Have you thought about getting a surface pattern design agent? You may be wondering, is a design agent right for you?

Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of getting a design agent.

Pros of a design agent

One of the great things about an agent is depending on their client list they will be able to get your work in front of a larger number of potential clients. This also means that they will be doing things like contacting clients, following them up, showing them your work, liaising this back and forth and so on. I know these are some of the tasks that a lot of designers don’t like to do. Designers often find the business and marketing side really difficult and overwhelming and something they don’t enjoy doing. One of the things that an agent will take care of is finding people to sell your work to, and they will also then take care of the contracts.They will take care of all the payments and chasing up payments so basically, they’ll take care of all of those business tasks for you, which can take up so much time.

Design agents will mostly be licensing your designs however there may be some agents that will want to sell your designs outright. It will really depend on the agent and I’ve done both working with an agen so it depends on the agent that you choose, their specialty and the way that they work.

Cons of a design agent

When you are working with an agent, you need to pay them a commission for the work that they do in representing you. That agent fee can really vary according to the agent, but that will be anywhere between 30 to 50% of the price for the design that is sold. For example, if you sell a design for  $2,000, then your agent could potentially make $1,000 of that money. So your agent would get half the amount the design sold for depending on the percentage that they charged.

You want to make sure that when you’re working with the agent that can actually sell designs for you. If they’re not very good. You want to make sure that you’re working with someone that is going to be able to represent you really well and it’s a really good fit for you. There’s really no point working with an agent if they’re not going to be able to sell any of your work. Also keep in mind that if you are licensing or designs through an agent, that it can take quite some time for you to build your business with them.

Hear more about the pros and cons of working with an agent in this podcast episode.

You can download my Pattern Design Secrets eBook here