Uncategorized
The Honor System
Nov
“It’s up to my customers’ honest nature to pay for the sculptures they picked up. It’s kind of like a self-checkout of today, but with no one checking over your receipt or watching over your shoulder.”
When I first started the Iron Fish Gallery in 2001, my gallery was my wrap-around porch at my house. When I would have to boat over to the mainland for groceries and supplies (due to Daufuskie Island’s almost total lack of commercialism), I realized there was no way to lock up my open aired gallery. For this reason, I decided to adopt an age old business model known as “the honor system” where it’s up to my customers’ honest nature to pay for the sculptures they picked up. It’s kind of like a self-checkout of today, but with no one checking over your receipt or watching over your shoulder.
At the time, I figured this system could easily fail, but since I had no other creative solutions to my not being able to lock up, I decided to give the honor system a try. I’m thankful to say that today, nearly 20 years later, my gallery and studio are totally separated from my home but “the honor system” remains in full force. In all of these years speaking with customers, the question I get most of all is, “how often do you get ripped off?”. My answer to that is “never, as far as I know”. In fact, I think I get overpaid in the end. I’ll happily explain.
To “self check out” my customers sign into my “sign-in log”, mentioning what sculpture they took, then noting if they left money in the honor box, or if they want me to call them for a credit card payment on my return. I usually go through this sign-in log once a week and make phone calls. I almost never have to go through and make a second call because customers are great at getting back to me immediately. However, there have been times where customers forgot to call back and forgot to send a check, but I never noticed.
The truth is, I don’t keep a great record of my inventory, so it’s possible someone has taken art without paying. Here’s the cool part that I do notice. At least 30 times in the past 20 years, I have had customers send me a check months (even a year) after they picked out their sculptures. In these rare cases, often the customer sends a check for over the amount they owed, accompanied with a friendly note explaining they wanted to over pay because they forgot. These instances of customers voluntarily overpaying, coupled with the fact that people LOVE this rare “honor system” method, would lead me to easily make a solid case that in certain circumstances (such as having a gallery on a bridge-less rural island), it pays to be trusting.
Chase Allen
November 21, 2019