Business Opportunities Weblog

March 26, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

SFGate:

Four years ago, an 8-foot-tall banner depicting Swedish ball bearings on a crimson field fluttered from a Manhattan light pole, touting the reopening of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Today, it hangs in Peter Knockstead’s dining room in Washington.

“It just spoke to me from a modern sense,” says Knockstead, events manager for the American Diabetes Association. “And how cool is it that you know the provenance of it? I was told it was hung on Fifth Avenue.”

Dawn Laguens was smitten with a banner showing a detail of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Red Hills With Flowers” at the Art Institute of Chicago. She bought one last Christmas for her partner, Jennifer Treat, and now the ceiling-height work radiates red, yellow and magenta in their D.C. living room.

Both banners came from BetterWall, a 4-year-old Denver company that scouts, buys and sells these outdoor exhibition promos from 25 U.S. museums and galleries. They are impact pieces. Measuring from 6 to 8 feet tall and 30 to 36 inches wide, they are as large and bold as most rooms can take.

All of them once hung from light poles or building fronts, and most are printed on both sides to catch the eye of drivers and pedestrians. Their sturdy vinyl material, fade-proof inks and wind slits mean they can survive outdoors for years.

The company was born of the enthusiasm of art historian Nora Weiser, 38, who ran a Denver museum shop alliance, and her husband, Nicolas, 39, who worked for an environmental consulting firm. Both were searching for a home business to meld their professional expertise and give them more time with their two children.

They pitched a “recycle and reuse” concept to dozens of museums, knowing that once an exhibit ended, “they would throw the banners out. They are dirty, they are big and kind of an unwieldy product to have.” Cleaned up, however, they are affordable art with a backstory.

“Most people pick the banner that appeals to them on an aesthetic level. They just really like the image, or maybe they were in a city and saw the exhibit there,” Weiser says. “Designers buy things for clients. They are not so interested in the artist but the look, maybe black and white.”

Current stock includes promos for Amish quilts from the Denver Art Museum, a black-and-white Chuck Close self-portrait from a show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and an image of a Japanese geisha that once flapped outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The Weisers are motivated partly by affection for the banners and partly out of concern for the environment. Nora Weiser estimates they have kept 15 tons of plastic fabric out of landfills since 2004.

Editor’s note: Here is a business built around an item that was previously thrown away. What other ‘throwaways’ are out there that could be turned into profitable businesses?

Photo by BetterWall.

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Tags: Government, Niche