Comments on: Amazon To Dabble More in Customization?

By: Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million | t7000

Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million | t7000 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:46:43 +0000

[...] January 2007 we heard rumors that Amazon was looking to acquire the company, but a deal never materialized. Instead, the [...]

By: IS2B » Blog Archive » Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:48:38 +0000

[...] January 2007 we heard rumors that Amazon was looking to acquire the company, but a deal never materialized. Instead, the [...]

By: Simply Gadgets » Blog Archive » Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:01:47 +0000

[...] January 2007 we heard rumors that Amazon was looking to acquire the company, but a deal never materialized. Instead, the [...]

By: Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million

Imagekind Acquired By CafePress For $15-20 Million — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:32:25 +0000

[...] January 2007 we heard rumors that Amazon was looking to acquire the company, but a deal never materialized. Instead, the [...]

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:47:18 +0000

I have been checking out ImageKind for a while now and am just in the process of signing up for a paid account.

The whole thing looks great… but is anyone making any sales?

Richard

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:01:09 +0000

Art.com also met with Imagekind several times to invest or acquire to bolster their own user generated site at Sistino.com

By: Barbara Burns

Barbara Burns — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 02:39:09 +0000

I like ImageKind – enough that I paid for a Platinum Account so I could have more than one gallery and so I could upload as many images as I needed. Yes it would be awesome to be able to upload more than one image at a time … but I LOVE being able to set my own mark-up and it is wonderful not to have them take 90% of it.

I’ve had oil paintings in a local Art Gallery once upon a time – the normal rate they charge is generally anywhere from 40 to 70% of whatever the painting sells for to a collector. If the painting is damaged in that Gallery, many times, you’re just out of luck … either the insurance company finds a way around paying anything for it to you … or it turns out the insurance does not cover damages for whatever reason or egads … no insurance at all in some.

Most artists long to have their work hung in an actual gallery downtown somewhere in the Art Gallery district … until they find out just how little money they actually are going to earn as emerging artists or as artists who are not selling for thousands of dollars per print let alone per original painting.

ImageKind is a great place to sell prints and for people to see different options of how it would look matted / framed with no damages to the artwork for the artist to worry about and I never have to worry if insurance will cover a shopper’s children with chocolate touching my artwork and ruining it for sale, or if it is going to be dropped and torn so it is no longer saleable.

And ImageKind is not taking the majority of what the print sells for either, which is fantastic to this artist.

By: Nancy J Wostrel aws

Nancy J Wostrel aws — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:39:17 +0000

I have been a new member of ImageKind for a few months and have found their staff to be wonderful and especially helpful to a non-tech person like myself. I have found their site easy to access and to upload images, etc.
I hope they grow into a fabulously successful business for we, the artists, will only benefit by their success. I would also hope that they don’t let go of the reins entirely or things might not remain as beneficial to the artist as they are now!

By: Burl Carson

Burl Carson — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:17:45 +0000

I love Deviant Art, which is certainly the largest artist’s community online – but their print sales program is not as advanced as Imagekind’s. Deviant Art doesn’t have as many choices for media, and they only let paying members set their own pricing. Even if you are a paying member, the maximum you can get out of any sale is 50%! The MAX that Imagekind takes is 5%! All the artists on Imagekind set their own prices, and keep 95-100% of their markup. You can’t beat that.

By: Savanna

Savanna — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 14:17:37 +0000

If Amazon can help boost IK into the stratosphere – it would be fantastic!
IK offers a wonderful service to the professional or budding artist. Fingers crossed that any changes – will only improve their standing and marketing of the artists listed with IK. I am meticulous when it comes to the quality of my limited edition and open edition prints, IK has the quality. Right now, the staff is the BEST, it is obvious they care about the artists they represent, great customer service (please don’t let fast growth change that). My only request in changes would be to offer the professional artist more options on their own personal branding… I’m very happy with IK and I tell all my artist and photographer friends – they need to check it out!!!

By: Patricia

Patricia — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 07:23:07 +0000

Well, I actually went over to Imagekind tonight and tried out their service… it actually looks like they have a much better grasp of making the experience easy to use. Guess I’ll stick my foot in my mouth this time. But I still don’t know who they are!!

By: Liz

Liz — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 05:20:38 +0000

I just joined Imagekind a couple of weeks ago and I like ability of being able to set the default framing customization for your art to get it looking its best. Their site looks very clean and uncluttered, I hope they can get it off the ground and become a visible presence on the web. And if Amazon could help them do that, that’s great, but I wouldn’t want Amazon taking over Imagekind, they’d probably pay the artists 3% commission, lol

By: Patricia

Patricia — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:48:55 +0000

You realize that it takes about five seconds to plug your names into search engines and find out what it pulls up? I think you’re being a little too defensive about the whole thing. I’m not an Art.com employee, I’m a consumer, but I have used their service to buy the majority of my art collection. I’ve never had a problem with the service or the products I’ve received regardless of which artist’s work I decided to purchase.

If you stop once in a while and read the offered services from all the companies involved rather than pulling the artist-ego about how only a small company can understand you, you might actually realize smaller isn’t indicative of superior service.

Just like it’s not a merchant site’s fault if your work isn’t selling like crazy. Taste is dependent on your audience, and they might just not like what you do. In which case, it doesn’t matter where you sell. They’re not going to buy.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:21:37 +0000

@Steven

I was thinking the same thing – in terms of traffic, deviantArt is big. Just looking at Alexa, it shows the site has half the digg.com traffic (although Alexa isn’t the best place to get true digg traffic).

So that there is plenty of potential in the visual art market. I used to think it would only ever be a niche, but it looks like the art community is getting itself online!

By: Steven Gonzalez

Steven Gonzalez — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:12:17 +0000

It is interesting to me that http://www.deviantART.com has not been mentioned once in this thread. deviantART is the largest online art community on the web (trailing Alexa weekly traffic ranking – 99, 3 month – 118) and has one of the best print on demand programs available.

By: Seattle Insider

Seattle Insider — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:46:03 +0000

Rumor was that valuation was in the $5-7 million range. Anyone heard anything different? Seems to me Imagekind would rather just keep building the company than sell now. If those numbers are correct it doesn’t sound like alot. But Amazon would certainly give them more traffic and that’s pretty key in this whole thing. So, we’ll see what happens.

By: TJ Gordan

TJ Gordan — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:21:03 +0000

Art.com is currently bigger than Imagekind but Imagekind is a much better product. And Art.com’s print on demand business is NOT really all that evolved. I too feel that “Patricia” should have written her message more carefully. It reads like a pretty thinly veiled post by one of their employees.

By: Susan Camfield

Susan Camfield — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:12:57 +0000

Wow. I didn’t realize that Art.com is now rebranding itself as “Patricia.” (Who else would take the time to search for the names of a bunch of people posting on techcrunch to see if they are artists who also offer their work on Art.com)? And who else would know if they legally have a direct partnership with Amazon or not? I guess it is to be expected, but that type of posting just always leaves a bad taste in my mouth about a company. Art.com, don’t make yourself sound so threatened. I now have to wonder why your members would stray over to Imagekind if they were happy with Art.com.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:08:18 +0000

Who is Imagekind? A small company that just started last year and has amazing customer service, quality printing and framing, and has really taken off in the last couple of months. I’m not sure if art.com is paying people like Patricia here to write posts like this, because if you actually read the buzz around Imagekind, it looks to me like other companies like Amazon are becoming interested in the company, NOT the other way around.

Bottom line, Imagekind delivers more for the artist than art.com does. Why is art.com the biggest art site online? Because not many companies have begun to play in this space yet (print on demand art). Imagekind is kind of like Apple in this space right now – you’ve got a bunch of stodgy companies who have been complacently sitting around for a while now (kind of like Microsoft) – and Imagekind is shaking things up.

They offer 15% commission for artists, on frames, mats, AND glazing.
Art.com offers 10% off frames only.
I can actually upload images to my galleries at Imagekind. Art.com’s new OAP community thing, which I tried, doesn’t even work on my mac/firefox.
Imagekind is designed better. I have checked back often and see they are constantly improving their user interface, ease of use, and strengthening their brand.

If a company like Amazon is interested in investing / aqcuiring a small company like Imagekind, when they already have a slight partnership with Art.com, that speaks volumes about what they think of Imagekind.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:29:19 +0000

Do none of you shop at Amazon.com? You can already purchase posters and prints from Art.com ON Amazon.com. It’s not a direct partnership, but Art.com does sell things through there. In fact, I did a search for some of your names on Amazon.com and found your artwork available, all courtesy of Art.com.

Who is ImageKind, really? Most people haven’t even heard of that site. But ask them if they’ve heard of AllPosters.com or Art.com, and most everyone has heard of at least one of those sites. What this release sounds like is that ImageKind isn’t doing well enough and that they’re going to go under if they don’t get some serious financial backing from a powerhouse like Amazon.com. At least Art.com can stand on its own in that respect.

By: Asbjorn Lonvig

Asbjorn Lonvig — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:48:18 +0000

Largest Art Event Ever…

A new Michelangelo has been born?
A new Rembrandt?
A new Van Gogh?
A new Picasso?
No.
Larger.
The internet revolutionized computer business. By accident.
Art has not been revolutionized by the internet.
Yet.
For the last month I have eagerly tested ImageKind.com.
In the Beta test and after the launch some months ago.
I knew ImageKind.com was right for me.
You create your piece, you load it up, you set price, that’s it.
I have created 500 new peaces in 25 Galleries.
People around me are sure I’m in sane.
I was pleased about ImageKind’s ambitions: To build the largest and best platform for buying, creating, and selling art.
Easy to say.
But.
Very, very hard to accomplice.
This morning, however, I knew the Art world would be revolutionized.
The revolution is around the corner.
Talks are going on between ImageKind and Amazon.com.
Amazon.com has what ImageKind doesn’t have.
And what ImageKind probably never will have.
A brand.
The place you go when you want to buy online.
And a dream comes through.
I create my pieces, I load it up, I set the price and a customer looks at it a few moments after.
No Mr. 25 %, no Mr. 10 %, no Mr. 50 %.
No galleries, no curators, no museums.
No intervention.
Just me, the artist and the customer.

By: Scott Ingram

Scott Ingram — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:54:39 +0000

I have been an ImageKind member for a while now, and the site is amazing. The customization options are quite good and the community as a whole really seems to be warm and open to new artists like myself.

If they can partner with Amazon and leverage the powerhouse’s marketing and financial backing this would be a great boon to the artists on ImageKind and those thinking about joining.

As long as it’s done correctly, this could be a great venture.

By: Sarah Schoenfeld

Sarah Schoenfeld — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:21:45 +0000

I sell my work on Imagekind, and I love them. Their customer service is wonderful, they listen to their artists, their website is easy to navigate and and very user friendly.

I like being able to see what the work will look like framed, and I like being able to manage my own galleries. We can set our own prices, add or delete pieces and arrange the order. I can create photographic art and have it available for sale 5 minutes later.

When I’ve emailed them with questions, I’ve always gotten fast, friendly and courteous responses. sometimes pretty late at night.

And they continue to improve the site and ask for suggestions and feedback on what would make it better.

I’m betting on Imagekind.com for the future.

By: Keith Doyle

Keith Doyle — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:09:28 +0000

I set up at ImageKind several months ago when I first heard about it, and I find their print quality is pretty good and they seem to know what they are doing and I’ve seen evidence that they work pretty hard to make sure I’m satisfied. Though the point about 2D is a good one– what I’d like to see is a similar service that could make 3D models using a 3D printer of some kind. However, I’d suggest they wait to implement that enhancement until they’re sure they’re going strong enough, as it’s probably expensive to get that off the ground…

By: Curtis Neeley

Curtis Neeley — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:42:10 +0000

I am a ‘master’ photographer who has use Art.com. Imagekind, and CafePress to produce my artwork. If I had read carefully the agreement when my art photos were going on ART.com that said they would be required to be listed there for a year, I would not have let them get listed. I want them off there ASAP. They will very soon no longer be there. They only have my lower cost art photos. Their fixed pricing and 10% commission makes them irrelevant! My limited editions and figure studies are not there,