gangstertim

Battery-operated household items. I have a cordless dewalt drill that I can use all day on my jobsite, but every single appliance in my kitchen needs a cord. Hand mixer? Immersion blender? Regular blender? Stand mixer? Everything has a cord. Why isn't there a kitchen battery system yet?

Similarly: I'd love to have a little reading sconce on my wall next to my bed, but running a circuit through the existing walls without tearing them up is impossible. Why isn't there any attractive battery-powered home lighting? Sure, maybe overhead lights for lighting a room need more draw, but there's no reason to plug in a desk lamp, wall sconce, or coffee table light every day. Especially for renters who aren't about to hire an electrician—why no battery-powered lights designed for the home? Periodic recharging is annoying, but it's better than literally not being able to have a light where I want it.

There's a market here and it's not new technology. It's just repackaging existing technology with a splash of industrial design. Hell, the battery requirements for my drill are much greater than the battery requirements for my immersion blender. It shouldn't even be expensive!

The short answer is no, we don't have it 100% figured out yet. But we have learned a few things:

- The cost per sale of paid marketing targeting CUSTOMERS is just a little too high to be sustainable right now. Part of that, I think, is because the searching/tagging/categorization of VSUAL isn't great. We can create an ad with interesting art that causes a clickthrough, but if that piece isn't quite compelling enough to sell, we don't do a good job showing similar pieces. We're working on improved tagging and categorization right now to make finding curated, related artworks easier.

- Many of our best selling artists do quite well attracting their own traffic to their store. They already have IG/FB followings significantly greater than our own. So, we're investing in tools to help those artists with marketing (such as markup generators) and to help tools specifically for artists with distribution. For example, those artists who already have distribution want to link people to their shop, not to an entire platform. We're working on building whitelabeled shop pages without the platform nav bar for those partners in particular.

- Finally, I believe that with the amount of UGC on the site, we're currently not taking full advantage of the power of SEO. Creating landing pages specific to art styles and techniques is high on my to-do list after our upcoming tagging improvements are launched. I'm hopeful that moderate SEO improvements can drive our traffic up significantly.

Thanks for the kind words! We'd love if you bought some art from us :) Our artists would too!

No, the revenue seems like it will last. But revenue is not profit, and I have a family to take care of and I'm the breadwinner. Plus, my regular job is good. Leaving my regular job for VSUAL right now would mean a 20x reduction in income, and I can't support myself on that. In time, hopefully that divisor gets smaller.

Thanks Changdizzle! There are a few ways to filter—you can filter by medium by clicking the "Photography" "3D" or "Illustration" boxes, or you can filter by artist by going to the Shops page in the top nav. Or, you can search prints for tags. Did you have something else in mind?

Congrats on your launch! The site looks great—and it strikes a chord with me, because I'm working on an art marketplace as well (albeit for prints, not originals). Given we have adjacent, not competitive platforms, let me know if you'd ever like to do some co-marketing! Our product is www.vsual.co

A few things I noticed when looking at your site: - I like the detail views you have on your pieces, but a the higher resolution, you may want to consider a watermark—and it's possible it will help with artist trust, as well. - The "Apply as an Artist" link is kind of buried. It took me a while to find it. Might be worth moving that up, if getting more artists on board is a primary goal? - As a buyer, I'm still interested in the total price, and it's a little hard to comparison shop when both the base price and period for works are different - I actually really like the "message artist" functionality. That's a great touch! I'm sure artists appreciate it too

That’s fair! On our products page we talk about the ink we use as well as the paper options, but ultimately, the point is that our prints are “high quality”—which hopefully speaks for itself! You bring up good points though (:

My partner Charlie and I built VSUAL because the other print-on-demand solutions didn't feel right for the fine art prints he was making: if they did sell prints, it always felt like those were an afterthought to T-shirts, mugs, and phone cases. Even then, the prints felt cheap and low-quality.

VSUAL solves that problem for artists by giving them a prints-only marketplace focussed on quality. Every print is made with archival ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, Canson Baryta, or high quality Epson Semi Gloss paper. It also enables artists to sell a large selection of prints without keeping any inventory on hand: we handle printing, framing, and fulfillment.

For buyers, VSUAL solves the problem of size: all too often, you can find a print the size you want, or of the art you want, but you can't find the right art at the right size. With VSUAL, it's easy for artists to list their entire inventory at multiple sizes, making shopping easy for buyers.

We're still just getting started—we have /some/ traction with artists, but haven't quite cracked the code on marketing to buyers. What do you think?

Is the competition you're referring to Pendo?

Your site looks nice. What did you use to build it?