If you've ever shopped for artwork to decorate the walls of your new house or apartment, chances are you know the frustration of trying to find pieces that you like—especially ones that aren't generic and mass-produced like you'd find in most big box stores. That's why Fine Art America, a Santa Monica-based online art and print-on-demand marketplace, set out to transform the art world more than 15 years ago by helping independent artists sell directly to buyers.
Founded in 2006 by CEO Sean Broihier, Fine Art America has emerged as a leader in the more than $13 billion online art market by doing pretty much everything that you can imagine when it comes to furnishing your home with art. The company sells canvas art, framed prints, tapestries, and more from millions of artists who are based all over the world. Fine Art America allows buyers to transform their personal photos into wall art, puzzles, phones cases, and dozens of other personal keepsakes. It even has artists on staff that will transform photos into hand-painted works of art or transform NFTs into physical products.
Fine Art America is highly automated and uses an on-demand business model, with orders manufactured in just 2-5 business days at one of its sixteen global production facilities and then shipped directly to buyers. The seller side of its business is automated as well. Artists and brands can open free accounts on its website, upload their designs, and then begin selling products to a global audience of art buyers in just a few minutes. Fine Art America sets the base price for each product, and then sellers set their own markups on top of those base prices.
Automation is a huge part of the company's success. "We won't add any new process or feature to our business unless we can fully automate it," says Broihier. "You can't be the technology partner for millions of artists and brands unless everything is automated." This relentless focus on automation allows Fine Art America’s small staff to fulfill thousands of orders per day for artists all over the world—along with a who's who of iconic brands, including Sports Illustrated, Getty Images, and Major League Baseball, among many others. Fine Art America's development team spends a great deal of time focusing on creating innovative tools to help these sellers simplify and grow their art businesses and reach buyers everywhere. Artists and brands can sell their products through Fine Art America’s marketplace website and through a variety of other channels, including Shopify, Amazon, the artists' personal websites, its mobiles app, brick-and-mortar retail stores, and more.
It's partially due to this innovative crowdsourcing and on-demand business model—paired with automation and augmented reality—that makes Fine Art America so successful. The main reason the company has done so well, according to Broihier, is due to its small staff (of fewer than 20 employees) and the fact that it remains fully independent.
"If you're an entrepreneur, almost everything that you read and everyone that you talk to will tell you to raise money—especially if you're running a tech company," Broihier said in a Medium post from 2018. Raising money, he says, is almost universally hailed as a sign of success—but one that comes with a cost. "In many ways, the day that you raise money is the day that you lose control of your business. Instead of being the boss, you're now an employee answering to a new boss—your investors and your board of directors.”
"Many times, 'raising money' isn't a sign of success—it's a sign that your business isn't doing that well. Instead of running a profitable business, you've run out of money and need someone else's money to keep the lights on. We're the only major player in the art and print-on-demand space that is bootstrapped and remains independent to this day."
Broihier was adamant about keeping Fine Art America independent from the start for exactly this reason—he can call the shots without having to run everything past a board or investors. This flexibility is what gives the company its edge.
"We're able to take an idea for a new feature or product and launch it, from scratch, within just a few days," says Broihier. "That allows us to rapidly test new ideas, see what works, and then focus our efforts on the best ideas without the daily distractions of endless meetings, reporting to management, etc."
A graduate of the University of Illinois, where he received a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Broihier has been a self-starter from a young age. He taught himself how to code at the age of eight, and started his first business—LocalAutomation.com, an online marketplace for engineers—in 2005. It's Broihier's background in engineering that helped him build out the innovative technologies behind Fine Art America. Its mobiles app, for example, is the culmination of many years of technological breakthroughs by the company. Through the app, customers can browse through millions of images from artists all over the world, interact with the artists through its messaging system, and even see what products will look like on their own walls (in a variety of styles and sizes) with the app's augmented-reality feature before customizing and purchasing directly through the app.
So if you're looking to get a piece of artwork for that one spot on your wall you just can't seem to find something for, or you've just moved and you have a lot of free wall space to fill, Fine Art America is your best bet—and you can feel good having supported a small, independent team that loves their work.
*This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Fine Art America.*
