HoustonChronicle Business Section

July 17, 2005, 12:09AM

Your office is her canvas

Dinah Wright and her Art-Right firm provide a service for businesses seeking a sense of beauty for their office space

By MASON LERNER
For The Chronicle

DINAH Wright, the owner of Art-Right, always knew that she had a deep appreciation for art, but she never thought that her eye for what looks good hanging on a wall would be her bread and butter.

Seven years after leaving corporate America to act as an art agent and consultant, that is exactly what her life has become.

Her company has developed a method for supplying commercial businesses with the right art for their office space.

When a company decides to hire Art-Right, Wright or one of her two art consultants heads out to the business to size it up.

After an on-location analysis, the Art-Right team contemplates what type of art will be right for that particular business.

Then, depending on the client's budget, she and her staff sift through everything, from paintings to poster art to sculptures, before presenting her clients with the options.

A virtual art gallery

The next step in the process is what Art-Right uses as a selling point.

After careful consideration of what art suits their clients needs, Art-Right creates a virtual art gallery that allows clients to view choices from anywhere in the world via the Internet.

By entering a user name and password unique for their business on Art-Right's Web site, www.art-right.com, Art-Right's clients are able to view a virtual art gallery designed specifically for their business art needs.

By simply pointing and clicking, clients can take a tour through a gallery that presents them with the art that the Art-Right consultants feel will best bring a sense of beauty to their place of business.

Easy shopping online

According to Wright, these virtual galleries make shopping for art much more convenient for her clients than those businesses that seek their art elsewhere.

"One of the advantages to our clients is that we save them a ton of time" Wright said. "There are lots of decorators out there and there are lots of art consultants out there, and one of the ways we stand out from all of them is that we are the only company that I am aware of that puts together a Web gallery for our clients."

This not only makes it easier for time-pressed executives to choose the art they want, but it also allows Art-Right to reach a customer base far beyond Houston.

"If we need to, we will fly out to view a customer's office," Wright said. "We sell and ship everywhere from New York to California and everywhere in between."

Wright has two consultants, a bookkeeper, an office manager and an installer on a part-time or contract basis.

She hopes to move toward hiring a full-time staff within the next year.

She is also interested in franchising the Art-Right concept. She currently has interested investors in Colorado, and she is keeping her ears open for any other interesting offers.

"We really seem to be hitting a flow in Houston because now we have established a foundation," Wright said. "We will be solid, fluid and larger with full-time employees. I also see us having another franchise, if not two."

Franchising a rare talent

Judith Whitehurst, the director of the San Jacinto College Small Business Development Center, warns that while franchising is an intriguing possibility for Art-Right, there are intangibles that might make such a move tricky.

"That is something that at this point might be very difficult for this situation because she has an eye and a talent for picking out the right artwork for the spot," Whitehurst said. "Not everybody can do that."

Whitehurst advised that a solid training program be at the heart of any business model that Art-Right tries to franchise.

"She may need to do more in-house training and pull more people in to work with her before she lets them loose to run their own businesses," she said.

Whitehurst also said that because the virtual-art-gallery technology can be easily duplicated, Art-Right needs to show that its business model offers something proprietary in order to franchise successfully.

Wright agreed with this assessment and said she has already taken steps that she feels ensure her company's business plan is one that would be attractive to outside investors.

She said that while it might be easy enough for another consultant to duplicate Art-Right's technology, it would take a long time to build the network of connections that she has.

"Then there's the relationships that I have built with artists and publishers, some of whom work exclusively with us, that would take literally years to build," Wright said.