Gainesville Picture Framers is locally owned and located near Tower Road on the west side of town. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know owners Suzanne and Brett. Their passion is contagious, and I hope their story encourages you as much as it did me.
What do you do at Gainesville Picture Framers?
Custom picture framing!
How long have you been in business?
Almost a year as owners. Collectively, I have over 20 years of experience in framing and design.
What made you take the leap and start your business?
Suzanne: I was really nervous to open up our own shop and take on that responsibility, but ultimately it came down to freedom – the ability to make our own decisions about what we believe in – our business structure, how we price, what we hang on the walls. As a picture framer, there’s only so much you can grow within someone else’s company. We both hit this limit where we were essentially running other people’s businesses for them, and we realized we could be doing this for ourselves.
Brett: There’s a lot of trust that goes into people bringing you their most valuable things, and over the years, you build relationships with your clientele. It’s nice to be able to form these relationships and feel like they’re my relationships, not me being the face of someone else’s company.
Suzanne: That trust matters because people frame what’s important to them. Framing isn’t cheap, and what you choose to display – a diploma representing an achievement, a jersey of yours – may have both monetary and sentimental value. The sentimental value can be more important than the monetary, because you can’t put a price on that. When somebody drops off their most precious item, there’s trust that goes into keeping it safe and displaying it properly.
Is there a particular client or job that really stands out as meaningful?
Suzanne: The memorial jobs are always the most meaningful. We do a lot of them – for people, but also for pets. For pets, it might be framing a collar, or a paw print and a photo. We just framed a snakeskin for someone whose snake passed away. Even the snakeskin – the exoskeleton of this creature – was so beloved.
Brett: We’re there through big things in people’s lives – weddings, childbirth, achievements. It’s rewarding to grow with people and see these snippets of their lives through what they bring in. This is a fun part of the job.
Suzanne: We’ve worked with Grant Holloway, the track star here in town who’s won several Olympic golds. We knew him back when he was at UF. Getting to know someone through their career as they become the best in the world at something, that’s cool. Like Brett said, we’re there for people’s biggest moments.
I was talking to a friend who is a therapist, and I realized we do a lot of emotional labor in this work too. Whether it’s the good stuff or the bad stuff, people are sharing. This was from my grandmother. This was my grandpa’s. This is my child.
What do you wish more people in Gainesville knew about what you do?
Suzanne: We’re handcrafting everything ourselves. Often retail storefronts are simply brokers – moving products from supplier to customer. We’re actually collaborating with you to create something custom, ordering raw materials and building the frame ourselves. Every step involves care and pride and craftsmanship. As Brett likes to say, we want to demystify the process. What he’s been posting on social media goes behind the curtain to show how we cut a mat, how we make a frame and why frames cost as much as they do. We use archival materials, designed to preserve your memories so that ten years from now they won’t be disintegrating or fading from UV.
Brett: You can always buy a cheap frame and pop something in, but it’ll break down over time. I’ve seen jobs come in where a cheap frame has completely ruined the artwork. Those are always sad for me. Everything we do is to protect as well as make things beautiful.
Suzanne: I’d also add that we empower people. A lot of people come in saying, “I’m not artistic. I don’t know what will look good. I don’t know how to make any of these decisions.” We work with people in a collaborative way rather than saying, “This is the frame that you need.” We see people become confident in their own decisions. If you put something next to a piece and somebody gasps, you can really tell by their expressions that they’re emotionally connecting with it. That’s what art is – not some rational, logical standard. Besides the golden ratio, there doesn’t need to be an explanation.
Brett: When you look at something on the wall, we don’t want you to think about how much you paid for it. We want you to think about how beautiful it is and how much you like it. That moment when someone comes to pick up their piece and sees it finished – that’s one of my favorite parts of the job. Seeing their reaction.
What are you working on right now that has you most excited?
Suzanne: I’m really excited about three colorful prints by light artist Keith Sonnier. A lot of his work is 3D neon light art in the style of Dan Flavan. Our clients found prints of his – sketches and inspirations for his sculptural work. They’re colorful and messy, and the customers chose three primary color frames. They talk to each other – they’re not matchy-matchy. I really believe that you have to frame to the individual artwork, not the space that it’s going in, so it’s fun to see three separate pieces by the same artist in these primary color frames. One’s red, one’s yellow, one’s blue.
Brett: I’m excited about this embroidery here. A friend’s grandmother made it. She recently passed, and when they were clearing out her home, they found it – they didn’t even know she made art. I just stretched it and I’m building the frame today. Sentimental pieces like this are some of my favorite projects. It’s going to be beautiful and it has such a good story behind it.
You’ve been at this for about a year. Was there anything that took you by surprise as business owners?
Suzanne: For me, there were two things. First, the buildout took far longer than expected. Moving a single non-structural wall required three months and multiple permits instead of the couple of weeks we’d planned for. We kept having to push back our opening date, and that stretch felt like struggling in quicksand. I was anxious, stressed, honestly terrified – and every business owner we knew wanted to remind us how hard it all was going to be.
The second surprise was once we opened: how much I love it. I love being here. The clichés turn out to be annoyingly true – when you find something you love, you never work a day in your life. I still have to do taxes and stuff that I don’t like to do; I still sometimes feel like I’m at work. But honestly, I just love being here in our own space that Brett and I curated together, looking at everything on the walls that we chose. We get to make our own decisions. We don’t need to check in with anybody else. I’ll never turn down more business, but it’s not as stressful or hard as I thought it would be. I also hadn’t thought about how we’ve actually been doing this for 10 years for other people. Once we opened our own shop, I found a confidence I didn’t realize that I had.
Brett: The most challenging thing for me was learning to value our own work. As an employee, you don’t think much about what’s happening behind the scenes – the overhead, the bills, all of it. Being on the owner side, you understand why things cost what they do. Framing has a reputation for being expensive, and now I get it. We’re still working out
pricing a year in, because you really need a full year of sales records before you can see the patterns clearly.
Suzanne: I’m learning managerial accounting skills, how to read the QuickBooks reports, that kind of stuff. We want to keep prices as low as we can while still making a living. We’re finding that sweet spot between the cost of overhead and materials and buying our own groceries.
Brett: People always say the first year is the hardest, and there have definitely been hard moments, but overall, I’ve felt lighter than I ever did working for someone else. I still worry about bills, but I feel good about the work I’m putting out in the world. People kept warning us that the first year would be hard, but it’s actually been freeing.
How can readers connect with Gainesville Picture Framers?
Visit our website at https://www.gainesvillepictureframers.com, Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/gnvpictureframers/, or visit the shop at 7337 NW 4th Blvd in Gainesville. Our phone number is 352-888-1505.
Know a local business owner whose story should be told? Email us at editor@mainstreetdailynews.com.
Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of monthly business columns called “352Builds.” The content is opinion provided by Nathaniel Wingfield.