waje sensation at Homes & Interiors Show
08th September 2009
With sales far beyond expectation Helensburgh’s innovative business AnElephantCant stunned the Scottish Art establishment and scored a major success at the recent Homes & Interiors show at Glasgow’s SECC.
The product is Waje - and the strapline is ‘Shuffle your Waje’. It’s a hip phrase and it’s a neat concept.
The notion is dressing your walls without breaking the bank - and creating different relationships between the artworks as you do with your clothes.
The neat trick has been the creation of a special fabric on which the artwork is printed - coupled with a 'magic' adhesive that allows the prints to be easily moved around. What you get is art on your walls with all the
unpretentious serendipity of the poster - but with more substance and durability and a system that makes swopping around and creating new combinations of the objects quick and fun.
They describe it as ‘fine art at consumable prices’ and the art in question
is original material by Greenock’s Phil Burns who, with Brian Cairnduff, is a
partner in AnElephantCant.
Cairnduff says that, with their partners Richard Fildes and Bill Lachlan of
2Canvas, he and Phil had targeted this prestigious show as a market trial for
waje - wall jewellery: ‘to test whether the great Scottish public was ready for this radical challenge to how art is packaged, sold and viewed’.
It was.
Reeling from the success of their bold investment, Cairnduff admits: ‘There
are now dozens of folk out there with waje on their walls. They looked, they
questioned and they bought. Most people took it on board very quickly, loved the idea that you don’t need frames, glass or nails, and were intrigued by the fact that is is moveable. The waje shuffle just took off!’
He pays tribute to the 2canvas team, saying: ‘The work done by Ricky and Bill
was critical to this success. The high quality and resilience of the silk-like paper coupled with the ‘magic’ no-residue adhesive was a major factor in
allowing Phil’s art-work to be presented in the best possible way’.
Naturally there a few sniffs from the oxygen-thin altitudes of the Scottish
art establishment. While one art expert said: ‘You guys have created a new way of selling art’, Brian Cairnduff noted that: ‘Some dealers, of course, were less enthusiastic. But I guess even an elephant can’t please all of the people all of the time’.
They almost bottled it.
‘We were sitting in a cafe outside Partick
station, wondering if this was a really dumb idea even by our standards. We had done some market research, of course, but mainly through people who knew us.
Taking waje to an audience of thousands of complete strangers was suddenly an
intimidating prospect. Then the teenage waitress bounced up to our table with
that special vitality that characterises so much of what Glasgow is about. I
looked at Phil, he was grinning back at me.
“Joie-de-vivre”, he said, “That’s what we sell and people will buy it”.
And they did.
The product is Waje - and the strapline is ‘Shuffle your Waje’. It’s a hip phrase and it’s a neat concept.
The notion is dressing your walls without breaking the bank - and creating different relationships between the artworks as you do with your clothes.
The neat trick has been the creation of a special fabric on which the artwork is printed - coupled with a 'magic' adhesive that allows the prints to be easily moved around. What you get is art on your walls with all the
unpretentious serendipity of the poster - but with more substance and durability and a system that makes swopping around and creating new combinations of the objects quick and fun.
They describe it as ‘fine art at consumable prices’ and the art in question
is original material by Greenock’s Phil Burns who, with Brian Cairnduff, is a
partner in AnElephantCant.
Cairnduff says that, with their partners Richard Fildes and Bill Lachlan of
2Canvas, he and Phil had targeted this prestigious show as a market trial for
waje - wall jewellery: ‘to test whether the great Scottish public was ready for this radical challenge to how art is packaged, sold and viewed’.
It was.
Reeling from the success of their bold investment, Cairnduff admits: ‘There
are now dozens of folk out there with waje on their walls. They looked, they
questioned and they bought. Most people took it on board very quickly, loved the idea that you don’t need frames, glass or nails, and were intrigued by the fact that is is moveable. The waje shuffle just took off!’
He pays tribute to the 2canvas team, saying: ‘The work done by Ricky and Bill
was critical to this success. The high quality and resilience of the silk-like paper coupled with the ‘magic’ no-residue adhesive was a major factor in
allowing Phil’s art-work to be presented in the best possible way’.
Naturally there a few sniffs from the oxygen-thin altitudes of the Scottish
art establishment. While one art expert said: ‘You guys have created a new way of selling art’, Brian Cairnduff noted that: ‘Some dealers, of course, were less enthusiastic. But I guess even an elephant can’t please all of the people all of the time’.
They almost bottled it.
‘We were sitting in a cafe outside Partick
station, wondering if this was a really dumb idea even by our standards. We had done some market research, of course, but mainly through people who knew us.
Taking waje to an audience of thousands of complete strangers was suddenly an
intimidating prospect. Then the teenage waitress bounced up to our table with
that special vitality that characterises so much of what Glasgow is about. I
looked at Phil, he was grinning back at me.
“Joie-de-vivre”, he said, “That’s what we sell and people will buy it”.
And they did.
