Art Dallas Incorporated

Judy Martin started Art Dallas in January, 1988; right at the height of the real estate, cattle and oil depression in Dallas, Texas. With a degree in art, she’d been in the real estate business until 1986 and in the art business, working with another woman since then. But that wasn’t going as well as Judy thought it might. So, with a very favorable lease from the Trammel Crow people and a picture framer as her partner, Judy seized the moment and opened the doors on a facility that had previously been the Dallas Police Department’s property room.

Typically, it just didn’t seem important to Judy that she started the company manning a folding card table with a phone on it as her main furniture statement. What WAS important was to gain someone’s confidence and get a job or two. Art Dallas wasn’t some dilettante’s hobby. Art Dallas needed to be profitable.

Naturally, Art Dallas wasn’t given much of a chance by those “in the know”. The conventional wisdom was that bad timing, under-capitalization and no credit meant Art Dallas wouldn’t be around very long.

Those who said that, however, simply didn’t know our Miss Judy.

After a couple of small hospitality framing jobs started paying some of the overhead, a young man named Steve Routhier walked through the warehouse door with a pal named Isaac Tigret. Turns out, Hard Rock Café was opening its Dallas location and it needed a lot of framing/display work done; fast. Judy smiled, worked all kinds of hours and brought their project in on time and under budget. Messrs. Routhier and Tigret were pleased.

They were so pleased, in fact, they asked Art Dallas to do every single one of the Hard Rock stores for the next 11 years. What Art Dallas didn’t know, they learned. From the first day in business to the present, if Art Dallas didn’t know how to do something, it probably knew where to “look it up”. In those early days, we spent a lot of time looking things up. After more than 20 years in the business, it’s gotten a little easier; the looking up part, that is.

Hard Rock Cafe was Art Dallas’s first, big account. It grew into a very special relationship for many reasons, but one in particular stands out: we considered each other members of the same team. So when something was wrong, everyone worked to fix it instead of focusing on something counter-productive, like fixing blame. The relationship flourished from 1988 through 1998, when the entire corporate structure of the Hard Rock Cafes was changed. In 1999, since Out with the Old was the mantra, Art Dallas eased out of the Hard Rock picture to concentrate on growing its already-considerable share of the health-care and hospitality markets.

Art Dallas Incorporated started out as and remains a family-owned business. Judy’s children by a first marriage (Michael and Sloan Teleha) came into the fold as they graduated from college. After a brief discussion over coffee on Jan. 1, 1989, Judy’s husband (John) moved his office to the Art Dallas facility. Shortly thereafter, Art Dallas got its first (and only) loan to buy out the picture framer who started the company with Judy. The loan was paid off in a little less than a year.

If that sounds pretty conservative, it was. Judy and John had lived through the Texas depression working in real estate sales/syndication until there simply wasn’t a market. With that experience behind them, slow, controllable, steady growth, fueled exclusively by word-of-mouth advertising and funded entirely from current cash flow, seemed the most responsible way to proceed. Besides, in the early days, Art Dallas wasn’t considered a very good risk, so no one was beating the doors down for the opportunity to lend it money. 

Who is Art Dallas today? It’s a thriving community of friends with a variety of talents and resources it could only dream of 20 years ago.

For instance, a few years ago we decided that it was really idiotic to ask customers to burn hydrocarbons in a giant machine every time they needed to see some art or when we needed to get their approval for something like a substituted moulding. So, after trying a few of the commercial video-conferencing services, we developed our own system; a thin-client model, based entirely on our servers, designed to allow live streaming in excellent quality to anyone with a fast internet connection and a modern PC or Mac. Today, without compromising the client’s system at all (everybody’s IT guy loves us) we can stream video live from the gallery to multiple points anywhere in the world to show art, arrange substitutions or compare paperwork directly and in real time with our many customers.

In addition, using our new, interactive web technology, customers can look at their job’s progress on line 24/7 to verify that we’re all on the same page regarding piece counts, pricing and delivery schedules. If they need, they can do such things as print out (on their local printer) specifiers describing one or more pieces of art in their own format or have their staff vote on alternative art choices on line.

The Art Dallas, web-based database system, like all systems these days, is a work in progress. As it exists now, it’s poised to effect a huge change in production scheduling at Art Dallas. Fully implemented, it will allow considerable automation of scheduling the large-volume production lines. When that happens, Art Dallas will be able to make much better use of just-in-time production techniques. This will lower costs and customer pricing through improved efficiency without sacrificing quality at all. It’s all about value, whether it’s at the highest or the lowest end of the market. Art Dallas understands that and works tirelessly to stay ahead of the curve.

From the IT standpoint, Art Dallas has invested a lot so we and our customers can make more efficient use of their (and our) time. At the same time, our system helps us contribute to a global green movement by providing a way to reduce travel to an absolute minimum while providing pro-active management tools to help retain valuable staff by providing a way to participate directly in the art-selection process. We’ll continue to expand this important aspect of our service to the design and architectural industries because we think it’s important. Some day, we all need to be thinking about the planet, our relationship to it and ways we can help preserve it. The fiber optic infrastructure put in place in the ‘90s has flattened the world in many important ways. Art Dallas will continue to expand its use of that infrastructure to bring real design solutions to real people wherever they may be in the world.

Then there are little things like Print On Demand, which we’ve been working with since 1995. Today, using the latest and greatest flatbed printer, we can print art up to 5’X10’ on substrates like copper, glass, marble, Plexiglas, wood or anything else that’s less than 2” thick --- except, perhaps mirrors (we’re working on that). Alternatively, if you want a car wrap or a mural we can do that too, using a different (new) printer with solvent-based inks on special vinyl substrates. And we’re still printing (pigmented and dye-based inks) on every kind of paper and canvas known to man including the 225g/m 100% rag paper we have manufactured for us in 5 ton lots. That paper emulates the tooth and feel of Rives BFK, but it’s a few grams/meter lighter. It’s on rolls, so the process is less expensive, more efficient and still indistinguishable from a print on a very expensive, French, hand-laid paper. Among other things, we’re traditional print makers, so we like paper and we try to know something about it.

As indicated above, we started experimenting with large-format digital printing in 1995. For many reasons, including very slow computers, it wasn’t easy back then. And it was expensive. By the time we got finished “Art Dallasing” the original process in 1997, we’d solved some of the problems associated with the high cost of large format, digital printing and we were able to produce custom, regional art for hospitality rooms at about the same cost as generic, commercially-available posters. From the confusion we encountered from others in the industry about the possibilities of using inexpensive giclee prints whose subject matter was local to the project instead of cheap, generic posters, we concluded that Art Dallas was among the first to offer this option.

Now, we’re in the process of opening new facilities in the new building located next door to our existing 40,000 sq. ft. facility in downtown Dallas. The new building comprises about 15,000’. It houses our digital print facility, a new, high-end art gallery, our new video-art gallery, a traditional print studio (home to our 30”X50” etching press and turn-of-the-century newspaper proofing press for linoleum) and our professional dark-room, where the sins of digital photography can be eliminated or reduced by the forgiving caress of an old 8”X10” enlarger’s slightly softened lens system.

Yes, Art Dallas is swimming upstream again.

But none of this is significant without the wonderful people who make it all work.

Art Dallas has a staff of about 25. Judy’s still hovering over her “ducklings” in sales, making sure customers get exactly what they want/need on time and on budget. Michael’s doing national sales. Sloan’s the one who makes sure things get shipped on time (etc. etc.). Alan (Simmons) is the gallery director, tracking new styles, understanding trends and arranging things like shows, receptions and “art lunches” produced as short videos on specific artists streamed through our website live and then archived for re-viewing. Lawrence (Kaster) makes sure your custom/production framing is accomplished with the same unchallenged quality that’s always been an Art Dallas trademark. And then there’s the support staff; you know, the ones behind the scenes who’re responsible for making it all happen. As someone once said, we’re all native-americans over here. There’s not a chief in the crowd.

Art Dallas Incorporated has both changed a lot since Judy sat behind her card table in an empty warehouse in 1988 and it’s not changed at all since then. Everything’s bigger, better, more sophisticated and substantially more complicated than it was in January, 1988. We’ve become one of the few facilities in the country where an art package for an entire project can be put together in one place. And that project can be anything from an economy hotel to the highest 5-star, Mediterranean resort. But it’s still all about service, integrity, reliability and competence. I expect the company, the services and the art to continue to change. I expect our mission and our dedication to it to stay the same as it was when Judy first opened our doors.

John M. Martin II PhD, VP Operations