Jay Goltz, CEO and founder of Artists Frame Service, tells us his story. I started working in my friend’s father’s frame shop when I was 16 years old. I have always loved building things, have always appreciated good design, and was raised on the value of “customer service” in my parents and grandparents’ dime store. A dime store, for those too young to remember, had big front windows with red trim, creaky wood floors, and a tin ceiling. That’s where America shopped before the department store. My parents bought it in 1957 and named it after their new baby boy (me) and my cousin Neal. ‘Jay Neal’s’ was a fixture on Armitage until 1994.
In 1978, I graduated from college and had to make a ‘career’ choice. Law school? Accounting? MBA? People in my generation were expected to be professionals. The only problem was that I had had more than enough of school, and I loved picture framing! I thought I could do it better than what was available. My part time framing job and my ‘customer service’ roots serendipitously collided. I decided to start AFS in a third floor walk up loft on Clybourn, around the corner from my parents’ store. Unlike today where you would find entrepreneurial support and celebration, I was met with ridicule and disbelief. “You’re going to waste your degree???” I heard it a hundred times from my classmates. While I was unsure, I decided it was a risk worth taking.
Clybourn was an abandoned factory district, and I was the first new business there in years. I opened in June of 1978, and I found a ready market for better framing, one-week turnaround (3 to 8 weeks was normal), and ‘customer service’ the way my grandfather and father taught me. “Make sure the customer gets what they need, and make sure its right!” In addition, I had a passion for finding the best materials that were available worldwide, and an attention to detail that reflects my obsessive nature.
The rest, as they say, is history. Within five years Artists’ Frame Service became the largest custom frame store in the country. Today it is 20 to 30 times the size of the average frame shop, and the largest in the world. I am surprised; I am proud; I am appreciative. Appreciative of every single customer who has ever come into my store; and appreciative of my 70 employees who embrace my mission to do beautiful framing that will leave the customer thrilled.