RENTON, WA / ACCESSWIRE / December 8, 2021 / The pandemic has served as a wake-up call for many. From shortages of so-called ‘essentials' to daily reminders of infection statistics, value systems of individuals around the globe have been collectively re-adjusted. Compulsory homeschooling has helped parents realize the true value of teachers, and the isolation of lockdowns has to more expressiveness towards people and objects of sentimental value.
Fewer people have realized the true extent of this increased level of expressiveness than Chris Chen, founder of Instapainting.com, a platform that has perfected the art of creating real, hand-painted portraits from photographs. The multitude of dog portrait requests on Instapainting is a testament to the market's heightened desire for value expression. As customers requested pet portraits in varying styles, the business unexpectedly realized its role in the pandemic recovery efforts.
But how did Chris combine art and technology in such a valuable way before NFTs became a thing? The answer didn't come without a few forward failures.
Birthing the idea
The idea for Instapainting was conceived following a request by Chris' friend for help building a website to sell art reproductions. The simple idea was to source art from China and then sell it to American customers. As Chris was savvy with creating MVPs (thanks to a previous YCombinator stint as a solo founder), he swung into action. Instead, he built a simple site allowing customers to upload their favorite photos to be turned into real hand-painted pieces within 2 weeks.
The project was a success, as it turned out that there was an active, thriving class of consumers that wanted to see traditional, art representations of their nearest and dearest. In a fast-paced world where more photographs are taken now than at any time in history, Instapainting offered the perfect tech-enabled solution to helping people recreate special moments on canvas. And it was all seamless at the front-end. Customers only needed to upload their favourite pictures on the site, pay and then receive a hand-painted art piece in weeks, instead of months.
Scaling the unscalable
But the process wasn't so simple behind the scenes - especially when it came to scaling a traditionally unscalable product. Like any process that requires creativity, traditional art is notoriously time-consuming to produce, with memorable pieces like Da Vinci's Mona Lisa taking 4 years to complete. The challenge for Chris was how to scale a much-desired service in an unscalable industry, and he experimented with a number of options including building an AI-powered robo painter.
Luckily, Chris was able to tap into a little-known resource - a little village in China where 8000 artists produced around 3 - 5 million pieces of art each year. The key differentiator of this village's ability to scale so efficiently was its systematic approach to art production. Just like the revolution of the automobile industry by car assembly lines by Ford, Dafen revolutionized the art creation industry through art production lines. The production process, established by an entrepreneurial trade painter, Huang Jiang, saw ‘art specialists' (e.g eye specialists, tree specialists, etc) collaborating to produce each piece while individually taking charge of each element.
Leveraging strengths to meet marketing goals
As a bootstrapped technical founder, Chris' next challenge was extending his technical capabilities to include marketing while getting the startup in front of customers.
Chris' marketing approach leaned towards relying on his areas of competence to refine, automate and improve existing processes. Leveraging his network of friends, Chris took the advice of a friend who was knowledgeable about SEO, improving his SEO game to the point where 60% of Instapainting's traffic came from SEO alone. Chris built on his strengths and produced content that was guaranteed to generate traffic in the communities that he was already a part of.
The lesson here for entrepreneurs is this: by leveraging your skills and networks, you can bootstrap your way towards a critical mass of traffic that can turn into profitable, repeat purchases.
Support real artists
For entrepreneurs out there, the message is simple.
"Support real artists. When you order from services like ours, you're directly supporting a real artist who painted this piece, who might not be necessarily famous on Instagram - but who is making a living doing this. We don't hide these artists behind our brand-you get to talk to them and see who they are, and even order from them directly in the future. You'll know exactly who and where your artwork is coming from." says Chris.
In a world full of uncertainty, Instapainting stands as a symbol of how a business can help communities heal through art while also supporting artists directly.
Media Contact
Angie Shi
SOURCE: Instapainting