Know­ing about Sur­tex and Art Licens­ing hap­pened very ran­domly and com­pletely changed my life. Here are the high­lights, from the day I first read about this (3 years ago!) until now.

March 2007:
– As I was ran­domly surf­ing on the web, I acci­den­tally stum­bled upon the blog of a very tal­ented children’s book illus­tra­tor. Her name is Susie Lee Jin (Susie Stu­dio). She was blog­ging about her prepa­ra­tions for a cer­tain design show, as a first time exhibitor. It seemed like a big deal, so I looked it up.
– I learned about art licens­ing from the Sur­tex web­site. I had an idea about art licens­ing, but I didn’t know it was such a big indus­try, and I had never heard about Sur­tex before.

May 2007:
– I kept read­ing about art licens­ing on inter­net, and stum­bled upon other artists blogs. Every arti­cle I read about that indus­try was get­ting me more inter­ested in it.

July 2007:
– I kept read­ing Susie’s blog, and I sent her a mes­sage ask­ing her ques­tions about licens­ing. She gave me the con­tact of the per­son who helped her: Cheryl Phelps, who’s an artist, and an art licens­ing “coach”. She orga­nizes work­shops and offers in per­son and phone con­sult­ing about the art licens­ing world.

August 2007:
– I reg­is­tered to Phelp’s next work­shop: “The Greet­ing Card, Licens­ing and Art Biz Work­shop” in New York in Novem­ber 2007.

Sep­tem­ber 2007:
– I found a name for my busi­ness: Poki­dots! stu­dio. I reg­is­tered it, cre­ated a logo and busi­ness cards, and started doing my free­lance graphic design work through it.
– I bought “Licens­ing Art and Design – A Professional’s Guide to Licens­ing and Roy­alty Agree­ments” by Caryn R. Leland, A book that taught me most of what I know now. It is a small book that cov­ers pretty much all aspects of the busi­ness, espe­cially the legal aspect. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it.

Novem­ber 2007:
– I attended Phelp’s work­shop, and I did a con­sult­ing ses­sion with her after the work­shop. It was very help­ful, and Phelps pro­vided us with a book­let packed with infor­ma­tion and con­tacts! I learned a lot! I also met very inter­est­ing and tal­ented artists who were also try­ing to take the first steps into the art licens­ing business.

Jan­u­ary 2008:
– I cre­ated a web­site that I never pub­lished, and I started doo­dling… When you have to come up with an art col­lec­tion from scratch, it’s not always easy to know where to begin or what to draw.

Time went by… I still had a full time design job, I was still doing free­lance design work on the side, and I was still read­ing about art licens­ing, but I was just not ready for it yet.

Feb­ru­ary 2009:
– I had left my full time job and took some time off.
– My first licens­ing col­lec­tion was com­plete, along with Poki­dots! web­site that my friend Laura worked on. Great!

May 2009:
– I walked the Sur­tex show for the first time. It was beau­ti­ful and over­whelm­ingly inspir­ing. I talked to a few artists and I knew then that I def­i­nitely wanted to be a licens­ing artist, and exhibit at this show the next year.

I con­tin­ued read­ing about art licens­ing, and doo­dling and work­ing on graphic design projects. I started offer­ing print­ing ser­vices with my designs and Poki­dots! was doing well.

Jan­u­ary 2010:
– I moved from Mon­treal to Van­cou­ver (BC), and started get­ting myself men­tally ready for Sur­tex, although I was still unsure if I was really ready to be part of it.
– I cre­ated a Twit­ter account and dis­cov­ered artists who were talk­ing about licens­ing and about Sur­tex. I also “met” Tara Reed (Artist­Tara­Reed) who always has some­thing very inter­est­ing and help­ful to share with artists. She is an expe­ri­enced licens­ing artist and a con­sul­tant; her tweets, blog, videos, tuto­ri­als and the tele­sem­i­nars she orga­nizes every month are so infor­ma­tive and helpful.

Feb­ru­ary 1, 2010:
– This was the dead­line that I set to have my new, redesigned and updated web­site ready, and my dear friend Gus who made it hap­pen was done at 11:59 on Jan­u­ary 31. Right on time! I am so happy with the result, he did an amaz­ing job, and it is the web­site that I have right now on http://pokidots.com. Gus is the man behind all the online work for Poki­dots! includ­ing this blog. (Thank You!)

April 2010:
– I bought my booth at Sur­tex, and booked my flight to New York. Excit­ing!
– I started plan­ning my booth and ideas for new draw­ings and col­lec­tions were pop­ping in my head constantly!

May 2010:
– The Sur­tex Show was a suc­cess! It was a beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence and I was proud of how my booth turned out. I received a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back and made good con­tacts!
– Click here to read more about my Sur­tex experience.

It did take me lit­er­ally 3 years to actu­ally start in art licens­ing, since I knew about it, and I needed all this time. My last work expe­ri­ence was the best. I learned a lot and every­thing I did dur­ing those 3 years got me more ready for now and I am def­i­nitely happy about that.

A ran­dom blog post got me into the art licens­ing busi­ness. What about you? ☮