In 1963 Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade lived in Southsea, Hampshire while Colin was attending Portsmouth Art College to get his degree in Fine Art Painting and Design. They supplemented a meagre state grant by painting pictures and selling them. This was done by door to door canvassing in and around Portsmouth and Southsea. Colin used their old nanny pram to carry the pictures while Fran stayed home producing pictures and looking after their two very small children. When Colin graduated and started teaching in Bedford it continued to be necessary for them to sell paintings to top up his beginners salary. Within a year Colin was so successful that he gave up teaching and became a full time professional artist. The door to door method of direct selling was the key to this success.

An old art school friend, Richard Ackerman, joined Colin in Bedford and together they founded Spectrum Studios. Colin and Richard were soon joined by artist Colin Paynton. A year later they had teams of sales people criss-crossing the whole of southern England every weekend. During the week the artists would paint and frame. The three artists were invited to organise an art show in Rugby and then Banbury Art Festival. The swinging sixties in England were good for entrepreneurial artists. Richard, who lived in London, split from the other two to continue his own career, which eventually bought him international fame and fortune. Colin Paynton and Colin Ruffell were promoted by a major furniture manufacturer to supply paintings for room settings throughout the United Kingdom. They built up many trade customers and their paintings were displayed and sold in the best stores in the country.

The Ruffell family moved into a large rented farmhouse in Sussex, and Colin Paynton joined them there. Direct contact with customers was continued at Bayswater Road open air exhibition in London. Eventually in the early 1970's Colin Paynton moved, first to London and then to Wales. Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade carried on rearing their two children and selling their pictures wherever possible. They moved to Brighton and founded Buckingham Fine Art Ltd., which was a business selling original art to galleries and stores. They rented a large loft studio in the centre of Brighton. Buckingham Fine Art regularly displayed at trade fairs and trucked art all over the UK. The business grew and became an attractive package which was sold to a larger London based art dealership. A part of the negotiated price was that Colin was given a contract which undertook to sell all his paintings for him. When, two years later, the art dealership lost large amounts of capital in real estate speculation, and the business was wound up, Colin found himself back at square one.

The period under contract to Sion Essex Fine Art had enforced the artists to leave others to do the selling. Colin and Fran had missed the excitement of direct selling in customers homes, or at exhibitions. In marketing terminology, the contact with the end user had become a vital part of their raison d'être. Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade founded a new direct selling organisation in 1978 called Brighton Artists Workshop. This business still exists and has sold paintings and prints to thousands of collectors in nearby Sussex, Kent and Surrey.