Jen Bekman’s 20 x 200 has sold 140,000 prints so far in its brief two-year life. Built with $2.9m in venture capital funding, the profitable firm has grown to 20 employees. Bekman tells Ruth Graham that she built the company not to be cool with the art world but to change the way people buy art. Her new deal with furniture retailer, West Elm, shows that she’s making progress:
What made you take the leap from gallery owner to online entrepreneur? People come through the door with baggage; they were defensive. There’s a lot of opacity traditionally in the art world. … We live in a time of an empowered consumerism. But the art world says, you’re paying $2,000 because I say so, and you have to wait 30 days, and all that. Buying art is a big risk. It doesn’t come with a lot of the assurances that being a regular consumer usually comes with. But I knew if people lived with art, if they had the experience, they’d get hooked. That’s the birth of 20 x 200. The simplest shorthand is that it’s the gateway drug of the art world. We give them the good stuff for close to free, and create an appetite for experience. … I want people to talk about art in the same way they talk about books or movies or shoes
Executive Suite: Jen Bekman On Becoming “The Gateway Drug Of The Art World” (TheGrindstone.com)
