ShopSCAD
By Julie Elman
No one can say the Savannah College of Art and Design doesn’t take care
of its own.
Tapping into the vast pool of talent at the school (known as SCAD), SCAD managing
director Amy Zurcher and SCAD alumna Katie Runnell opened shopSCAD in 2003,
which sells the creations of a select group of the school’s students,
alumni, faculty and staff.
“We describe ourselves as a gallery shop,” says Zurcher. “We
don’t like to be referred to as just a gallery, because the store’s
very informal. It’s just packed—overbrimming with home things and
jewelry and clothing that comes up against the walls, which are hung salon-style,
top to bottom, with photography and painting and mixed media.”
With the amount of press the shop has received—from Vogue, Elle
and Southern Living, to name a few—during the first year it was
in business, Zurcher and Runnell realized a Web site could further capitalize
on the success of the brick-and-mortar store.
They were right. In fall 2005, shopscadonline.com
was born, and now, major retail players are taking note. West Elm, the modern
home furnishing company, is currently selling limited-reproduction prints by
Chia Chong, a SCAD alumna. The three prints, collectively called nest, beads
+ feather, are framed and sold individually ($29) or as a set ($79).
“West Elm bought the rights to three of her images, if not more,”
Zurcher says, “and they are offering them in all of their stores and in
their catalogue. That’s really a huge deal. And it says in the catalogue
and online that this is a Savannah College of Art and Design graduate. We’re
really proud of that.” Other companies keeping a close eye on the work
featured on shopscadonline.com
include Henri Bendel, Anthropologie and Hallmark.
There are more than 3,000 individual items in the store, and shopSCAD has represented
more than 500 artists since 2003. On the Web site, there are more than 100 artists
featured, including several established photographers.
According to Zurcher, top-selling items include work by photographer Meryl
Truett, whose black-and-white images hone in on southern culture. Truett’s
book, Thump Queen and Other Southern Anomalies, sells “like candy,”
Zurcher says. Truett’s limited-edition prints selling on shopscadonline.com
range in price from $300 to $1,100, depending upon size and framing option.
Dan Saelinger’s color prints, which have a more suburban bent, sell for
$300. Both photographers received their MFA degrees in photography from SCAD.
Typically, artists submit work to Zurcher and Runnell, and with work that has
promise for being featured in the store or on the site, Zurcher says she’ll
often work with the student or alum to fine-tune the product for their audience.
“I’ve got a ton of people I want to get up on the Web site,”
Zurcher says, plus even more work she’d like to include in the stores.
Since SCAD has spread to an Atlanta campus, another shopSCAD opened there in
the fall of 2006.
“One of the reasons that we’ve been so popular is that we get customers
who wouldn’t feel comfortable in a gallery setting—who want to buy
something, and they want to take it off the wall right then and go,” Zurcher
says. “They don’t want to wait until the show comes down.”
© 2007 All photos copyright Chia Chiung Chong, All rights reserved.
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