Space the final frontier: are you conquered by clutter? daunted by disorganization? A careful redesign of your frame shop's storage solutions may be just the thing to help maximize space and minimize hassle

Art Business News, April, 2004 by Tricia Bisoux

There are few retail environments with more to store than a frame shop, with its equipment, artwork, materials and countless tools and doodads. One of a framer's biggest challenges is evident: where to put it all. For frame shops coping with the limitations of 1,000-, 500-, even 300-square-foot spaces, finding the right storage solutions can seem even more difficult--if not impossible.

When a good portion of framing revenues pays to lease a space, it only makes sense that every inch should be mined for its maximum storage--and profit--potential. Space planning and storage design, in fact are no less important to framers than purchasing the right equipment or creating the right business plan Even so, these aspects are often forgotten by small business owners, said Dorothy Breininger, a professional organizer with the Center for Organization and Goal Planning in Canoga Park, Calif., and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers.

"When we work for larger companies, we have people who design the offices and install the shelving," said Breininger. "But many people who once worked for companies are now opening up their own shops and businesses, and they're forgetting they need to be their own space planners and design their work spaces."

If you, like so many other framers, feel that storage in your shop could be better, take heart. There are answers for shops of all sizes, assured organizers like Breininger. It's a matter of looking over, under, around and through your current shop to seek out underutilized space and create storage solutions that work best for your unique environment.

A Holistic Approach

The first, and perhaps worst mistake a framer car make when choosing storage is to address it in a piecemeal fashion. Purchasing a shelf here, a basket there or a set of drawers there may offer the promise of quick fix, but can often result in a mishmash of storage that doesn't work well together.

"The biggest mistake that people make is thinking that a product will actually help them get organized," Breininger pointed out. "To get organized, people have got to allocate the time to actually create a plan. I don't care if it's the largest corporation or the smallest business."

Poorly planned storage was the biggest obstacle for framer Kathy Wymore when she purchased Out on a Whim Custom Framing in Aurora, Colo., more than two years ago. The space was already small--about 700 square feet in the showroom and 175 square feet in the workshop in back. But the previous owner made the small space seem even smaller through misguided storage systems that simply did not work.

"The previous owner had these little modular things that had shelves in them, but they made no sense together. None of it was arranged in a way that was user-friendly for anything you needed to store for framing," said Wymore. "There wasn't a single bin I could use to store a 32-inch piece of matboard."

Wymore was also puzzled by the design of the worktables. Underneath each worktable was a single platform placed about a foot off the ground. Such a platform may have been a good footrest, but because it left an expanse of useless space between the platform and tabletop, it was terrible for efficient storage.

To make matters worse, the matcutting table was so small that the matcutter had to be moved in order to use the table as a work surface. And against one wall were three layers of mat scraps that went all the way to the ceiling. The scraps had been woefully neglected due to improper storage; as a result, the majority of them were faded, dented and unusable. "I had to throw 90 percent of the scraps away" recalled Wymore.

Wymore took a comprehensive approach to re-creating the space. She first knocked out a wall and moved it 10 feet into the sales area, reallocating 100 square feet to the shop area. She built a new counter for the showroom that included ample shelf and drawer space. Then she doubled the size of her matcutting table to accommodate both the cutter and ample work surface, and included slots for matboard storage. She replaced the single-platform worktables with new ones that offered storage to accommodate full boxes of glass and full-sized pieces of matboard.

In two years, Wymore said she has replaced everything in the store with fixtures that better serve the function of her frame shop and maximize every foot. "It took me some time to get rid of it all, but I've done everything I can to create more storage," she said.

Space Planning in 3-D

No space should be so packed with storage and worktables that it impedes work flow or customer traffic. But whatever space is not required for the best work flow should then be used for storage, organization, and work surface.

That means all space. Framers often think of their shops merely in two dimensions, but when it comes to maximizing storage capacity, it's important to think of space in three-dimensions. It's all about cubic feet, not just square feet, said Wymore.

"When you run out of horizontal space, the only way to go is vertical," she emphasized. "In my shop, every wall has shelves, moulding racks or something on it--anything to create more storage."