Although sales are doing well at Barewalls.com as shoppers have become more comfortable with buying art as well as frames on the web, CEO Lorne Lieberman has designs on a new online market inside of convenience stores. "We believe we can only increase our share of the art business through kiosks," he tells InternetRetailer.com.
Barewalls recently joined a small but growing number of retailers that have signed up as participating merchants selling over the Cyphermint Inc. kiosk network, which lets consumers make online purchases on web-based kiosks with checks or cash credited to a Cyphermint Pay Cash account. Kiosks using the Cyphermint system are being rolled out in some 1,500 7-Eleven stores this year, and eventually to all 5,800 of the c-stores in North America, says a spokeswoman for 7-Eleven Inc.
Lieberman figures that there is more than $10 billion in annual sales in some 30,000 art print and poster stores. Selling through a new channel like a c-store kiosk will help grab more of that market, he says.
"It's capturing spontaneous purchases by people who walk into a store as well as those who didn't know they could buy art on the Internet or were just not comfortable buying on the Internet," he says.
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