The ArtKlick Blog

Hi, I’m James Stewart, this is the story of what lead me to print organic T Shirts of New Zealand art and tattoo the designs on my legs. If you want to skip the story and just buy a tee just click here. (Don’t worry - I won’t be offended - I won’t even know!)

Art Klick was created to be the solution to helping emerging artists increase their profile and sell their artwork to the world.

I thought it was going to be easy. “Turns out it wasn’t“.

After three attempts, about $60,000 and two years of unpaid work I got it to it’s present state (which is OK but could be at least three times better).

After working hard in the online industry all 2008, visiting 1000’s of websites and absorbing information like a sponge I finally know how the site should look and operate for the new design.

But - I’m all out of $$$ - What is an aspiring entrepreneur to do? I KNOW! Why not sell advertising on my leg in the form of tattooed art work from Art Klick, getting companies to buy a piece of my leg? Cool idea - do a press release - see if we get some interest…..

The media seemed to like it, getting global media coverage and some pretty cool articles - the only problem was I didn’t have a site ready for it and as a result potential advertisers were reluctant to fork out $500 for 1cm of leg. Fair enough - lesson learned.

So what next? I’m stuck in Christchurch with a reasonably stale IT scene, working from home with no income… Right - one month road trip around the North Island to meet all the tertiary institutes.

First stop - Wellington - I had been reading the Silicon Welly blog and emailed Tim Norton to see if I could meet him - he offered me a desk in the new Silicon Welly office for the week and I couldn’t believe the cool vibe that was going on there. He spent a good couple of hours hanging out with me and giving me some awesome advice. On Friday I met Patrick Macfie who runs StartUp and he invited me to hang out in The Icehouse in Auckland which was great and really inspired me to get things moving.

One month later I get back to Christchurch - What now? Move to Wellington - I want to hang out in Silicon Welly!

After a couple of weeks of looking for a job to pay the bills to getting Art Klick moving Tim asked me if I would like to come on board as the Community Manager for Made From New Zealand - the dream job! Answering emails, running the social media and now I am Production Manager of the Film Crew - doing really cool 90 second video profiles on companies.

Awesome - so now I have a job to pay the bills. What next?
My dream has always been to run a clothing company (as it is for 1000’s of New Zealanders). I have talked to so many people who have cool ideas for tee shirts but to go to the effort of getting them printed, and more importantly - selling them is beyond most people - fair enough, there has to be a solution to that.

There is a great website in America called Threadless that has solved this gap in the market. The concept is that designers, artists and illustrators submit designs for T Shirts and the community votes on them. The top ones get printed.

Threadless has a passionate community of designers and tee shirt buyers, and the designs are chosen by the customers - so you know they are probably going to sell.

New Zealand has nothing similar - most companies have designers who create designs, often logo oriented and we buy them and “label bash” up a storm for them - that’s pretty lame.

Why not: Print awesome emerging New Zealand artists artwork onto tee shirts and pay the artist a commission on each tee sold?

One of my favourite artists on Art Klick Kim Loasby painted an amazing 50’s Pin-up style fairy called “The Orange Bangle” which I have chosen for the first T Shirt.

Pain in the name of art? To prove that I back the tee’s we print I am going to tattoo each of the designs on my legs (an adaption from the Million Dollar Leg Project - see below). I don’t know of any clothing company owners that are that passionate about their designs that the would tattoo them onto their legs. That’s got to be a good point of difference.

Getting environmentally concious: Did you know conventionally grown cotton accounts for more than 25% of worldwide insecticide use and 10% of the pesticides? Not only that but deveoping countries are being heavily exploited by their governments - forcing their people (and primarily children) to work in the pesticide ridden cotton fields. Thousands of people die from Tuberculous and Cancer each year due to exposure to the pesticides. After watching this video I couldn’t buy non-organic clothing and for an extra $5/T Shirt you can get organic Tee’s. The only drawback is the lack of colour selection, but that is something I am happy to deal with to play my small part in being a better human being.

The cost? By the time most clothing goes through the distributors and stores it gets pretty over priced - not to mention organic clothing - sitting up at $75 a Tee which is pretty rediculous.

The first Art Klick T Shirt is only $35 - I won’t make much on it but at least there will be 400 people wearing an Art Klick Tee, representing New Zealand art and spreading the word

If you like the design and keen to see more just click here to visit the online store.

Also: Anyone who buys a tee will also go in the draw to win 1/20 of the next design

I would love to hear what you think about the design and what you would like to see in the future - please leave a comment. The new Art Klick will incorporate a design submission and voting element so you can submit and vote on designs for future prints and subsequently, tattoos

PS Stay tuned - I should have a cool video of the tattoo up by Monday 12 Jan 2009.

(If you like the tattoo and you are in Wellington go to ALC at 162 Cuba St and ask for Jimmy their new tattooist - tell him I sent you and he will hook you up.)