Starting up
Easyart.com, which launched yesterday, is an unusual internet start-up. Claimed to be Britain's first online framing business, it actually employs people to manufacture - or at least assemble - the products it sells. Most other net start-ups merely sell other companies' products in a different way.
Founded by Simon Matthews, the company enables customers to choose a work of art or photograph from 10,000 currently available online, then choose a frame, its colour, and even check it against the colour of their own walls at home.
The pictures are then framed in a factory near Heathfield in Sussex, where seven people are on hand capable of framing and dispatching up to 150 pictures a day. Up to four more local craftspeople can be drafted in if demand exceeds expectations.
Customers can also get information about art exhibitions and read critical reviews.
Matthews says online art buying is a natural development because it combines three different activities: searching for a painting, finding a framer and then getting someone to deliver. Customers can change their minds about colours and frames without upsetting nervous assistants who are trying to satisfy several people at once.
Easyart is also unusual in that Matthews and his colleagues have all been in the art business before, so they are not coming to it without experience. He still runs the London Air Gallery which he founded. He fondly recalls having had to hang 200 pictures in a day.
So far, Easyart has spent £500,000 provided by Brainspark, the incubating firm (which is about to go public), in the form of equity and loans. Brainspark took a 25% stake in the company in return for financing it, providing it with offices, legal advice and backup.
"They were very important. I can't underestimate their contribution" , says Matthews. He is now looking for a further round of funding of up to £5m, half of which will be spent on marketing and half on selling pictures in two other ways - through screens in stores and by interactive television.
Matthews reckons that the framed decorative art market is worth £900m a year split 3:1 between consumers and business buyers. He and his directors have plans to expand into Europe and into the United States where he feels there is considerable potential despite the fact that online framers are already in business there.
