For the brother of marine artist Wyland, getting back to nature has been an $18 million experience.
The first thing you notice about Bill Wyland is what he isn't wearing. Though he's a driven businessman who has built Wyland Galleries into an $18 million art powerhouse, 'I haven't worn shoes to the office in years,' he admits.
The office is in the Haleiwa gallery, headquarters for the seven-year-old chain and the starting point for its stellar growth. It's less than a quarter mile from the North Shore, a decidedly atypical business location on Honolulu-centric Oahu. But the seven-mile stretch of coastline, with worldclass fishing, diving, snorkeling, surfing and wind-surfing, plays to the strength of one of the fastest-growing corners of the art business today.
No one sells the ocean better than Bill Wyland. The brother of Wyland, self-titled as the 'World's Finest Ocean Artist,' is the businessman behind the airbrush. While Wyland the artist has established a worldwide reputation for paintings of whales and dolphins, Bill Wyland has created an empire of 22 galleries and four retail stores in four states showcasing the works of his brother and other marine artists. The business is lucrative enough that the rapid expansion has been accomplished mainly with inhouse financing. He did it, too, during a period of rising bankruptcies in Hawaii and against the advice of businesspeople - the same people who probably would have told him to wear shoes to the office.
LIFE ON THE WYLAND SIDE. At 36, Bill Wyland spends four months a year on vacation and drives a Mercedes convertible, neither of which hints at a meager childhood. The Wyland brothers grew up in Detroit, where Darlene Wyland, divorced from their father, made a living as an auto worker. She encouraged her sons Steve, Tom, Bill and Robert in artistic and athletic pursuits and took them one summer to visit her sister in California, where they encountered the ocean and marine life that would become their signature. 'She's the reason we came out halfway sane,' Bill says.
Robert (now known as Wyland) stuck to California and the whales. He studied art in the late 1970s at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit before moving to Laguna Beach, where he still maintains a studio, gallery and part-time presence. Bill skipped college, enlisted in the Air Force and served on its Ski Patrol. His summers were spent working as a military firefighter in England. Later he skied professionally in Tahoe, but in the fledgling days of the circuit, 'It was a lot of work and the pay was terrible,' says Bill, who still spends at least a month a year skiing.
So he made the jump from the slopes to sales, starting his own timeshare real estate marketing company in Tahoe in the early 1980s. The operation grew rapidly and for the first time in his life, Wyland began to see real money. But the downside was obvious. 'It was risky,' he says. 'One time a timeshare went belly up and I lost a lot of money. I wasn't really in control.'
It was on a trip to Maui with Wyland in 1987 that he first thought of linking his career to his brother's. By this time Wyland had already painted 12 Whaling Wall murals on structures around the country, attracting considerable public recognition (he would go on to make the Guinness Book of World Records with a 1,280-by-100-foot mural in Long Beach in 1992). Marine art was booming, but on Maui, the center of the marine art world, Wyland's paintings got no respect. At one gallery, Bill Wyland saw his brother's work sitting on the floor against the walls. 'My brother's art was not being represented the way it should,' he says. 'I told him that I would start a gallery and if it went well, I'd sell off the real estate marketing business.'
The artist agreed. Ignoring the incredulity of colleagues, Wyland the businessman settled on a site in Haleiwa, far from the money centers of Waikiki and East Honolulu. 'I knew it would work,' he says. 'It has exposure to Kam Highway and lots of parking. Those are two key ingredients.' He was also gambling on a hunch that the tourists and water sports enthusiasts who drove up to the North Shore would probably be the same kind of people apt to buy Wyland's paintings.
It took a year to build and decorate the gallery. Even so, the July 1, 1988 grand opening was far from that. Wyland had run out of money and was forced to open an unfinished gallery, but his first sales that weekend were encouraging. For three months he was the sole employee of Wyland Galleries Haleiwa. 'I used to lock the doors but leave the 'Open' sign up. Then I'd run across the street to Rosie's to eat, and if a nice car pulled up in the gallery lot, they would put my food under the lamp and I would run back over and make a sale.'
Flush from his North Shore receipts, Wyland opened a second gallery three months later on Lahaina's Front Street and hired some help. Now his seven-day workweek was split between the two galleries, but sales were rising. At the end of 1988 the startup had grossed $200,000. Since then revenue growth in Hawaii has been quick and consistent, rising from $2.6 million in 1989 to $18 million in 1994. There are now 14 Wyland Galleries in Hawaii, six in California, one in Florida and one in Oregon selling limited edition fine art. Four Wyland retail stores in Hawaii sell lower-end merchandise. Both numbers should be revised upward within a year.
MARINE MACHINE. In Bill Wyland's view, heightened environmental awareness and niche marketing have driven the chain's expansion. But a major factor that has helped it outpace the rest of the marine art market (see sidebar, page 18) is the artist. Wyland's Whaling Wall tours - during which he visits a series of mainland cities to paint free murals - are one-man publicity juggernauts that increase the company's visibility and customer recognition immeasurably. 'His picture is in the newspaper of every town he goes to,' notes his brother. The tours hold down the mainland advertising budget, although Ad Strategies International, the chain's three-person ad agency, handles some campaigns in the islands.
Wyland's sales teams are also more aggressive than most in the industry. 'Back when I first started in this business, people would come into an art gallery and it was like Kmart or something,' he says. 'They would pick something out and say, 'I want that one,'' but most walked out with nothing. Now customers are greeted and assisted quickly, and the sales tactics, though not high-pressure, are definitely interventionist.
The resulting revenue growth and expansion have drawn an ambiguous reaction from Wyland the artist. 'He's wanting to grow continuously and I want to maintain the integrity and the quality,' says Wyland, who has expanded into publishing and multimedia. But 'higher sales drives you to more achievement in art. There's limitless amounts of merchandise that can be derived out of these images. It is, after all, a business.'
That attitude has some art world colleagues questioning Wyland Galleries' claims of artistic legitimacy. 'It's money-making art. It's like commercial television,' says John Wisnosky, director of the University of Hawaii's drawing and painting program, who calls marine artists like Wyland 'extremely talented illustrators.' He adds, 'Sure we all try to make some money at it. But with the marine artists, the business becomes the focus of their work rather than art.'
What most distinguishes Bill Wyland's approach in a largely similar marine art market is his appetite for growth. He supplies the drive; his brother supplies the art. 'He's smart and aggressive,' says Jim Tulip, director of Maui-based Robert Lyn Nelson Studios. 'He's certainly done an effective job.' Says Wyland the artist of his market dominance: 'Most of it is due to Bill. I would have been happy having one gallery here on the North Shore in Haleiwa.'
Where other gallery chains have chosen to restrict the number and types of products licensed and sold, Wyland has an all-out blitzkrieg of mugs, posters, sweat-shirts and T-shirts as well as numerous Wyland paintings and lithographs. He doesn't worry about overselling the market. For one thing, his brother's art has strong appeal among children, a large potential future customer base. And the artist recently signed a three-year deal with Film Roman (creators of the Simpsons animated TV show) to produce, create, write and animate an environmental marine-based cartoon series, ensuring greater exposure among children. 'It will never tap out,' Wyland says. 'With more and more people getting involved in the environment and more pollution and environmental problems, you'll see even more attention given to marine art.'
Where the chain's growth will stop is an open question. In 1992 Wyland moved his expanding operations and merchandise into a 30,000-square-foot building in Waipahu. He's negotiating to open 30 more Wyland Galleries, mostly on the East Coast. Within four years he wants to open 25 retail stores in Hawaii and on the mainland to sell Wyland image products that are more affordable than the typical Wyland oil painting or sculpture, whose prices can range into the tens of thousands of dollars. Strong sales to foreign tourists have him thinking about galleries in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, England and France. 'I want to make this a $50 million to $75 million company in the next five or six years,' says Wyland, who hopes to delegate well enough to expand his yearly vacation time to eight months by the time he turns 40.
With all that free time, he says he might start another career as an underwater photographer. Having tested the business side of art, he wants to try becoming an artist himself. What was that criticism about sales driving the art? He made it work for his brother. Who's to say it won't work for him too?
RELATED ARTICLE: The Rest of the Picture
The marine art movement can be traced back to 1979, when Maui artist Robert Lyn Nelson painted 'Two Worlds,' a depiction of a marine environment's underwater and above-water aspects. Other artists, including Wyland, were working on similar themes, but it was Nelson's work that catapulted the genre into the limelight. Soon galleries along Lahaina's Front Street were overflowing with paintings of whales, dolphins, fish and seascapes, often from Nelson's 'Two Worlds' perspective.
As a treasure trove of marine life and an artist's mecca, Hawaii remains the center of the world's marine art movement. A disproportionate number of its big names live in the islands, including Wyland, Nelson and Christian Riesse Lassen. The definition of the genre has expanded to include just about every art medium and work that features the ocean and its creatures. Nor is marine art limited to marine settings any more. 'There are marine artists in the Midwest that probably spend very. little time by the ocean and are doing very well,' says Jim Tulip, director of Robert Lyn Nelson Studios. Lassen, meanwhile, has moved his corporate headquarters to Las Vegas to take advantage of a better business climate.
Consensus in this segment of the art world places the value of marine art sales in Hawaii at well over $ 30 million annually, of which Wyland Galleries accounts for nearly two-thirds. Tulip estimates that additional exports to Japan, where Lassen is strong, top $20 million a year.
Marty Kahn, a Kauai entrepreneur with six galleries on Kauai and Oahu, estimates that marine art drives 75 to 80 percent of his art business, up from 40 percent when he started in 1984. Though his first two galleries were more eclectic with a strong crafts orientation, customer demand pushed Kahn toward more whales, dolphins and seascapes. But like other dealers, Kahn has noticed a growing dichotomy within marine art. 'We realized there were two markets - posters and fine arts. So we segregated the posters out into a separate gallery and did an exclusively fine arts gallery.' The more affordable poster gallery has become a big seller, but the general move toward mass market appeal raises questions about the sustainability of marine art in a rapidly expanding market.
Not everyone is singing the genre's praises. Lahaina Galleries, an upscale Maui chain, sharply reduced the marine art portion of its stock after sales dropped several years ago. 'We saw many people walk in and say, 'Oh, there's another whale,' and just walk right out the door,' says sales and marketing director Kim von Tempsky. 'The exclusivity and uniqueness of the product were greatly diminished.' The six-gallery chain - where Nelson's work first appeared in the late 1970s - once did 25 to 30 percent of its business in marine art, but now only does about 2 to 3 percent.
The art world's reaction to the popular genre has been tepid, primary gripes being lack of originality in subject matter and strikingly similar styles. 'I think it has made a statement and the message it has is an important one,' says yon Tempsky, 'but I don't know whether you will see it in galleries in London, Paris or New York - what you might call the high quality art markets.'
But Tulip notes that marine art has nonetheless clearly broken into the mainstream. 'We've had inquiries from people that are collectors of Chagalls and Monets,' he says. 'It's a legitimate art form.' The genre has been featured in cover stories of U.S. Art Gallery and Art Business News, two prominent industry publications.
And if growth means acceptance, then marine art is well on its way to respectability. 'Sales of our licensed images and calendars have increased twenty-fold,' says Tulip, who has watched revenues for Robert Lyn Nelson Studios double in the company's first two years. 'Milton Bradley sold over 1 million Robert Lyn Nelson puzzles in the last 12 months. There certainly doesn't seem to be any slowdown that's perceptible to any of us.'
- Alex Salkever
