Minted is an online marketplace of premium design goods created by independent artists and designers. The company sources art and design from a community of more than 16,000 independent artists from around the world. Minted offers artists two business models for selling their goods - one in which Minted handles manufacturing and fulfillment and a second where the artists handles manufacturing and fulfillment.
History
Minted was founded in April 2007 by
Mariam Naficy to sell high-end lines of stationery and adopted a crowdsourcing model when it realized that designs by independent artists were outselling those of established brands. Minted has raised more than $300 million from investors, including T. Rowe Price, Permira,
Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, ...
,
Technology Crossover Ventures
TCMI, Inc. better known by the name TCV (Technology Crossover Ventures) is an American investment firm based in Menlo Park, California. The firm mainly invests in public and private growth-stage companies in the technology industry.
Background ...
,
Benchmark Capital
Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.
History
The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company. In 2011, it invested $12 mil ...
, Ridge Ventures. Angel investors include former
Yahoo
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
CEO
Marissa Mayer
Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American businesswoman and investor. She is an information technology executive, and co-founder of Sunshine Contacts. Mayer formerly served as the president and chief executive officer of Yahoo!, a p ...
, Yelp CEO
Jeremy Stoppelman
Jeremy Stoppelman (born November 10, 1977) is an American business executive. He is the CEO of Yelp, which he co-founded in 2004. Stoppelman obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champai ...
, and
Eventbrite
Eventbrite is an American event management and ticketing website. The service allows users to browse, create, and promote local events. The service charges a fee to event organizers in exchange for online ticketing services, unless the event is f ...
founders Kevin and Julia Hartz.
In 2012, Minted expanded outside of its core stationery market by launching wall art prints and party decor.
In 2015, Minted launched home decor.
In 2017, Minted launched wholesale, with national retail partners including Target, West Elm, and Pottery Barn Kids.
In 2021, Minted introduced Direct From Artist, where artists manufacture and fulfill their own products.
Minted partnered with Every Mother Counts, a
maternal health
Maternal health is the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. In most cases, maternal health encompasses the health care dimensions of family planning, preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care in order to ens ...
nonprofit organization led by
Christy Turlington Burns, in which a part of the proceeds from selling customized children's art would go to benefit the organization.
Crowdsourcing
Minted holds regular design challenges that are open to artists and designers. Thousands of independent artists participate in the challenges. More than 2,000 designs are submitted by artists to Minted every week.
Visitors to the website vote on the design submissions to help choose the winning designs that will be sold on the website. Minted's predictive voting algorithms use consumer votes to predict which of the thousands of submissions from the contest will be future bestsellers.
Winning artists are paid a cash prize and earn an ongoing
commission on sales of their designs.
Awards
In October 2014, Minted was named #5 on
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
's 10
Bay Area startups that are most in demand by local techies.
References
{{reflist
External links
* http://www.minted.com
Online retailers of the United States
Companies based in San Francisco