A Brush With Success
“Cheap” Joe Miller Celebrates 20 Years in Art Supply Business

By Jeff Eason

Longtime shoppers and diners at the downtown location of Boone Drug may remember when “Cheap” Joe Miller had a couple of shelves of art supplies for sale among the cold remedies and Ace bandages. Twenty years later, Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff is one of the fastest growing art supply companies in the country and one of Boone’s signature businesses.

This week Joe Miller and his company will celebrate Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff’s 20th birthday. They will also host the 2007 Boone in June Art Festival at the Holmes Center on Saturday, June 16th from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In the last 20 years, Joe Miller has turned a couple of shelves of brushes and paint at Boone Drug into Cheap Joe’s Art Supply, a Boone-based company that now employs over 80 people. Photo submitted

The free event is expected to attract over 2,000 artists and art lovers to the Holmes Center. The Art Festival will include demonstrations, workshops, free giveaways, a putting green and malt shop with a DJ spinning classic oldies from the 50s and 60s.

Hosting an event of this magnitude is just one of the many instances when Joe Miller stops and reflects on what a roller coaster ride it has been since he first tried to sell a few paint brushes at the pharmacy.

“I was a part owner of Boone Drug and I was a pharmacist there along with my partners John Stacy and Jim Furman,” said Miller. “I took up art in the early eighties and Boone didn’t have a really high quality art materials store at that time.”

After local artist Noyes Long gave Miller some watercolor lessons, that particular style of art became his passion.

“I was using so much paper and paint I was about to break the bank,” said Miller. “So I thought, ‘drugstores carry everything else, why not art material?’ That way, I’d be able to get them wholesale.”

After researching several distribution companies, Miller bought some art supplies for resale and set up a space for them on the shelves at Boone Drug. “I tell people I stuck them between the aspirin and the Zantac, and it did better than either of those.”

Miller created a homemade sign with his picture on it pointing Boone Drug customers to the art supplies. It said “Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff.” With one sign a business name was born.

“I really didn’t get much business there, to be honest,” said Miller. “I didn’t have enough variety, for one thing. But I had joined the North Carolina Watercolor Society along in ’85 or ’86. A salesman came into the store and said, ‘If you buy a thousand sheets of this watercolor paper, I’ll sell it to you for a dollar a sheet.’ And I’d been paying something like three dollars a sheet for it, so it was a good deal. When that paper came it scared me to death. I thought, ‘What have I done?’ I had enough paper for everybody in Boone to have a sheet of paper.”

Miller decided he would write to every one of the 100 or so members of the North Carolina Watercolor Society to see if they were interested in some of the paper.

“I hand-printed this little 8½ x 11 flier that said ‘special: watercolor paper, 25 sheets for $29.95.’ And it flew out the door. It was gone in no time. So the next deal that came up, I did it again, and then again. And the first thing I know, I’ve got a little mail order business going.”

Looking for good wholesale deals and promotional specials, Joe relied on his knowledge as an artist to lead him to supplies that people would want to use in their home studios. By 1990 the mail order business had outgrown its space at Boone Drug and Joe began looking at other buildings in Boone to house Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff.

“I rented space at The Watauga Democrat from Armfield and Rachel Coffey,” said Miller, referring to the building in the Boone Industrial Park that now houses Mountain Times Publications. “It was about 2,500 square feet and it scared me to death. Again I thought, ‘What have I done? I’ll never use all this space.’ But by ’93 or ’94 our business had continued to grow really well.”

Miller stayed in the Industrial Park and, along with the company Goodnight Brothers Country Hams, purchased 15 acres on the hill above The Watauga Democrat building. On his half of the land, Miller built a 20,000 square foot building with a deck facing the mountains and valleys of northern Watauga County and southern Ashe County. The building now houses Cheap Joe’s mail order headquarters, an art supply outlet store, and a gallery and classroom where professional artists teach the public through the company’s popular workshop series.

“Once again, I thought I’d really goofed because we’ll never ever fill this building, it is so big,” said Miller. “I tried to rent half of it. I thought I had rented it to Tom’s Peanuts but they found another place somewhere else. Before I knew it we had this building full and business was good and by 2000 we had outgrown it. So we added another building.”

Eventually Cheap Joe’s outgrew the second 20,000 square foot building and now rents two additional spaces in and around Boone. In 2000 Cheap Joe’s added an outlet store to the mail order business and it has become one of the most popular High Country destinations in the state for out-of-town artists and gift shoppers.

“I’m always amazed that people find us, we’re not exactly easy to find,” said Miller.

Earlier this year, Cheap Joe’s opened a second outlet store in Charlotte that is more than twice the size of the one in Boone.

“We’ll have a grand opening in July, but it’s done really well not to have been advertised much,” said Miller. “It’s a beautiful store.”

Counting the mail order business and the two outlet stores, Miller estimates that Cheap Joe’s now employs over 80 people.

It is obvious that Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff is one of the better business success stories in the High Country over the past two decades. But Miller has made sure that the business is also a success on a humanitarian level. Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff started Brushes For Vincent, an organization that donates art supplies to children in burn hospitals, inner city day camps, orphanages and places where kids have lost everything due to hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and floods.

“When we started Brushes For Vincent, it was a fairly broad statement at that time that we would supply art materials free of charge to any group or organization that couldn’t afford it and needed it,” said Miller. The demand for donations was so great that Brushes For Vincent eventually narrowed its scope to concentrate its efforts on providing quality art supplies for children in need.

After Hurricane Katrina struck the gulf coast in 2005, Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff contacted all of its mail order customers in that region and offered to replace any art supplies they had lost in the flood with free replacements. Over 1,100 artists in Louisiana and Mississippi were able to re-stock their studios through the offer.

Cheap Joe’s is also a sponsor of a number of art projects in the High Country including the monthly gallery exhibits at the Jones House in Boone. The workshop gallery at Cheap Joe’s hosts annual community art shows and exhibits by Watauga High School students. Miller knows that going that extra mile to help instill a love of art in young people will pay off in more adults looking to purchase paint, brushes and canvas at his store.

“The future looks really good for Cheap Joe’s,” said Miller. “We are looking at a couple of other locations for retail stores, if this one continues to do well in Charlotte.”

The company is also conducting some “research and development” experiments with art supply products, trying to come up with new ideas for the Cheap Joe’s catalog line.

“We’re constantly adding new products,” said Miller. “I love it. It’s so much fun. We just developed a new easel and I think it’s going to be incredible. It’s a portable outdoor easel that’s designed for watercolor artists. The only ones that are out there today are really for oil and acrylics. It’s very stable and very lightweight. The prototype hasn’t come back yet but it should be here pretty soon.”

Although his job at Cheap Joe’s keeps him busy, Miller finds time to socialize with his friends and family and to volunteer for Meals on Wheels.

“I have plenty of time to paint, to fish a little, and to play golf every once in a while, so I’m very fortunate,” said Miller. “And I have a great team here at Cheap Joe’s. I count my blessings every day.”