by Geoff Williams

ver since he opened his Pontiac, Michigan studio, Epiphany Glass, in 1993, Jason Ruff had a chilling thought, despite working with an oven that could get as hot as 2,100 degrees. Ruff, a 35-year-old glassblower who with his wife and partner, April Wagner, 32, commands hundreds to thousands of dollars for their intricate glass marvels, knew that because his glass-making system was based in gas, carbon monoxide poisoning was a genuine danger.

“I have friends in the same field who have not only had their dogs die of carbon monoxide, but they’ve collapsed and passed out and ended up in a coma, and coming out of it with a little bit of brain damage,” says Ruff. He also has known that a bad day in the studio could involve blowing up in an explosion.

Ruff spent months designing his own safeguards, and even brought in a professional pyro-technician — until their studio had a system, with a back-up generator involved, that is designed to monitor everything — gas leaks, temperature changes and air-quality. If any type of emergency arises, the system will contact his cell phone, wife’s phone, his house, their assistant and finally, if nobody answers, the fire department.

It’s a technological marvel with about a thousand wires protruding everywhere, that nobody can buy in a store, but it makes Ruff’s business a more efficient one, and not to mention safer. Most of us aren’t so lucky. If it hasn’t been invented yet, we do without.

But then there are many of us who do without all the time. Oblivious to what’s out there, or afraid of what gadgetry lurks in the shadows, we slog away, unaware of the technologies that have been invented to make our businesses run more efficiently.

Understanding that money doesn’t grow on trees but in the spirit of improving your life, we decided to showcase five technological gadgets at random — some that you’ve heard of, and some that you probably haven’t. We’re not saying they’re going to revolutionize the art industry like the paintbrush, or save your life, but they just might save you a little time, a little money, and a lot of your sanity.

The gadget: Working Artist 3.0 software
The price range: $99-109
Why you just might need it: This does everything you’ve hopefully been doing — it just accomplishes it easier and faster. It’s specifically designed to help artists manage the business of art. There are over 300 forms and reports here that will let you catalog your work, manage your patron contacts and track all of your show entries and sales. There’s a price grid, a place to create a biography and manage other tasks. Hobbyists who purchase the software and only dabble in art will be lost, but you won’t.

The gadget: The Blackberry
The price range: $400 - $4,000
Why you just might need it: Three million users couldn’t be wrong, could they? Unlimited e-mail, free e-mail services, a calendar and a telephone are just some of the services that the Blackberry is famous for. Some Blackberry units have speaker phones, serve as coast-to-coast walkie-talkies, include cameras and allow you to surf the web.

So how does this help your business? Dominic Serraro, 35, found out how earlier this year. He owns Tamba, a jewelry design company in Whitehouse Station, N.J., which was established in 2003. His creations, which can be viewed at www.tambadesigns.com, incorporate eras-old gold and silversmithing techniques. Serraro’s designs and collections are sold in prominent boutiques, art and craft galleries and specialty gift stores across the United States and Canada.

When Serraro was at the New York International Gift Fair several months ago, he received an email from Marilyn Bauer, an influential art critic who writes for The Cincinnati Enquirer. She wanted to write about Tamba. It was great news, but bad timing. Fortunately, with his Blackberry, Serraro was able to trade several emails with her, without leaving the show or losing his focus on what he was doing.

When Bauer asked for some photos, Serraro took his laptop — with the right Blackberry, he might not have needed it — and rushed over to a Starbucks, found a wireless network hook-up, and he sent out several high-quality digital images.

“We live in an age of instant gratification,” says Serraro, in explaining why he loves his little gadget so much. “If a prospect or customer has needs, I want to be able to respond quicker, which in turn could lead to faster decisions.” Recently, a leading catalog company shot him an email stating that they urgently needed another pendant in their collection. “Even though I was on the road, we were able to quickly respond and provide all relevant information, that helped us close the deal in a matter of a few hours,” says Serraro. On a scale of 1-10, in terms of how useful a Blackberry is, Serraro gives it an eight.

The gadget: Microsoft Point of Sale
The price range: $799 per checkout line
Why you just might need it: If your business still uses a cash register, you are stuck in the 20th century. Microsoft Point of Sale, which was just released in June by Microsoft, is specifically for small businesses. You can use the software with your existing PC, or it can be purchased in complete hardware and software bundles. The software package allows small retailers to track and manage sales, inventory, employees and customer information. Granted, it’s for any small business and not designed with artisans in mind. But with the goal being to easily integrate everything from scanners to receipt printers, cash drawers and magnetic stripe readers, gallery owners just may want to jump on this bandwagon.

The gadget: RFID Tags (radio frequency identification tags)
The price range: $1,000 per system (two to four systems is what a typical art gallery will likely buy, estimates the maker of the product)
Why you just might need it: Michael Zammuto, president of Sapago Inc., in Delray Beach, Fla., makes a compelling case why your art gallery needs RFID tags, but first, a little explanation of what they are is probably in order. RFID tags are those small adhesive stickers that you’ll find on everything from jeans to CDs in retail stores.

Zammuto takes the technology so familiar to retail stores and brings it to the art world in a, fittingly, creative way. (Not that he’s necessarily the first to do so; some museums are using similar technology for similar purposes.)

Walk into Granite State MetalWorks, in Littleton, N.H., the first art gallery to use the Sapago technology, and you’ll see what Zammuto has done. Customers who come into browse are given a handheld computer and what looks like a highlighter; they point the highlighter at a scan tag near the artwork, and suddenly, on the screen of their handheld PC, the visitor can read a biography of the artist, see what other work they’ve done and even potentially watch a video of the artist at work, or discussing what motivated them to create the artwork that the customer is viewing.

“It’s a sales tool, but not a sales person,” stresses Zammuto, who acknowledges that a live human being could convey much of the information that his RFID technology does. The problem, however, is that “very few people make the leap from wandering around an art gallery like it’s a museum to intermingling with the sales staff. Art galleries have the lowest conversion rate in the entire retail industry. It’s less than one percent. On the other hand, in the dairy aisle at a grocery store, it’s almost one hundred percent. People don’t go there to just look at the milk. But if we can just shift that from less than one percent to two percent, it would be a huge boom to art galleries.”

But in an art gallery, Zammuto points out that there’s almost a conflict set up from the start. “We’re seeing that at Granite State, the customers are happy to have the diversion something that takes away from the idea that I’m here to buy art, without feeling the pressure that goes along with it,” says Zammuto, who is certainly right about that tension. Purchasing a $3,000 painting that’s going to shape the entire look of your foyer, for many years to come, is a high-pressure decision. Buying a quart of two-percent milk or a slab of cheddar cheese? Not so much.

The gadget: Lightbox Photo Gallery software
The price range: $399-$699
Why you just might need it: Let’s assume that you have a web site, but let’s also assume that you feel it’s lacking, and maybe the money you’re shelling out is draining you. Lightbox allows you, as they declare on their Web site (www.lightboxphoto.com), “to create your own stock photo library and stop paying commissions to third party providers.” As Lightbox declares, you can use the software as a complete stand alone Web site or integrate it into an existing Web site. And it’s easy to see why you might want to do either: Lightbox lets you create watermark images for security purposes, it offers secure online payment processing and allows instant downloading. You can create everything from customized invoice forms to private online galleries for select customers. You can even import IPTC metadata to create a hyperlinked field search!

(We have no idea what that means, but it sure sounds cool.)

Geoff Williams is a free-lance writer based in Loveland, Ohio, and among other things, most frequently writes about business issues for Entrepreneur Magazine.

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