Linking Artisan and Audience
Published: Wednesday, November 01, 2000
Wander Woman, in a diary posted on Novica.com, based here.
Novica.com is one of several new e-commerce sites that link artists and craftspeople in developing nations with consumers around the world.
It's no surprise that handmade arts and crafts would capture the attention of Internet entrepreneurs. The World Bank Department of Commerce estimates the market for traditional, handmade arts and crafts to be $22 billion in the United States and $280 billion worldwide. Forrester Research predicts that $271 million will be spent online this year for specialty gifts, up from $167 million in 1999. The Net is an ideal medium for selling handmade arts and crafts because it enables merchants to add value to any purchase simply by adding information.
“There is nothing like knowing about the person who made the plates on your table or the weaving on the wall,” Ryan says. “People who enjoy world art are adventurers at heart. They enjoy the story behind the art.”
Novica.com works with more than 1,000 artists in 13 regions around the world. The website features more than 8,500 items for sale. Every item and every artist has a photograph posted on the site along with the artist's biography. All this, and Wander Woman's diaries, results in a very content-rich website.
“I don't think you could travel around the world on our site in a day,” says Charles Hachman, Novica.com's chief technology officer. “Our customers are well traveled and well educated. Our website is set up to give them an experience similar to traveling.”
Novica.com, which launched in May 1999, is the brainchild of Roberto Milk; his wife, Milena; and her mother, Armenia Nercessian de Oliveira, a former human-rights officer with the United Nations. Novica.com doesn't buy or sell anything. Rather it operates as a true cyber marketplace, with consumers buying directly from artists, who exercise complete control over the items they sell and the prices they charge. Novica.com adds a margin to every item sold, shipping directly to consumers from 13 regional offices. Typically the artist keeps about 70 percent of the selling price. It's all about promoting the artist and fostering economic development, according to Ryan.
“We provide the artists with a platform to sell globally,” Hachman says. “The technology provides them the leverage to market to the world.”
Novica.com plans to go public in 2001. The company wouldn't disclose sales or revenue information, but PC Data, the Internet tracking service, reported that Novica.com's website received more than 6 million page views in the month of August alone.
Most new e-tailers have a more traditional business model, essentially a digitized version of the old import/export relationship. They buy products from indigenous artisans, import them, post them on a website, then resell them at a profit. But, like Novica.com, many of the websites prominently feature stories about the items and artists.
“People like to know about the artist,” says Harry Nutumya, who operates hopimarket.com from his home on the Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona. “We have biographies of all our artists because it helps the buyer understand the art and appreciate that it's authentic. We feel the profiles enhance the art.”
Nutumya launched his website in 1997 to broaden the potential market for the reservation's artists, who number more than 4,000, he says. A maker of jewelry and kachina dolls himself, Nutumya markets his work online along with items crafted by about 100 other Native American artisans. The website enabled Nutumya to open a gallery in his home. Between the two venues, Nutumya sold about $100,000 worth of art last year—about 65 percent of that over the Web.
E-tailers of socially responsible products also tell their own story—an important effort for any business whose consumers want assurance that their purchases aren't contributing to the exploitation of people or the environment.
Novica.com goes to great lengths to explain its business model and how it benefits indigenous cultures. Its website also links to several nonprofits that the company supports, such as CARE2.com, rainforest.com and ecologyfund.com.
“The kinds of people who are interested in these kinds of causes will have an affinity for establishing a close tie with artisans,” Hachman says. “Our content is designed to provide those kinds of ties.”
“The consumer is demanding more transparency,” says Michelle Long, co-founder of Seattle-based Viatru, which links Western retailers with artisans in developing and economically depressed regions. “Consumers are making decisions based on information. A lot of companies have realized that the solution to credibility is to tell stories. They're saying, 'This is what the community is like where this product came from, and this is what's being done to improve things.'”
In 1999, Long and three co-founders started a business-to-consumer website called World2Market. In September, the company changed its name to Viatru and changed its focus to building business relationships between mainstream buyers and suppliers in the developing-world. Rather than individual artists, Viatru enlists entire communities to
supply products in quantities needed
by retailers.
And Viatru's services go beyond
business matchmaking. The company's designers consult with artisans to
develop products and styles that will be marketable in Western retail stores. Retailers can choose from various “
digital windows” that Viatru offers into the communities that make the products they're selling: content for a retailer's website, or video presentations via
in-store kiosks designed by Viatru. “Technology makes it possible to acquire more knowledge,” Long says. “People want to know that a rocking chair didn't come from an endangered rain forest.”
“Viatru tells the story and provides transparency for people to engage with the product and the place that it came from,” says Tracey Clark, executive manager of Bridgehead, a coffee retailer and wholesaler in Ottawa, Canada.
In the business of marketing organic shade-grown coffee for 19 years, Bridgehead opened its first coffee shop in June. The shop carries coffee mugs made by Keramics, a woman-owned ceramics company based in a ghetto on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Viatru helped Keramics with product design, packaging, shipment and delivery. The firm also produced a five-minute interactive presentation about Keramics for Bridgehead's website.
“The goal is to provide information and make it immediate, personal and accessible,” Clark says. “Viatru is good at telling
stories.”
Venture capitalists and Internet players are approaching sustainable arts and crafts sites with wallets open. Launched in November 1999, eZiba.com stocks 1,200 to 1,500 handmade items from around the world at its headquarters in North Adams, Mass. The company recently raised $70 million in a second round of funding, including $17.5 million from Amazon.com in exchange for about 20 percent of the company. Showing the kind of cause commitment that marks the field, principals in eZiba.com pledged a portion of its stock to a foundation they formed to improve living conditions in artisans' communities.