Finding Asian art is hard, so interior designer gets angel money to sell art online

Photo credit: Wai Kay Ho

E-commerce is touching every aspect of our lives, from groceries to fashion to baby products. Art is no exception. Startups like Artsy, Artspace, and Saatchi Art want to replicate the gallery experience online, and even Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring.

But despite the changing behavior of art consumers, where 64 percent of collectors surveyed have bought art from galleries just by looking at digital images, Asian works have been left out.

“I was helping clients source for designs in London, and started looking at what’s available online. But there weren’t many sources,” says Talenia Phua Gajardo, who put her architectural and interior design practice on hold to start The Artling and work on it full-time.

The Artling is a Singapore-based online art gallery which has just secured $200,000 in seed funding from an art collector. It caters primarily to American and European customers who want to buy art from Asia.

No walk in the park

Jumping into an e-commerce venture has its own set of challenges. Raising funds was one. She approached an angel investor with the idea, but was told that she’ll need to build a prototype and get galleries on board first.

Fortunately, she was able to put money from her design work into the startup and go without a salary while securing galleries. It took some convincing, but she got it done. She says:

“Some galleries have online stores, but the majority don’t. What happens after a show is that all the works disappear; it doesn’t live anymore. So why not bring them online?”

Next she had to create a beautiful site on a shoestring budget. Unable to afford a UX designer, which she says cost between $15,000 to $18,000, she had to coordinate with a part-time Python developer herself to get the beta product out. Her design skills were put to good use when doing mockups.

Like any non-technical founder, it was challenging to get a full-time developer on board. But Gajardo found learning programming herself too intimidating:

“I tried out Codeacademy but stopped very quickly – programming isn’t for me.”

While she could’ve just hashed out a simple minimal viable product using plug-and-play e-commerce builders like Magento or Shopify, she chose to build the product from scratch. That’s because unlike other kinds of e-commerce, art buyers and sellers have very specific requirements.

“Aesthetics are very important. Artists wouldn’t want to put their artwork on a site that looks ugly. The clarity of the artwork on display is really crucial too.”

A concierge element