Echelon Alumnus ArtKred launches public beta for all art lovers

By http://e27.cohttp://e27.sg/2012/08/01/echelon-alumnus-artkred-launches-public-beta-for-all-art-lovers/ | Aug 1, 2012 | News

Echelon alumnus Artkred launches their beta which now allows art lovers to get art prints by emerging Asian artists.

Four months after our Echelon Singapore Satellite, ArtKred, a Singapore based platform that aims to connect artists with art lovers, have publicly launched their beta version. Although, Spencer Yang, cofounder of ArtKred, did not get into the finals of Echelon, the website has finally launched and is now available for all art lovers around the world.

What is Artkred?

According to cofounder Spencer Yang, the app is “for emerging artists in Asia, a platform where they can showcase themselves, interact with other artists, learn more about art and be rewarded for their works through the sale of prints. For art lovers, ArtKred makes art accessible to them through purchasing, learning about art, interacting with artists and collecting works from their favourite artists.” Orders are fulfilled with tender loving care in Singapore and shipped internationally.

How the idea came about:

The idea behind bootstrapped startup ArtKred.com started when one of the co-founders, Spencer, received a gift from a friend who travelled to Europe- an art print in a nice pizza box. That gift inspired him to find out more about the arts industry that was something rather foreign to him until then. The ArtKred crew set out in the middle of last year wanting to create a platform that will serve the needs of artists in Asia and art lovers around the world.

Artkred landing page

Working with artist all around the world

ArtKred has only just launched but is already working with artists and groups from Singapore, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and looking to work with more artists in Asia. “We have artists from various schools in Singapore who were invited to join, such as NUS, NAFA, Laselle, Ngee Ann Polytechnic and a few more.We also have artists from Japan, China and Indonesia. One of the artist groups that is supporting us is wejungle.com, a collective of artists who recently exhibited at lit up singapore exhibition. Number wise, we are currently in touch with over 30 artists. The number is growing everyday as many of them refer their friends to us.”

The team have learnt so much about the state of the art industry from conversing with artists and partners, travelling throughout the US, Europe and Asia to explore the art industry. The ArtKred team is also working on partnerships with art communities and blogs in the US and Europe, with aims of officially launching a showcase exhibition for all artists based in LA, USA on ArtKred early next year in February or March.

The ArtKred team holds the belief that the following equation will prevail in helping them bring art to homes around the world: (Quality X Affordable X Limited edition prints) + The Internet + Asian artists community = Accessible art for all. With an average time of 6 minutes spent per user on their website, the team is certainly looking at some interesting times ahead.