An e-commerce site for a painter in Vienne

Like all contemporary artists, Valérie enjoys selling her work…

A contemporary creative approach, supported by an online shop

Being an artist is no easy task: the trials and tribulations of the creative process tend to take up most of one’s life. For many artists, creating a piece of art is akin to pregnancy: long periods of waiting, a feverish phase of creation and a painful birth.

But many visual artists, once their work is complete, find their pieces piling up in their studios due to a lack of buyers.

If there is one thing that is difficult for a contemporary artist, it is selling their works: not that they do not wish to part with them, but because the act of promoting themselves to sell their creations is as far removed from them as the planet Saturn is from most of us.

The art market is tough. Going to see a gallery owner to present your portfolio (if you’ve actually put one together…) or an exhibition catalogue can seem as daunting as organising an expedition to Mars. Not to mention that the reception won’t always be warm at the first door, and that, lacking encouragement, our timid seller will quickly turn tail.

So what can be done?

That’s the question Valérie put to us in 2014.

She’d already held a few exhibitions, sold figurative and abstract paintings, and her reputation was well-established, particularly at Drouot: she’s no novice. She has an up-to-date portfolio and photographs of her work, which she’s posted on her website. Our first piece of advice was to set up and manage a Facebook page, to build up a core group of loyal followers who share her posts; at the same time, she runs a Twitter account, which allows her to reach a different, more professional audience.

In early 2015, she came back to see us to find out how to sell some of her new designs directly online. She had just embarked on research based on the mathematical tools for visualising fractal curves, a subject dear to Benoît Mandelbrot, following on from an earlier body of work on abstraction, *Chaos et Lumières*, which had led to an exhibition in the Paris region. These creations are produced in limited editions, much like lithographs: their price is therefore more affordable than that of her original works.

An online shop built on an industry standard: PrestaShop

Faced with the choice between Magento and PrestaShop, we recommended PrestaShop, as it is better suited to a small shop. His expertise in graphic design tools meant we had all the graphic elements needed to go live.

It took just two weeks’ work by a small, motivated team to create the shop, which launched on 19 April 2015. To build momentum for the launch, a teaser campaign was organised on social media in the days leading up to it.

From day one, the shop received over 600 visits, and the first sales followed shortly afterwards. The artist said she was completely satisfied: the project’s budget was recouped within a few sales.

Your online shop

Would you like to sell online via a shop designed for mobile phones? Take a look at our e-commerce website creation page.