a woman bought two pieces at the open studio and then asked if i'd take a payment plan for a third
open studio was saturday. sold three things which, for a saturday in a converted warehouse with bad lighting and worse parking, is basically a miracle.
but the thing i keep thinking about is this woman who came in around two, bought a small one, came back at four and bought another, then asked if i'd take a deposit and three payments for one of the big ones. i said yes immediately and then felt weird about it after. like did i just undercut myself? is this a bad precedent? am i a bank now?
the whole drive home i argued with myself. and then i remembered being 24 and putting a $200 print on a credit card i couldn't pay off for a year. so. idk. i think i did the right thing and i also think i'm going to be chasing an email for six weeks.
anyway the real win is that i stopped saying "no pressure" every time someone looked at a painting. that reflex is a disease
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payment plan for a piece is not undercutting yourself, it's just selling to people who don't have the whole amount sitting there. i've done it twice and both times the person came back for more later, so the "precedent" fear didn't really happen. the only thing i'd say is write down the dates somewhere so you're not chasing it in your head for a month. but yeah, you're not a bank, you're a person letting someone pay for something they clearly wanted enough to come back twice in one afternoon. that's a good saturday.
Writing the dates down is the part I'd second. I did a payment thing once with a coworker and never put it in writing, and then I felt awkward bringing it up even though she was totally fine about it. All that stress was on my end for nothing.
Coming back twice in one afternoon is the tell, honestly. Someone does that because the piece stuck with them, not because they're hunting for a discount.
the awkwardness being entirely on your end is so real lol. she probably forgot the whole thing existed and you were rehearsing the conversation in the shower for three weeks.
i'm writing the dates down. text message, screenshot, both. mostly so i don't have to be the guy who brings it up, i can just point at the thing i already sent.
ok the "you're not a bank, you're a person letting someone pay for something they wanted enough to come back twice in one afternoon" line got me. i was fully in my head about precedent and interest rates like i'm jpmorgan chase and this woman just liked a painting.
the dates thing is real though. i have it in my phone notes somewhere in a note called "stuff" that i will absolutely never open again. gonna make an actual calendar thing before i forget. appreciate it.