HOW SCOTSY STARTED
‘Scotsy’ new Scottish Art Marketplace, incorporated company name Scotsy Ltd., is a Scottish company, based near Edinburgh. The Marketplace was established in 2022 by David J Anderson.
The main aim of the Scotsy marketplace is to offer a wide range of Scottish Art, that attracts an array of UK and worldwide buyers, art collectors and art lovers. Accordingly, this results in a great platform for Scotland-associated Artist sellers to sell their Art, without having to invest in e-commerce themselves.
The Scotsy Ltd. company came about following my retirement in 2018 when I took up an interest in photography. I wanted to create an online presence, to sell my fine art photography prints. Doing so would then add more purpose to taking photos and producing photographic work. The work also keeps me busy and occupied, which greatly benefits my mental health and well-being. (My David J Anderson photography Artist Store page is included as one of the Artist Seller Stores).
FAMILY INFLUENCE
Another influence on setting up the Scotsy, Scottish Art Marketplace was my daughter, who had trained as an Artist. She was also pursuing a successful career in fine art painting and had achieved awards with paintings selected for a number of prestigious exhibitions and collections. This recognition included a painting being appropriated, for the RSA (Royal Scottish Academy) collection.
MY TARTAN TIME EXPERIENCE
Prior to retiring, I established and ran a successful small online tartan business. It was called ‘Tartan Time’. Starting Tartan Time, entailed learning web design and e-commerce around the millennium. Notably, it was in the early days of the dot com revolution. I, therefore, gained considerable experience in creating e-commerce websites and operating an e-commerce business from early on.
Things have moved on considerably with the World Wide Web since Tartan Time was first created. A number of major players now command influence like Google and Facebook Meta. Therefore, a Scottish Art Marketplace niche fits well, in a small way, with today’s dominant marketplace players, such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Artsy, Artfinder and others.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA
In creating a website for my new Art related photography interest and having the above website experience and background, I was thinking ‘why not make a Scotland specialist marketplace for Art!’.
Furthermore, my Tartan Time experience, having included selling on marketplaces, also shaped the new Scottish Art Marketplace plan. The process resulted in, the creation of a new business ‘Scotsy Ltd’. Subsequently, domain names and business names were then secured.
The Scotsy name was developed from other established Art & Craft online marketplace names such as Etsy, Folksy and Artsy. And Banksy of course. The latter is the ‘art name type’ founder, established in the ’90s. The artist known as Banksy would appear to have swayed the name formation with the addition of the ‘sy‘ pronounceable section. Moreover, Scotsy also related directly to ‘Scotland’ and ‘Scottish’.
A FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
Although a Scotsy.com art site was the initial conception, this further developed into the creation of separate website entities for ‘Crafts’ (scotsycrafts.com and ‘Art & Craft Courses’ (scotsycourses.com) Thus, the Scottish Art Marketplace, Scotsy, is the main site and the initial site to be created.
CALL TO ALL SCOTLAND-ASSOCIATED ARTISTS
Scotsy invites all Scotland-associated artists to apply to become a seller on this Scottish Art Marketplace, Scotsy.com and you are welcome to join for a non-subscription plan or one of two paid subscription plans.
Notably, you need to be born in Scotland, live in Scotland, be educated in Scotland, produce Scotland-themed artwork, or have some other Scotland association. For more info on signing up have a look at this page: Apply to Sell on the Scotsy website.
Alternatively, please go to the Artist membership page to subscribe now! to unlock assistance to sell your art prints, paintings, art merchandise, sculpture or other artworks.
We are open to applications from good, practising professional Artist sellers, in all Art genres. Includes: Painting, Art Printing, Photography, Drawing, Sculpture, Digital Art, Collage, Installation, etc.
We look forward to receiving your initial Artist Registration.