Artists.Clothing wants to bridge the gap between designers and merchants

The internet is a wonderful thing. Besides giving us the ability to watch Gangnam Style over a billion times, it allows creative ideas to become businesses, and supplies to meet demands with fewer barriers. Take Artists.Clothing for example. This startup has created a DIY platform that enables the supply of creatives to meet the demand of sellers.

Besides having a bad-ass domain name, Artists.Clothing is a Cape Town, South Africa-based marketplace for designing and selling T-Shirts. Freelancers can upload their graphics to the site, and merchants can then buy and download unique designs to sell shirts.

“Freelance designers struggle to get their foot in door with regards to selling designs directly into retail channels,” explains co-founder Paul Muller. “Business owners often struggle to cut down costing and do not require a full time design team on hand.”

Started and self-funded by Muller and Warren Brink, Artists.Clothing will be launching next week, with the hope of bridging the gap between designers and the market.

Having first-hand experience of the industry, Brink is a digital and graphic designer based in Cape Town, while Muller has a background in building startups. A self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, Brink was involved in the early stages of photo curation site Thunda.com and the building of interactive contact page tool Formsly.

The team notes that they’ve spotted a gap in the DIY printing market worth US$2.6-billion in the US alone. IBIS World refers to the prominence of the internet and the services on it as the main driver of this growth:

The proliferation of the internet has lowered barriers to entry into the industry, but it has also led to greater competition as more potential customers look to internet publishing and DIY screen printing.

Artists.Clothing notes that the simplicity of the demand and supply concept can eliminate major in-house costs for any small- to medium-sized retailer and help fast-track ideas to market in an extremely competitive industry.

“We hope to help bridge the gap between designers and the textile industry, by letting designers showcase their great designs direct. As some designs take more time than others, we allow designers to set their own pricing,” says Muller.

All designs have their price set by the designer. From there, Artists.Clothing takes a 20% fee upon sale, which the team notes is similar to what other platforms, like the popular freelance marketplace Fiverr, offer .

Explaining how the buying process works, Muller notes that there are two versions of designs up for purchase. The first version is a high quality PNG which doesn’t include design files and cannot be edited. The second and more expensive version includes all the design files needed (PSDs and AI files). The buyer will also own all the rights to that design.

In regards to trademark and product IP, the team notes that all designs are reviewed by them personally before going live on the site. Furthermore, the approved designs can also be reported by using the startup’s DMCA reporting process.

“We help designers make money, and businesses save costs. Perhaps not saving the world, but we’ll put change in your pocket,” explains Brink. Designs can be printed anywhere in the world, meaning that the company has a global reach.

Not only can Print-On-Demand sites like Zazzle and CafePress, stalls or chains find designs for print, Artists.Clothing allows groups, clubs, teams and individuals the ability to buy a design and merely take it down to the local print shop to have it printed. It’s open to everyone.