It's only a little while ago that we started noticing ourselves saying " Yes! We stock the big size frames!" more and more often to our Customers' calls, and so, here's this post! Now, we've always stocked " big
sizes" frames, for years, actually, but how come we're being asked this more frequently? Our theory is that is due mainly to two, important, factors. The first is that there are less and less of these variety stores and discount shops around. Many have simply stopped trading and closed down because their small business proprietors can't make enough money to pay expensive rents and high taxes, let alone paying themselves even a basic wage. The first factor is the easiest to ...
Picture Frames, Picture Framing and Picture Framers' Blog
Welcome to our weblog about picture framers, picture frames and picture framing. It is published with the goal to share information, knowledge, tips, ideas and opinions about this industry. All posts are grouped in the sections listed below. For help with orders, visit our Help and FAQs or use the Contact page.
About our News Blog
We have been picture framing for a long time, since the late 1970's. Back then, Malcom Fraser was our Prime Minister and 200,000 or more Asian migrants and boat people were settling here, helping to make Australia multiracial and multicultural. This was a long time ago. In those days, the picture framing industry was adolescent, fit, strong, healthy and growing all the time. Now, around half a century later, the once youthful industry is sadly decrepit.
It is moribund, impotent and almost infirm but the infirmity is not due to ageing or industrial decrepitude. Rather, it slowly became so because of global, technological, economic and political events and circumstances beyond its ken and control. By and large, the competitiveness engendered by the internet, the dismantling of import duties and tariffs, and our high domestic wages, disproportionate to those of our leaner, meaner and hungrier competitors, have all contributed to the slow strangulation and destruction of our local industry.
Sure, there are still isolated, scattered, tenacious survivors, like ourselves, but your local street, or shopping centre picture framer has pretty much disappeared. This is because, and in the main, our Customers find our locally-made products and services too expensive. Alas, we have outsmarted ourselves. We kept awarding ourselves such high wages for so long that now, most Customers cannot afford our picture frames and our framing factories have all closed down. Vale, Australia Picture Framers!
Nevertheless, and during all these years, experiences were gathered and lessons learnt, about picture frames, picture framing and our industry, such as it once was. Rather than forsake these rich legacies of small business and suburban manufacturing histories to become unremembered and be forgotten, we have retrieved and curated these here, under the mantle of this News Blog of posts, or blogs. Enjoy!
Entomology Shadow Boxes
Posted on Category: Ready-Made Frames
About a year or so ago we began experiencing a renewed 
interest and higher sales in our lovely wooden shadow box frames, and it wasn't until we started chatting with Customers that we learned that our increased sales were due to the new, local trend, and subsequent demand for, Entomology Shadow Boxes! And what are these exactly, you might say? Well, frames for bugs, or to display insects, invertebrates and even small creatures. It seems that this new craze is all about Customers wanting to buy 3-dimensional frames inside which are mounted spiders, scorpions ...
Goodbye, eBay …
Posted on Category: Picture Framing IndustryThis post "Goodbye, eBay ..." is really a literary elegy reflecting our recent commercial divorce from selling online via this eCommerce 
platform ( hereinafter referred to as 'eB' ). Our decision was prompted by yet another of their "throw-you-under-the-bus" decisions which was emailed to us by either their one of their AI bots, or one of their anonymous apparatchiks, we don't know which. But let us begin. We began this selling online relationship way back around in 2009, initially lured and, later seduced, by their enticing promises of easy, profitable sales. Alas, it was not to be...
Seek and you shall find … ( but only if done correctly )
Posted on Category: Picture Framing IndustryThis month's post "Googling the right search terms" was sparked by an unknown visitor's, or visitors', persistence in seeking results for an unusual ( antithetical actually ) search term "square A2 frame" which is an excellent oxymoron.
Why? Because A2 is an internationally recognised and adopted, rectangular ( not square ) plane being, to wit, 42x59.4 cm. It's also equally surprising that the unknown user, or users, persisted searching this term for several weeks. How would we know this happened, post readers might well ask? Ah! we would retort, we know because we pay Google Ads to tell us every day what users search for, or with, that's how. As an online retailer spending copious amounts of advertising dollars with Google, Bing, eBay, Gumtree and other online search engines, platforms ...
Framing Collingwood Premiership Posters
Posted on Category: Custom Picture FramingBeing St. Kilda football supporters, we are writing this post with some trepidation, reticence and reluctance, 
but write it we must. This is because we have been more or less inundated with picture framing request for the the picture framing of the 2023 Collingwood Premiership prints and posters. We have seen and framed different print versions, including the Herald Sun newspaper, as well as various Limited Edition formats. However, and by far the most common print that Customers want framed is the popular and inexpensive Mark Day 64x45 cm Premiership Poster edition. With this in mind we will explore the most popular and cost effective, picture framing options ...
Uncollected and abandoned picture frames
Posted on Category: Picture Frames FAQsThis post will deal with the humdrum and slightly annoying topic of uncollected, abandoned picture frames and akin picture framing goods. 
We will begin by saying that an unglamorous part of our online business retail of ready-made picture frames and the factory manufacturing of custom picture frames is the non-collection and ensuing abandonment by Customers of orders and custom picture framing jobs that they ordered. Each year this consists of anything between 10 to 15 assorted online orders and custom picture frames totalling in value between $1,000 to $2,000, some of these orders are shown below. Individually, nearly nearly every order is worth less than $200. This amount is important, as it will be seen a little later on as we continue reading.
So you want a “gallery frame” ? What’s that?
Posted on Categories: Custom Picture Framing, Ready-Made FramesSo you want a gallery frame? Once more it was a Customer's inquiry that germinated the composition of this post. A city Customer rang us up and asked us for a price quotation for a "A0 size gallery frame". 
We asked what she meant by "gallery frame" she replied that she didn't know but she thought we would know, hence this post. Well, the short and sweet is this: it's not a particular or specific size, colour, finish or framing style that makes a picture frame a gallery frame, but rather, how and where it's going to be used. If it's going to be stood on its easel on a desk or table, or hung on a wall its own, or just with another or couple of other frames, then it's not really a gallery frame.
Apropos Change-of-Mind Returns
Posted on Category: Picture Framing IndustryApropos change-of-mind returns - it happened to us again last week! A Customer brought back an 18"x24" black wood poster frame he'd bought earlier in the week claiming that "My husband doesn't like it" , and 
adding" Can I please have my money back". We checked the poster frame for dents, dints, damages and breakages, and, on finding none, we refunded her money, and that was that. Nothing extraordinary, one might say, so, what's the big deal ? Nothing remarkable, we will segue, except to say that the refund that the Customer asked for called is called a "change-of-mind" ( CHOM) refund, and one which, legally speaking, Customers are not entitled to. To quote the Australian Consumer Law, Customers, or consumers, are not entitled to obtain refunds "when they got what they asked for but simply changed their mind".
Broken expectations ..
Posted on Category: Custom Picture FramingIn this post we will write about unmet, failed, or broken expectations. Not about big life expectations, but smaller ones, 
like the obvious one you would naturally experience when you fit a steel wire to the back of a picture frame, and rightfully expect it to hold, only that it doesn't, and you end up with a broken glass, frame, or both. From time to time we have discussions with Customers as to which material, steel wire, or rope, is the strongest, safest and most durable to hang a picture with. Invariably, Customers asks or suggest the former, and are surprised when we tell them that, in our experience, cord is the gold standard. Our experience in observing and repairing frames that ...
Refunds, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Posted on Category: Picture Framing IndustryWe venture to say that our refunds policy is not only progressive and fair-minded, but that it's also quite generous 
and at the forefront of the picture framing industry. We propose this commendation because the Australian Consumer Law legislation, in specific cases, restricts the payment of refunds ( inter alia ) by excluding this entitlement to certain Customers where and when " .. Customers just changed their mind about buying a product, or found the same product cheaper elsewhere , or simply decided they didn't like the products or could not use it ... ". Felicitously for all Customers, our Terms and Conditions of Sale page advises that they can return most goods ( Conditions and Limitations ...