to turn the block into a new modern development. The way they see it, the cozy, old-word setting has allowed the space to grow into a realm of local preservation. Northwestern alumni from decades past or neighborhood families return and find nostalgia, and even tradition in the space. Darren described that the unique locale had lent to its own unique point of attraction. Without any concerted efforts to avoid digital marketing, Darren and Ross continue to focus more on upholding Mr. Molloy’s dedication to craft and philosophy of standing behind their work. Instead of grinding for the review or the Yelp feature, they focused on building relationships that would last and encourage return patronage and a reputation. Coupled with their outstanding dedication to their work and craft, the word-of-mouth had traveled on its own. Not only is the Alley Gallery’s work top-class, it’s housed in a charming space that has faded away for the most part in the modern world.
The Gallery also hasn’t been without a bit of change as well. Like described earlier, renovations and expansions of the gallery have allowed for the opening of a dedicated exhibition space. By becoming a home for featuring artists’ works they have created their own analog-version of “inbound content marketing.” “We didn’t try to put out any print advertisements or anything. These exhibitions were all the ‘advertising’ we did,” said Darren. By hosting the works of artist, and sometimes even performances, those seeking out the space for the small exhibitions would be exposed to the frame crafting, almost “serendipitously. “ The word of mouth would also travel through artist communities as they became a unique setting for featuring art.
Digital has permeated into the business but more from a back-end standpoint. iPads in the exhibition space or digital payment platforms for transactions have allowed the Gallery to better account for their business but also manage their key, expanding community of customers.
The Alley Gallery was such a pleasant surprise to us in so many ways and really put all the lessons and ideas we explored in class into perspective. It’s truly something to admire and aspire from. We hope, on a homecoming day decades down the line, we can return to town to find that the Gallery still remains a quiet corner for local artists and reminds us of our time here. It truly imparts us with what it means to run a business that is so deeply human.
