About Artistorm
Artistorm is an online art gallery which allows independent artists to sell their work in a powerful, elegant store.
Our Goals
Our main goal is to provide excellent, affordable art for people to buy, and we strive to make this a higher priority
than turning a profit. We admire Google's mantra: "focus on the user and all else will follow". We think that kind of selfless focus is incredibly important for Artistorm because we've never
admired anyone who was self-centered, and have never known a self-centered person who was both successful and happy. We work with that in mind.
Our second goal is to keep stuff as inexpensive as possible - but this doesn't necessarily apply to everything we're going to be selling. The price of originals is determined soley
by the artist. But when we're talking about mass-produced art, we want to keep the prices low. The people we want to reach are normal, young people - most of them, like us, won't
have very much money, and certainly won't be willing to drop much of it on something as seemingly unnecessary as art. We want that to change.
Our third goal is to help our artists. We want to get their art into your hands (or onto your walls/doors/bodies). We want to help them find inspiration to make some awesome new
stuff. We want to help them make some money off of their work. And we want to give them some real world experience with printing and selling their own stuff.
Our fourth and final goal is to make the entire process enjoyable with great design, solid code, and excellent usability.
Marketing Speak
We don't like corporate marketing speak / design. And to be frank, we hate swoosh logos and stock photography of pretty secretaries wearing headsets. Artistorm is independent artists striking out on their own, and we don't want to misrepresent that. We work to help our artists succeed and give our customers an enjoyable art buying experience. Artistorm will grow only as far as the word travels, so help us spread the word of this unique, cutting-edge way of selling art.
Prices
Normal Price: $34,197
OUR Price: $999
YOUR Price: $9.99
We're kinda tired of everything selling for $9.99 instead of $10, and every e-commerce site listing three prices (with two crossed out). But what really gets us is when a store says an item is on sale when it's
obviously not - this is especially, exceptionally bad at jewelry and furniture stores. Have you ever passed a jewelry or furniture store that wasn't having a BLOWOUT SALE? One doesn't feel like they've
gotten any 'deals' from these stores - simply that they paid what the product was originally worth only after receiving some ridiculous discount.
We want to be honest with our prices. If we're taking the price down on an item for some reason, then we'll say what the price was, when we took the price down, and if/when it will go back up - no need to try to trick people into buying things.
Art Selection
We will not sell just any art - we deliberate and think very carefully before putting a piece of art in the store. The same goes for the artists.
Anyone can suggest an artist to us, but we're the ones who will actually extend them an invitation to sell their work in the store. Once again, this isn't because we're control freaks, but we know how
many people we can handle at once, and whether or not we think a particular artist's style will go well with our store and audience.
If you're interested in signing up, you can check out the contribute page.
We'll tell everyone up-front that we're not interested in novelty and fads - we'd rather chew on tinfoil than add to the world's gigantic stockpiles of 'I See Stupid
People' t-shirts and beer posters. We're selling art, and we'd like for it to avoid that lethal combination of novelty and pop culture.
Operations
The website is hosted by Starmen.Net. The store will either be a custom shopping cart or an installation of osCommerce. We are going to accept credit cards, and possibly Paypal for anyone who wants to use it.