Cartoon E-Commerce

Edmonton artist Malcolm Mayes brings his cartoon syndicate Artizans to the Net

Almost everyone has a relative or friend who can draw, but talent or not, that doesn’t mean they have the skills to pump out quality, reproducible artwork. While it may be tempting to try and save a few bucks by having an amateur develop logos and illustrations, in the end you will probably have wasted both time and money. So wave good-bye to your artistic friends and set your browser to Artizans.com. This Edmonton-based company is providing a new way to access quality artwork, from a group of carefully screened artists.

Artizans.com is the innovation of Malcolm Mayes, a political cartoonist who is applying his creative style of thinking to business. He started the company in 1998 with an initial investment of just under $12,000, with an additional $42,500 spent in 1999 on the ongoing process of designing the Web site.

Mayes’ goal is straightforward: He wants to make it faster, simpler and more economical for artists and art buyers to do business. As well as supplying the Edmonton Journal with a daily cartoon, Mayes has been selling his own art for more than 20 years and has credits in about 80 publications. He realized he could help other artists broaden their sales by developing a Web site that brings artists and art buyers together. “I was distributing my cartoons via fax and Artizans grew out of that,” says Mayes. “I decided to bring on other artists when I realized that distributing cartoons digitally was far more efficient.”

With more than 4,100 reproducible images in 141 categories, Artizans.com is the first major North American syndicate to fully exploit the distribution advantages of the Internet. In a matter of minutes, registered users can download images from a database of approved cartoonists and illustrators. There are daily updates of political and gag cartoons, illustrations, caricatures, and animations. Many of the 33 artists are award winners. Users can also contract artists for specific projects varying from brochures and logos to personal caricatures.

If an artist creates something specifically for a client, Mayes retains 20% of the price while the sale of pre-existing art on the site earns him 50%. To date, this e-business has never lost money, and in 2000 it pulled in revenues just over $108,000.

In the past, shopping for artwork meant the time-consuming and often frustrating process of thumbing through tear sheets and concept designs. “There’s a lot of clip art out there,” says Mayes, “but a lot of times it’s really general and everybody is using the same images. If you’re a company that needs a logo, or a restaurant that needs images for your menu, you want these to be unique and professional.”

The concept of an online gallery sounds simple enough, but Mayes soon realized there were technological as well as business difficulties to overcome. He felt it was extremely important to get the site working effectively before focusing on attracting artists or customers. “If I was to do something differently I would probably get more capital up front,” says Mayes. “It’s an expensive proposition to build an online site.”

The process of building a secure site inhaled the bulk of Mayes investment capital. Software had to be licensed, artwork had to be uploaded, and accounting procedures had to be set up. “I had two issues to contend with,” says Mayes, “the security of the cartoons, and tracking what people purchased.” Mayes hired CSM Systems Inc. to help him find the e-commerce solutions that would work best in his application. Based in Edmonton, CSM Systems specializes in building electronic business applications and providing Web design, Web hosting and consulting services. They found they could protect artwork from being stolen by using watermarks and by posting images with a lower dots-per-inch resolution than required for publication.

Another primary consideration was to understand the technical limits of what clients would be capable of doing on a site. “As developers, we have to make the site accommodating to people who have no other experience using the Internet,” says Michael Peckham, chief technology officer at CSM Systems Inc. “You can never make any assumptions about the user’s ability to follow the technical logic.”

They soon discovered that incorporating off-the-shelf software did not provide ideal results. “Originally we were using a software package from one of the three main vendors,” says Peckham. “We found it was designed more for selling books and CDs. As a result, we had to do a lot of additional work to get it to function in a rudimentary way.”

As Artizans.com grew, the company’s marketing and business plan changed. The old system was pay as you go, with prices depending on rigid costs and circulation, but Mayes wanted to replicate the kind of relationships artists and syndicates have traditionally experienced. He wanted to incorporate flexible pricing quotes, but the existing software was not structured that way.

In December, CSM replaced the software with a program developed in-house, called Miraware. “Having our own software helped because we know how every piece of it works,” says Peckham. “We could make the changes to accommodate his needs. Performance, speed and responsiveness were accelerated. Now the system has an application process where a customer can negotiate a deal on the site. This is geared to what editors want to see and has also been quite a success getting illustrations out to the non-publishing industry.”

Another problem was the length of time it took to download images by customers with slow dial-up connections. Artizans responded with a feature called “Download Zone Lite” to allow users to scroll through illustrations based on text descriptions.

Years of experience gave Mayes the insight he needed to improve on the traditional methods of brokering art. Peckham is convinced bringing industry knowledge to e-business is vital for success. “I think it can’t be stressed enough how valuable it is that Artizans is run by a prominent political cartoonist that understands the industry,” says Peckham. “We’ve dealt with clients in a number of different fields and the ones who succeed know their industry intimately. It’s really naive to think it’s possible to just start up an e-business. You need contacts and you need to understand how an industry works.”

Another of Mayes’ strengths is his careful scrutiny of the artwork that is submitted to him. He looks for consistency and originality and is selective about who he accepts. One of the artists featured on his site is Gerry Rasmussen, who also draws the pictures you see in the world syndicated comic strip called Betty, as well as illustrating Watercooler Tales in Alberta Venture.

Rasmussen provides Artizans with original art about once a month. He finds selling through the site allows him to spend more time at the drawing table. “With Artizans I can just draw something up, put it out there, and see if anybody responds,” says Rasmussen, “It bodes well for the future because it’s the most efficient, clean, and inexpensive way to get cartoonist’s work out there.”

Florence Ross agrees. When she wanted to purchase a custom caricature for her mother’s 90th birthday party, she went to Artizans.com and explored the site. She supplied Artizans with photos, exchanged a few e-mail messages, and came away with a $300 caricature drawn by Rasmussen. “I thought I could do something artsy at the computer myself, but I’m not an artist,” says Ross, “The picture stunned my mother.”

Most artists don’t really have that many ways to project themselves beyond their local market. “If you’re an artist, the clients you develop within a hundred kilometres of where you are are usually the clients you sell to. Artizans exposes his work to people who would never otherwise have seen it,” says Mayes, who has customers around the world including Russia, France, the U.K. and Sweden, as well as artists from as far away as India and Belgium.

The astute observations in Mayes’ political cartoons are indicative of the savvy he brings to Artizans. And while his political cartoons reflect society back to us, his Web site allows people to explore and choose from a greater variety of art. “I always knew there was a lot of creativity in cartooning, but it was a real surprise to me that you really have to be creative as a business person as well. The original thinking that goes into doing cartoons and artwork has really helped me push Artizans forward.” Says Mayes, “I think e-commerce will explode and it’s very exciting to be riding on the edge of that wave.”

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