Product Description

The book provides both inspiration and practical advice or all those involved in running or setting up a creative business.

David Parrish draws on his own experience of running creative businesses and the insights he has gained from helping hundreds of people in creative enterprises. He combines his own perspectives with research from successful businesses to offer sound advice and some new ideas to help creative enterprises to develop and grow.

Written in an engaging and common-sense style, the book provides useful advice about managing creative enterprises, using established techniques and some new ideas. It's a book which can be read straight through - or dipped into for specific ideas and help - or both. There's something for everyone involved in the business of creativity, whether established enterprises or those about to start up.

The best creative businesses integrate creativity with good business practice, hence the need to mix the approaches of both T-Shirts and Suits into a workable business formula. This book demonstrates through its ideas and examples how the apparently different approaches of the worlds of T-Shirts and Suits can come together to create successful enterprises.

"The business of creativity is the art of turning recognition into reward,
and the science of turning intellectual property into income streams."
- from T-Shirts and Suits

Designed in a readable and user-friendly way, the book covers marketing, intellectual property, competition, assessing feasibility, finance and company structures. It also helps the reader to clarify their own ambitions and values in relation to their creativity.

The book's themes are illustrated by snapshots of how creative enterprises are successfully using the ideas presented in the book.

In short, this book makes a practical contribution to the development of successful enterprises in the creative sector.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #516418 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From the Publisher
Foreword by James Purnell MP, Minister for Creative Industries and Tourism.

As Minister for the Creative Industries and Tourism, I am pleased to write a foreword to this new guide to the business of creativity.

The UK is arguably the world’s most creative nation. America may have bigger creative industries, but we punch well above our weight. But having creative people isn’t a guarantee of economic success. Arguably, the UK has been great at inventing but not so good at exploiting those inventions. The challenge is to turn that creativity into industrial success and we must find ways to turn talent into hits and hits into profits. In other words, we must become creative entrepreneurs, not just creative inventors.

Publications like T-shirts and Suits will help inform creative talent to become more successful entrepreneurs.

What David has done in this book is to enable the most creative people to also understand and use the best business practices. He has used his experience as a practitioner, consultant and trainer to present key ideas that can be used by creative entrepreneurs, both established and new. Furthermore he has used his own creativity to propose new ideas and to explain vital concepts, for example about intellectual property and marketing, in a clear and entertaining way.

I congratulate this contribution to creative entrepreneurship and I applaud Merseyside ACME’s publication of this book.

Customer Reviews

A Must have for any Creative Business!
It’s an old cliché that artists don’t like business. There’s a sense that somehow getting stuck into the administration side of your arts business will stop you being an artist, turn you into a ‘suit’.

It can be true but it doesn’t need to be, as the author of T-Shirts and Suits, David Parrish, goes to great lengths to make clear. Parrish is a rare thing. He’s a hugely qualified business consultant; there are more letters after his name than in it. He’s also worked extensively in the creative industries. If there is a divide between creativity and business then Parrish has been successful on both sides of it. The man knows what he’s talking about

At only 105 pages T-Shirts and Suits is short, but it’s designed for people who probably don’t enjoy reading business manuals. In eleven short and readable chapters Parrish takes you through the steps necessary to establish and grow a successful arts project. The chapters are deliberately laid out to be easy to read and access; the longest is ten pages, perfect for dipping into when the need arises. Parrish’s ideas are presented simply and without jargon. He has a friendly, clear writing style and the book is a joy to read, each chapter presenting as many concepts in a page or two as other books take whole chapters to squeeze out.

The book is a generic guide to business skills in the creative industries; it isn’t directly aimed at theatre companies. In fact it seems a little over-focussed on web design, especially in its case studies, and while there are links on the website, a little more advice in the book itself on where to go next might have been useful.

T-Shirts and Suits doesn’t pretend to be a catch-all manual of business skills, it’s far too short. What it is is a brief introduction to what you will need to know to run an arts business or group, and, in many cases, just enough information to stop your fledgling project floundering before it’s properly started.

Parrish has been there and done that, and hasn’t so much bought the t-shirt as silk-screened and successfully marketed it. Whether you’re established or start-up, this is a book you can dip into for advice and inspiration. T-Shirts and Suits is lucid, easy to read, jargon free and guaranteed to save you sweat, money, time and tears. Buy this book!

Great guide/ advice for new & small businesses.
I was recommended this by a colleague. They weren't wrong. I'm finding it very useful and supportive.

"Suit"able for T-shirts
Rating anything as a "five" is a bit of a departure for me as I can usually think of something I would do differently/ improve. Not so in this case.

The book takes a creative look at business and challenges some of the thinking around marketing, finance, competition and leadership. It draws on some of David Parrish's own personal experience.

The book is well structured. Each chapter is written in a clear fashion, has a key point summary and is followed by "Ideas in Action" where real examples of creative business are described and analysed.