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Every once and a while you stumble upon a niche startup totally unfit for an elevator pitch. Bootstrapped, Denver-based Artwork Archive is one of those businesses. A 30-second sales presentation does not do this company justice. Only after a chat with co-founders John Feustel and Justin Anthony does the full value of what they’ve created dawn on you.
John Feustel started Artwork Archive to help manage his mother’s aspiring oil painting career. That being said, it may not initially jump out as a product with huge potential.
“Two years ago when my mom was starting to grow her oil painting career, she started looking for software to manage her sales,” said Feustel. "Not all artists are tech savvy. They’d rather spend their time in a studio.”
General-purpose inventory and accounting software like QuickBooks just did not appeal to an artist like Feustel’s mother: “A lot of artists come from generic database tools,” said Feustel. Yet, those databases just weren’t providing the value artists wanted.
This is where Artwork Archive’s software starts to become something special.
Art terms like collectors, clients, artwork and galleries are not part of generic accounting software, so such software did not appeal to artists. By building software around those terms and the processes that artists know, Artwork Archive tapped into a frustrated and underserved niche.
“It’s easier to do the things they love, by greatly simplifying the business aspect,” said co-founder Justin Anthony.
“Even at the most basic level they’ve never had a way to see the value of their inventory,” said Feustel.
But more than that, Artwork Archive is not just accounting software with an art twist; it helps manage the business side of an artist’s career. And that is the genius of it: artists’ needs are broader than generic accounting software, they need more. So not only does the online program track inventory data, it also manages consignment records, sales information and competition history.
Furthermore, Artwork Archive appeals to the art community by meeting them where they typically engage with computing tools. Most accounting software is desktop-based, but Artwork Archive is adapted to an art community that grew up using computers in different settings. As such “one of the first things we needed to address was making this available on any device,” said Anthony.
“We were the first cloud-based tool for artists,” said Feustel.
And to date Artwork Archive has been a huge hit amongst the art community. “We have done no marketing. Everything has been done by word of mouth,” said Anthony.
So contagious is enthusiasm for the software that new customers are popping up in unexpected places.
“Without us even thinking about it, it grew internationally,” said Feustel. “So now the site is international; you can change your measurement units and currency.”
When the site built in capabilities to manage print runs of artist’s work demand sprung up amongst the photography community. Photographers found the print run management tool to be a great way to manage their photo work and began using the site in droves.
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Further appealing to artists' visual inclination the site also has an “insights page that gives you a heat map of all your inventory,” said Feustel. This is more than a cute feature. “If one of your goals as an artist is to really saturate the New England market, for example, at a quick glance you can see all your pieces in Boston.”
And to manage art production, the site graphs sold works and works in production, showing “I’ve sold this much in value and I’ve created this much in value,” said Feustel.
Feustel and Anthony know they could expand the software into other verticals, but for right now “we are very laser-focused on helping artists manage their careers,” said Anthony.
“We’ve built this from the beginning for artists,” said Feustel. Its success “just comes down to ease of use.”
