Our New ‘Art from Steel’ Business
Nearly 5 years ago, when I first arrived in Thailand I was in awe at the steel artwork I saw in one of the local Bangkok markets. The centrepiece was most often a 2.2 meter Predator or Alien statue made entirely from old car parts, nuts and bolts.
Tik and I have been looking at building up some more business opportunities here and my immediate though was to learn more about the skills involved with building these monsters and to study more about how we might export them. The statues are extremly expensive to buy from the market stall however we hunted down the artist responsible for the whole industry and paid a visit to his workshop last week to speak with him. We spent the night in the Sheraton Grande Hotel as a late birthday treat for us both.
His scrapyard is probably every young boys dream, with components sourced from all over Thailand we see Ford motor parts, washing machines and all manner of guts and innards from dead appliances that have been cast away by their once proud owner.
The artist himself was much younger than we expected. He should be proud that his business has thrived since only 2000 and he built it from scratch (and scrap) winning numerous awards and recognitions along the way. He has personally trained 12 artists who have worked with him for more than 4 years already.
Impressed by how much labour goes into the creation of each model we’ve been keen to find sources from overseas who might be interested in reselling them. In Thailand the large statues sell for 200-300% above wholesale prices and I expect that somebody with a shop overseas could inflate their prices even higher.
We advertised a few models on ebay last month but without any direct success. It takes a special kind of customer to be prepared to pay 25% of the purchase price to shipping but the publicity has attracted a number of bigger customers. Right now we are working with an Australian business owner who is about to make a large order with us and it has left me very encouraged.
When Tik and I return from Europe in September we will move things forward much faster. We are developing a new website at ArtFromSteel.com which will detail our products. Once we have done this I am really looking forward to sourcing and telephoning trade leads.
Advertising the large statues on ebay has not resulted in direct sales however now we are better experienced with shipping, I am confident that we will be able to sell smaller models (under 30cm) quite easily and competitively.
As of today, we only have our photo gallery online but please do take a look at ArtFromSteel.com to see the kind of variety we can offer.
