A Few Words from Jim – July 2021

WooHoo! 

This fun phrase is used often by Helen Funk when exclaiming the great news during board meetings of the Jackson County Fair, of which I proudly serve on. She is the director and even through COVID shut the fair and expo business down for over a year she has much to celebrate, but I wanted to borrow her excitement to share with the business community how excited I am that we are going to have county fairs again. I explain the business model of the Jackson County Fair on page 21. 

WooHoo! 

I’ll say it again to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of an Oregon company that I am a partner in. Art Authority, LLC purchased, 1000Museums.com,  a failed dot com e-commerce business 5 years ago and it’s doing very well now under new leadership, in a new location (Ashland) and expertise. 

I remember sitting for several hours in a trailer at the Jackson County Expo RV park – it was fair-week – walking through the purchase agreement word by word with our legal teams and seller on the East Coast and signing on the spot. It was a milestone day. 

With the help of my 3 amazing partners ( we started with 2 additional partners – the original founders of 1000Museums.com, who amicably exited the partnership early on) we have turned around this company and grew it in amazing ways. We doubled our manufacturing space, added employees, brought 100% of our framing in house and grew both our museum partner base as well as our e-commerce customer base. We constantly innovate new systems, products and processes to improve our little company and it’s exciting and rewarding work. 

I think the thing that I am most proud of is that we survived COVID. 100% of our Museum customers were shut down overnight and it greatly impacted us financially forcing us to pivot hard to survive and we did. Hard decisions were made and everyone rolled up their sleeves again to find a way through it. Because of this, we are stronger coming out than we were going in. 

It’s a great story worth sharing and it starts on page 36. 

It’s July. It’s hot and we have a lot to celebrate. Visit your county fair and checkout 1000Museums.com and let me know what you think. 

Jim
Jim@SouthernOregonBusiness.com