101 Best Dot-Coms: The Essential Sourcebook of Success Stories, Practical Advice, and the Hottest Ideas

Art Posters Start-up expenses: $100,000 Special requirements: Extensive database and a paid employee who can manage it continually Best advice: "Have realistic expectations. This business is hard work. The Net is growing and changing so quickly. You have to stay flexible and stay 100 percent involved at all times." Bare walls are dull. Naturally, then, people plaster their living spaces with artwork of all kinds, including posters. For many of us, posters help us articulate our wishes and desires, our secret lives and alter egos, our tastes and our prejudices. Walls can bear the likenesses of Pearl Bailey or Pearl Harbor, Lisbon Antigua or Liz Taylor, the Rocky Mountains or Rocky Balboa. The subjects are endless, and the styles range from high camp to high art--Andy Warhol in the foyer, Velvet Elvis in the den, Michelangelo's David in the library, and Nine-Inch Nails in the Teen Ghetto. Millions of posters are sold every year in the West, and not all of them come from brick-and-mortar shops. Needless to say, the poster business is well suited to the world of e-commerce. It is therefore no surprise to find plenty of poster addresses in that giant mailbox called cyberspace. One of the specialty niches in this field is art posters. Ann Reiter and Jane Henley are partners in TimelessTraveler.com, an e-shop whose name sounds like that of a travel bureau but really deals in art posters and prints. "We specialize in the hottest," says Reiter. "That's to differentiate us from others who try to carry every print in the world. A million prints? Who has the time to look at them?" Reiter and Henley list only the newest and most trendy art posters and prints, leaving the problems of massive inventories to other businesses. As a result, they have carved a special niche, one that began as a traditional catalog-sales business. Originally the partners sold wholesale art prints. Then they ventured into retail sales, marketing through their own print catalogs. Reiter and Henley had always advertised in art magazines, but they soon discovered the limitations of operating in the world of bulk mailings and print-shop deadlines. "We finally decided to forego the paper catalog," says Reiter, "because the mailing costs, printing costs, and fulfillment costs became very expensive." When the partners started their Web site in November 1998, they thought it would just supplement their catalog business. But it didn't take long to realize the Net was "a better economic decision." As Reiter says, "This industry changes a lot, and every time something new comes out, you have to change the inventory and the catalog and the mailing base. That's really expensive and difficult normally. But on the Net, it's a lot easier." A Tale of Two Cities Ann was a sales manager for 15 years, working in Chicago, while Jane specialized in graphic design projects in Minneapolis. With the advent of the Net, geographic distance became a small, almost infinitesimal, disadvantage to the art poster partnership. Today, Henly provides Web design service for not only TimelessTraveler.com. but other companies as well. Reiter also does business outside the partnership, serving as art director for a large Chicago corporation. Despite their busy work schedules, the partners have learned a number of skills appropriate to the Web. Both are technically proficient. Henley does the company's Web site design and maintenance, and Reiter also knows her way around a computer keyboard. Working from separate cities has not been a problem thus far, perhaps because both partners have kept current in technology. But the process was not easy for art specialist Reiter. "When the business started, I knew only what the average user knows," she says. "There's a big learning curve with HTML coding. It isn't as easy as people think." ReiterThe Philip Lief Group is the author of '101 Best Dot-Coms: The Essential Sourcebook of Success Stories, Practical Advice, and the Hottest Ideas', published 2000 under ISBN 9780767906043 and ISBN 0767906047.