But George recently switched gears. After a one-year hiatus, he is ready to take over the responsibility of building Art.com, the largest e-commerce site for prints, posters, photographs and custom frames, as the dot-com’s new CFO. It is an interesting career move at a time when dot-coms, with the exception of Amazon.com, have largely faded into oblivion.
“People went out and promised a lot of things that they couldn’t deliver on,” George says about the dot-com debacle. “Right now only the strong are surviving, and art.com is a strong one, so I am very bullish.”
George does not believe that there is a fundamental difference in the way public companies, especially in the tech sector, and dot-coms conduct business.
“The challenges of working with hyper-growth companies are similar,” he says. “If you have a culture that embraces growth, then the rest is just a matter of scaling.”
Exactly how to scale Art.com is something that George has to determine. The arts space is tremendously fragmented, and shared by traditional brick and mortar retailers like Michaels and thousands of small mom and pop framing stores. Art.com is going after a roughly $4 billion market, but getting even a small chunk will be extremely difficult.
George has set no specific target, as his current task is to evaluate the company’s situation both in terms of operations and finances. The company is not cash flow positive yet, but sales rose 500 percent in 2001. George declines to specify the exact revenue details; nor did he say when the company would raise venture capital, revealing only that the cash from operations has allowed Art.com to be self funded since its inception in 1995.
The company’s aim is to become the dominant supplier in the arts space, possibly by partnering and allying with the numerous small companies that are involved in making frames and selling posters so that the both can benefit from economies of scale. Apart from making strategic alliances, Art.com is also thinking of entering new areas to expand its business.
“What we want to get into in the future is the interior design space, the hotel and industry space, the corporate gift program and a whole lot of other areas,” he says. “But before we stretch to those areas, we will first solidify our position in our market while simultaneously evaluating our options.”
Having posted its first-ever profit in the fourth quarter of 2001, Amazon has demonstrated that dot-coms can be viable businesses. It will be a while before Art.com with 190 employees can match the e-commerce behemoth.
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