Business ethics for commercial artists.
As an artist, I am providing services to the media and the industry.
In my 12 years of experience, I have encountered a lot of inappropriate behavior towards my copyrights and in general. Often I felt like an exchangeable subject and got ripped off constantly, even by my own clients and my agent. I found my work used without my allowance worldwide a couple of hundred times. People sold and are still illegally selling products with my designs in various countries and even in my own hometown Berlin, Germany.
My own agent proposed to one of my clients to have my style copied for cheap in Asia, so they will not have to pay me at all. He was telling me this after I left her. This very agent who took 50% of my income, was also there to take my Design Price given for one of my calendars, at the German Bookfair in 2016. She never informed me about it. I heard of this much later through a comment someone wrote on Amazon. These painful experiences all together, made me almost leave the business in 2019/20. I was done with it and felt like a failure. I could not defend myself from the attacks of the sharks. And there were many of them. After all the bickering with my fate in 2020, I had decided to keep on going and to rebrand myself and start over with a new consciousness and approach. I know that it's difficult times now economically, with the worldwide crisis and all, but we need to go back to values and humanly behavior. The world is changing, but we should crave to change it into a better place.
Overall I stand for fairness, equality, and transparency.
For myself and for my client. There is no hierarchy, we are both working on something together.
The artist and the client should be equal partners in the venture of creating the best possible product, and engaging in a rather long-term trusted partnership, other than short-term cheap deals without respect, exchangeability, and doubtable practices. I have been under these treatments a lot, and despite my international success as an artist, certain clients kept on treating me as if I was some unimportant provider of minor goods.
I strongly believe that applying ethics to a working partnership will have good effects on the products and the recipients and create value and satisfaction beyond the monetary aspect.
It's time to end living and working in a pool of sharks and starting to create humanly livable environments. In nature, in communities, and in work relationships.
“Never start a business just to make money. Start a business to make a difference”
Marie Furleo
