After a Long Time, Asian Art E-commerce Startup ArtKred Now in Beta

ArtKred is a Singapore-based startup founded by undergraduate Spencer Yang. The startup has had quite a journey so far. It started as PizzaBoxArt, then changed its direction slightly, and now the initial founding team have all left the company for various personal reasons. Yeah, the sad journey of a founder.

But it isn’t game over yet, as Spencer pushes on and continues to explore other Asian markets and crack into the problem of how to fuse art and the web. His conclusion is straightforward — promoting and selling Asian art online. Following in this new direction, the company has also rebranded to name itself ArtKred.

Honestly speaking, ArtKred does sound better than PizzaBoxArt. Spencer did note that previously, quite a lot of folks thought he was selling pizza boxes. (Of course he wasn’t). As of now, the startup remains lean with three people all from the same university at the helm. It is also self-funded at the moment.

I also did give the site a quick test. Though ArtKred is in beta the user experience is decent enough, at least for me. The site does load a little slowly, possibly because of the large image files. The checkout process is quite smooth but only offers PayPal as a payment option, which will alienate users in countries like Indonesia. ArtKred also faces competition from sites like 20×200.

Anyway, the startup is far from being done so we shouldn’t judge it too early on. It is a good start, though. I’m happy to see founders pushing on and doing real shit. Call it obstinate or determination. Sure, it might not be the best idea or the billion dollar company Southeast Asia is dearly lacking. But for an undergraduate, starting by doing things and making it happen is a good first step. ArtKred is likely to fail (the same is true for many startups; ours included) but it shouldn’t be much of a problem if we see this as a marathon and not a sprint.