As McRee tells the story, in 2006, she was looking for a muralist to paint her son’s bedroom, so she put an ad on Craigslist. That’s how she met Wexel Art co-founder Morgan Doherty.
Doherty had already made a name for herself working on some high- profile projects in the Austin area. McRee said after Doherty worked on a few projects for her home, they collaborated on several projects for her company, Bump Marketing.
“Then, the recession hit [in 2008],” McRee said. “The very first place people cut is marketing.”
With McRee rapidly losing clientele and Doherty’s mural commissions dwindling due to the recession, the door seemed open for another collaboration, McCree said.
At that point, with maybe too much time on her hands, McCree said she was staring at her kids’ artwork, which had been piling up. She said she called Doherty and told her she wanted to “crack the code” on how to display it.
“It’s odd-shaped, and it’s three-dimensional, and it’s never the same thing each week,” McRee said. A catalyst for her desire, she added, came from a visit she had taken recently to a frame shop, where she was quoted $400 to frame a set of little turkey handprints.
In late 2009, McCree and Doherty came up with the idea that now forms the foundation of Wexel Art: acrylic, see-through frames with tiny, circular magnets to mount the art.
Since then, the product line at Wexel Art has evolved into an entire catalog of different ways to mount art, from standalone tabletop frames for 4” by 6” photographs to shadow boxes for 3-D art to large, wall-mounted frames.
When the business started in 2010, Doherty and McCree were doing all of the work themselves. They hand-dipped each magnet for each frame and packaged the products they had sold in McCree’s kitchen; each had invested $6,000 to keep the business going.
“Most of that money went to our first trade show, which happened in March [2010],” Doherty said, adding after that first trade show, interest in their idea started growing.
From there, a large online retailer took interest and wanted to feature their frames, which gave a major boost to the company's early growth, McRee said.
Now located at Bee Caves Road just west of Bee Cave, Wexel Art has logged nine years in business, employs eight people and has a presence at six trade shows a year, from New York to Las Vegas.
Similar products from other companies have emerged since Doherty and McCree first launched their acrylic frames almost a decade ago.
“We like to say we started this trend,” McCree said. “Ten years ago, when we were doing those first trade shows, people thought we were nuts. You know what they say. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
11715 Bee Caves Road, Ste. 300, Bee Cave
877-609-1920 www.wexelart.com
Office hours are Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m., closed Sat.-Sun. Customers may make online orders any time.
