From her base on the Gold Coast, Leanne Pearce has built multiple successful businesses – each one born from a risk taken when times were tough worldwide.

When the Global Financial Crisis really hit in 2008, Pearce’s art consultancy Corporate Art was supplying some of the world’s most prestigious developers and hotel brands with artworks. Think Palazzo Versace, Sofitel and Abu Dhabi’s iconic five-skyscraper complex Etihad Towers. For the latter, Pearce supplied eight 40-foot shipping containers of artworks.

The impact on Pearce’s business pipeline was immediate and devastating.

“If any hotel was refurbishing, they actually pulled the pin,” Pearce recalled. “We went, Okay, what do we have to do to survive?”

The company “went through a million dollars” to ensure no staff were laid off, while they also set about establishing Gallery One, a high-end art gallery in Southport for cashflow. 

“Everyone thought we were crazy, absolutely mad,” she said about the leap in the dark that paid off, with the gallery now representing leading Australian artists including Ken Done and David Bromley. As she noted, regardless of belt tightening across most socioeconomic groups, “the people with money still have money”.

At the same time, Pearce’s partner, Jasmine Smith opened St Barts, a furniture and homewares retail business inspired by island living on its Caribbean namesake St Barthélemy.

Through Corporate Art, they also started producing and retailing fine art prints – an enterprise that was eventually carved off as the more appropriately named FINEPRINTCO.

Being based on the Gold Coast has never tempered Pearce’s and Smith’s ambition or ability to close a deal. 

After seeing the work of iconic photographer Slim Aarons at a Paris trade fair, Pearce doggedly pursued the international sales manager of Getty Images for two years before he granted FINEPRINTCO the Australian rights to the complete collection of original negatives. 

Essentially, her pitch was “you’re selling nothing by Slim Aarons in Australia”. Now, eight years later FINEPRINTCO is the world’s number one supplier of his prints. She has also secured the rights to print archival Vogue images in Australia by advising News Corp they should open their archives “to make money”.

Pearce said people should not underestimate small Australian companies.

“We can be worldly … I’ve never been small minded. I always think big and have an agile mindset,” she said.

“You have to take risks to succeed. I think that’s the difference between an entrepreneur and a manager.

“I’ve taken risks and I’ve lost a lot of money in some things. But as you get older and wiser, you take more calculated risks, and think, Well, I can afford to risk that much and let me just see where we land.”

When Covid was in full flight, Pearce’s partner Smith used WhatsApp to source and buy container loads of furniture and homewares for St Barts; it is now the default channel for all their stock purchases. 

The pandemic, however, did put the brakes on their intention to open a bricks and mortar FINEPRINTCO. in the US. Pearce said she was in Los Angeles looking for premises, when Covid first emerged.

“It made us stop and consolidate [our businesses] and say, we’re just going to put those aspirations on hold for the minute,” she said. 

Covid lockdowns ultimately proved a boomtime for the businesses, particularly FINEPRINTCO., whose prints reflect the design aesthetics made wildly popular on social media and home renovation shows. 

Relationship building is important for Pearce, who said it was key to developing a successful business. “And you have to have integrity, you have to always do the right thing,” she said.

This is particularly pertinent when it comes to the Aboriginal art market. Passionate about the sector, she travelled to the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair last year to establish relationships with artists and local art centres.  

As a result, FINEPRINTCO. now has original artworks for sale, as well as more affordable art prints. 

“There’s not a lot of Aboriginal artists that we represent. But we work with some art centres that want to [promote] artists from their communities,” she said.

Pearce is currently working on opening trade hubs in Sydney and Melbourne in partnership with other furniture and home suppliers, selling direct to interior designers, and together with Smith, recently opened the FINEPRINTCO Art Bar in Southport. 

With retail quietening down post-pandemic and in the face of high inflation, she said she is ready for more calculated risks. 

“Sometimes, quiet times are the time to consolidate to the next stage of growth,” she said.

“If you believe in what you’re doing, just go for it. But you have to take calculated risks.”

Pearce said digital technology, including communications platforms like Zoom, meant there were fewer barriers to building a successful business. 

“You can work globally nowadays – there is no reason not to.”