overstockArt.com was founded in 2002 by Stacy and David Sasson. It was a modest beginning in which the newly married Sasson's financed the start-up with a $5,000 loan from a local Wichita Bank. As the sole employees operating out of the couple's suburban Kansas home, their first art collection offered only a handful of unframed oil paintings to choose from.
The company soon prospered relocating to a converted warehouse on the busy Rock Road Street, just outside of the luxury shopping center, Bradley Fair. By 2005 the company had a handful of employees and stood on the verge of amazingly rapid growth.
This success was the result of the Sasson's long hours of hard work and intimate knowledge of the oil painting business. It was also a matter of fortuitous timing.
overstockArt.com was among the earliest online galleries of hand painted oil paintings and the first to focus on art reproductions of great masters such as Van Gogh, Monet and Klimt. The company's early years coincided with an explosion in the popularity of Impressionist art and the development of exciting new relationships with overseas art studios. As the Modern Art movement was conquering the auction floors getting record breaking numbers in Sotheby's and Christie's, overstockArt.com was slowly becoming a destination for art lovers who could not afford the high price tags of galleries, but wanted to enjoy hand painted art of great masters in their homes.
The company has led the way in creating a decorator-friendly website that makes the process of finding and ordering the right art for your space a matter of a few clicks. As the Internet becomes increasingly more appealing and accessible to interior decorators and home owners, overstockArt.com is finding new and exciting ways to engage customers via the web.
With the advent of Web 2.0, overstockArt.com is devoting substantial resources to providing customers with custom-tailored shopping experiences that reflect their specific decorating needs.
Today, overstockArt.com is a successful art gallery. The company has over 20 employees in 3 continents; headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, the company offers the most comprehensive selection of oil paintings and frames to choose from in the online oil painting industry — currently over 90,000 decorating combinations — including works by Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Klimt, Degas, Munch, and much more.
Despite the growth and many changes the company has seen over the years, one thing has remained unchanged at overstockArt.com. We are still a company composed largely of artists and art lovers. Many of us enjoy art and make art a part of our lives. We live and breathe the oil paintings that surround us and feel we have a special connection with our customers. Put simply, we are art lovers serving art lovers.