The online gallery Kunstkopie.de celebrates its 20th anniversary

Hamburg, August 2019 - Whether classics like Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt or contemporary artists - the list of famous painters whose works can be conveniently delivered home by ART-PRINTS-ON-DEMAND.COM in various designs and sizes seems to have no end. Founded in 1999 by Hardy Schulz, the online gallery now has more than 250,000 images from around 25,000 artists. This success story as well as the 20th anniversary of the company is to be celebrated in Hamburg in September.

Pioneer of e-commerce

"My vision of ART-PRINTS-ON-DEMAND.COM took shape well before 1999," says Hardy Schulz, founder and CEO of Kunstkopie.de. "In the mid-1990s, when it was hip to be interested in the Internet and when the first online stores appeared, I came up with the idea of ​​making my passion - art - accessible to people at home."

1,000,000 images sold

Thought, done. When Kunstkopie.de went online in 1999, the company was the first online gallery in the world to have individual print sizes and variable print media in its portfolio. 20 years later Kunstkopie.de is the market leader for high quality art reproductions. "We started with 750 artworks. If you consider that we did not sell a single picture for the first two months, but today we have a quarter of a million motifs online and ended up with the one millionth order in the shopping cart in 2019, that makes me a little bit proud in retrospect, "emphasizes Schulz. p>

It's hard to get started

Today, Kunstkopie.de employs 40 people across Europe and achieved 2018 sales in excess of five million euros , But all beginnings are difficult. "At the beginning, there were few opportunities for online advertising and online shopping was suspicious to most people," recalls the graduate in business administration (Dipl. Kfm.). Another challenge was the payment cycles of credit card companies. Although the company was profitable, Kunstkopie.de had unnecessary liquidity problems. "Our customers have always had to pay for shipping. Many customers use their credit cards even then. Of course, we have to go in advance for the printing materials and picture frames and have been able to do that for a while. Paradoxically, the faster we grew, the bigger our liquidity problems were, because the money was stuck with credit card companies. "

Off Hamburg into the world

By the way, the lovingly designed art prints are all made at the production site in Hamburg - from prepress to printing and frame construction. And thanks to state-of-the-art technology, you can print your favorite motifs, whether on acrylic glass, wood or canvas, even up to two meters in size.