Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mark Malott. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mark , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In the early 2000’s I had been getting tattooed by several different tattoo artists and was amazed by their ability to create great impactful art and then apply it to skin.
One day I was shopping at Target and saw they were selling T-Shirts with a tattoo style dragon on them. The artwork was obviously done by someone that did not know how to draw a tattoo style dragon. I thought how much better one of my tattoo artists could have done.
I thought if I was able to get my tattoo artist to create art for clothing I would put a hang tag on each garment so the customer would know who created the art and how they could get in contact with them if they wanted a tattoo.
So I told my tattoo artists about my idea and they seemed excited and willing to make art for me. After a few months I had 11 artists at 3 different tattoo shops asking me what type of art I wanted and when I was going to get started.
I had a bachelor degree in business and had been working in middle management for 14 years.
I was paid well, but was tired of the meetings, conference calls, reports, forms, policies, procedures, etc. and wanted to do something I was passionate about.
Even though I had 2 small children and a mortgage, I decided to follow my passion and in May of 2005 I started Black Market Art Company. Exactly 20 years ago.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was raised in Los Angeles and went to a small private liberal arts college in Oregon. I graduated with my bachelors in business in 1992
After I graduated I moved back to Los Angeles and over the next 14 years I worked in middle management for several large corporations.
But these were always just jobs and I was not passionate about the work.
In 2005 I decided to follow my passion and started Black Market Art Company.
For the first year we made apparel with artwork from artists I knew. But as we grew I had more and more artists contacted us wanting to get involved and create artwork.
After 2 years we had over 40 artists and had amassed a large catalog of artwork.
It was at this point we had customers asking for art prints of our artists artwork too. So in 2007 I found a local art printer to make canvas giclee’s for us.
Over the next 4 years our canvas art business grew and became a large part of our business. So in 2011 we decided to bring all art manufacturing in house and we purchased the printers and all the equipment to make canvas giclee’s and to offered framing too.
We still offer apparel but today art prints are over 80% of our business.
All our art prints are made in house here at Black Market Art in Southern California. Everything we make is gallery quality with archival inks, museum quality canvas and papers, solid wood stretcher bar and frame moulding.
Today we work with over 300 artists from all over the world and have a catalog of over 4000 pieces of artwork.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

When I stateded the Company in 2005 most of our business was wholesale to brick and mortar retail stores and art galleries. But over the years most shopping has gone online and many of our wholesale stores closed down.
Then during Covid some of our best wholesale accounts closed.
Since Covid we have had to really focus on our direct to consumer sales channels.
Amazon has been our best volume direct to consumer sales channel. But Amazon is definitely the most difficult to deal with. Their software is old and has a lot of issues and support is terrible and can never get anyone to help resolve these problems. Also their return policy allows anyone to return anything for any reason and many customers understand this and take advantage of it, which has cost us a lot in profit margin.
Etsy’s software is great and they are very easy to work with. But they do not produce the volume that Amazon does. We also use Ebay and Faire Wholesale Market Place.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We send weekly email campaigns to our wholesale and retail website customers.
We feel weekly emails are enough contact without being overbearing.
With these weekly emails we showcase new products and feature sales or hot selling items.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://blackmarketartco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmarketart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMarketArtFanPage/