The Printers Inc

Idea

Introduction

We want to remove the barriers faced by artists from selling their work online.

Our first product is "The Button Factory". The Button Factory allows artists to quickly and painlessly sign up for an account with The Printers Inc and upload high-resolution copies of their work to our system.

The system then generates a snippet of html code that can be inserted onto the artist's own blog / website which will display as a "Buy this print" button.

When clicked, this button links to The Printers Inc system which opens in a light-box in front of their site. Here the customer can choose from a variety of different media and image size and purchase the print. We believe this facility would enable a highly innovative revenue stream to be crafted. Artists would set their own rates above our base rate. We plan to take 10% of each artist's mark-up as commission.

We believe we are offering no start-up cost, instant monetisation solution to artists.

Intended impact

In our view, artists and designers all over the world find that unless they are well-renowned they have difficulty in gaining awareness and creating revenue. The Printers Inc would provide an easy-to-implement solution to help budding independent designers monetise their artwork through our print button factory. This would give any designer the opportunity to quickly and easily sell their artwork online without the hassle of purchasing, organising, storing and distributing copies of their work.

Substantial accomplishments to date

The Printers Inc has developed and launched The Button factory as a beta version. We have artists on the system already uploading their work and implementing the buttons. We have also arranged and attended presentations at universities to present The Button Factory to students taking courses in the sector (e.g. photography, painting, illustration etc).

Monetisation strategy

In essence, we would offer artists an embeddable, print-on-demand service. We would have a base rate for each product we sell (currently stretched canvases and fine art posters but planned to include framed prints amongst other items as we grow). The artist would then be able to set any mark-up they wish on top of this. We would also get a 10% commission as a finder's fee. Once we have reached 250 high quality designs on our system, we plan to launch a gallery on our main website. Artists would then have the ability to select which of their artworks they would like us to sell on our gallery. We would then market direct to consumers to supplement each artists' individual marketing efforts.

Use of proceeds

As we have already developed and launched The Button Factory, we are mainly seeking to raise money for the purposes of marketing, and to cover with the costs of raising capital. We have plans for a guerrilla marketing video to be made as well as a range of targeted magazine ads and highly pertinent pay per click campaigns on major search engines as our main form of marketing expenditure. We also plan to supplement these efforts with a road-show presented to those UK universities offering art-based courses. Here, we would expect to find high concentrations of our target market. Such events would enable us to give a captive presentation to maximise our conversion rates at each end of the spectrum. The company has already received a £10,000 loan from a director. The proceeds of this funding round will not be used to repay this.