Feb 2009

Multi-Seller Community Shop

Pickin'Art is a community site for artists and painters. The concept is Facebook meets eBay built specifically for Artists. It lets any artist create a profile on the site where they can promote themselves and exhibit their works. They can also choose to sell their works through the online store run by Pickin'Art based on a commission scheme.

Focus on:

• multi-seller store
• community site
• picture galleries

Stats

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Business Requirements

Artwork Galleries

Pickin'Art lets you exhibit your artwork, enter competitions and exhibitions and gain exposure. You can choose to sell your work through us or directly by leaving your contact details or linking back to your own website or eBay page.

Artists Portfolios

Create an online portfolio and promote your artwork. Each artist’s portfolio page is unique. Upload as much of your art as you like and, if you want, we’ll help you gain more exposure. Setting up an account is free; there are no hidden costs or trial periods.

Stunning Exhibitions

Please enjoy the collection of unique artwork we have on display. Each piece is unique and beautifully displayed in our galleries, the artist’s portfolios or in one of our featured exhibitions. For all our latest news subscribe to our newsletter.

What we did

This is a special case in that we are the full owners of Pickin'Art and run it as a separate business. As such, we have been through the full process of establishing a business entity, gathering our requirements, building a business plan, putting it into action and finally focusing on marketing and growth.

The website is build on the now defunct osCommerce platform and was our first experience in eCommerce. At the time we started building Pickin'Art in mid 2007 the osCommerce platform was considered the best available. However it didn't come anywhere near what we needed to do. All available platforms were based on the premise of managing your own stock. We on the other hand wanted to let others, the artists themselves manage their stock. To enable this we had to completely rewrite several aspects of the osCommerce platform.

Still, this presented us with a number of limitations and problems and we are now currently transitioning the entire site over to the much more advanced and stable Joomla platform.

Outcome