20x200 Case Study
Movable Type Enables 20x200 to Offer Affordable Art Online
In August of 2007, Jen Bekman launched 20x200 with a mission to make fine art available to everyone. Built entirely in Movable Type, the e-commerce enabled site has since garnered a global community of diverse collectors and ushered the art market into the digital age.
Customer Profile
In 2003, Jen Bekman was a self-described dot-com refugee. After a career in technology that included leadership roles at Netscape and Disney, she decided to explore a completely different path. She opened an art gallery on Spring Street in New York, and began a photo competition named Hey, Hot Shot! that attracted photographers from all over the world. Among the photographers she met through the competition was Raul Guiterrez; like Jen, he had a background in technology and an eye for composition.
"I knew that I wanted to collaborate with Raul on a project shortly after I met him," Jen recalls. "I just didn't know what it was yet."
On a January night in 2007, Jen had an inspiration: why not combine her technology know-how with her passion for art? The art market had long withstood digital innovation; aspiring collectors still had to visit a gallery space to buy art. Jen believed that the Internet made it possible to not only expose fine art to new audiences, but also to offer it at ridiculously low prices. The success of her New York gallery and other art-related online ventures would help drive awareness to the site, and most importantly - would help Jen continue to champion emerging artists and help more people discover the joy of collecting art.
The Challenge
I tell people that if they can type into a Word document, they can use Movable Type. It's that easy.
- Jen Bekman, founder of 20x200
Jen's vision hinged on two values: the art had to be affordable, and it had to be high quality. The formula she devised for 20x200 was both elegant and innovative: she would offer two limited-edition prints each week - an edition of 200 for $20, an edition of 20 for $200, and an edition of 2 for $2,000. The entire business would be conducted online.
"My background prepared me perfectly for this," she says today. "I already had a grasp of digital technologies and a sense of what could be accomplished." She immediately picked up the phone: "I wanted Raul to be involved."
Raul Guiterrez has created multiple sites in Movable Type over the years, so Jen approached him to help build the 20x200 site, his first instinct was to build it in Movable Type. Her only stipulation: it couldn't look like a blog.
"The fact that we could build a site so easily and inexpensively was one of the key components of the 20x200 business strategy," Jen notes. "Just a few years ago, anyone who wanted to build an ecommerce site had two options: eBay or a custom solution. With tools like Movable Type, you can build out a beautiful, professional looking site without a huge capital investment."
Raul took a methodical approach to building out the site: "What I do at the start of any new Movable Type project is to strip out the default template code. I use a set of simple, pared down CSS templates that I've created - they don't have the standard blog look, and I can build around them."
Raul chose to break everything down into modules so that troubleshooting would always be a simple task. "The site is actually a series of blogs," he explains. "Everything is modularized so that any issues can be targeted and fixed quickly without taking the whole site down." The artist pages are a blog; the pages showcasing each piece of art is a blog; and so on. The site also includes a traditional "blog" with news and information about 20x200 artists.
The Solution
"MT is very stable and easy to maintain," Raul remarks. "It allows tight control over the pages - we can use it to do whatever we want to." The Movable Type architecture demonstrates its abilities as a robust CMS, where inventory can be easily managed and discovered. Each original edition has three separate SKUs for inventory and tracking purposes. Visitors to the 20x200 site can browse by artist, by price, by size, or by month - a search delivers a page of thumbnails showing art that is still available for purchase.
The mission of the site is expressed in the user interface: buying art is easy and fun. The site integrates Google Checkout, which enables buyers to make a purchase with one click.
The administrator interface is customized with the 20x200 branding elements, where administrators can easily add information such as the artist statement and links to the artist website into standardized fields. The result is a simple, turnkey process that doesn't require a dedicated IT department.
"I don't need to have an HTML jockey sitting in the office every time I release a new edition," Jen says. "The economics of it work perfectly for this kind of business."
Less than one year after 20x200 launched, the site has sold over 14,000 prints, garnered praise from The New York Times, and attracted a prestigious list of art buyers from all over the world. The site perfectly complements Jen's New York gallery and her other art-related ventures, and has generated tremendous enthusiasm among new and seasoned collectors alike.
"I call 20x200 the gateway drug," she laughs. "Friends who were formerly intimidated about art now talk confidently about what they like and don't like, and have begun making bigger purchases. It's incredibly satisfying."
