Company History

Founding and Early Years

In 1967, Bernd Carl, a graduate textile engineer, founded ARTland GmbH. Since 2006, his daughter Ricarda Jacobi, a textile designer with a B.A., has been a co-owner.

Initially, the basement and garage of Bernd Carl's parents' house served as the perfect space for development. The furniture store of his father, with its WK furniture, had already sparked his interest during his teenage years. The first sales successes came quickly. By the second year, a significant turnover was recorded, prompting a move to new premises as the next step. This was followed by exhibitions at trade fairs in Frankfurt and Cologne.

In the 1980s, framed pictures with passe-partout were mainly sold to the furniture trade and galleries.

In the 1990s, customers from the mail-order industry were added (such as Quelle, Neckermann, Heine, Otto, Baur, Weltbild, Klingel, Bon Prix, Bader, etc.). During this time, art prints mounted on fiberboard were among the most popular products. In 1991, another important step was taken in Aachen-Richterich. A new building enabled the continuation of production. At the same time, the ARTHaus gallery (retail) was opened, where wall decorations were sold to end customers for the first time.

Digitization and Establishment of the Art Publishing House

In 2014, ARTland GmbH moved again. Office, production, and shipping are now located at the current address Rotter Bruch 17 in Aachen. The old location in Richterich was abandoned as the conditions, such as multiple buildings and two floors, were no longer practical. Now, production is on one floor in one building, optimally set up for order production.

The ARTHaus gallery was closed with the move in 2015. Ricarda Jacobi showed interest in the company as a student and took every opportunity to help on Saturdays and during holidays, also participating in trade fair appearances with great enthusiasm. She took over the management of the graphics department during her studies. In 2006, Ricarda Jacobi became a 50% shareholder of ARTland GmbH.

The acquisition of professional digital printing machines marked the starting point for the ARTland Edition. The company also collaborates with artists, graphic designers, and photographers, continuously expanding the range. This resulted in a collection of motifs exclusively available to ARTland. Through digital printing, canvas prints, glass prints, wood prints, and more became bestsellers. The product range was expanded to include wall coat racks, key boards, shower and kitchen backsplashes.

The online presence was launched in 2003 with our company homepage ARTland GmbH www.artlandgmbh.de. Following this, our own online shop (ARTGalerie.de) was launched in 2009, offering over 30,000 motifs in different sizes and product types.

Transformation of Business Models

As can be seen from the company's history, our customers have changed frequently over 50 years of company history. This often shifted our focus.

In the 1990s, we lost many customers in the furniture trade to our then competitors. As a result, we focused on acquiring mail-order customers. Within 2 years, we supplied all mail-order companies in Germany with our products.

By establishing our own graphics department, hiring artists, and the ARTland Edition, we were able to develop special products for the mail-order companies. We directed our new product development and production towards supplying the mail-order companies. Initially, these were large quantities of individual products delivered directly to the mail-order warehouses.

Direct Shipping and Online Trade

The quantity of ordered items per motif decreased while the number of motifs increased. Many mail-order companies introduced direct shipping to their catalog customers. Therefore, we switched our production to single-item manufacturing. Today, we exclusively produce single orders upon receipt. The warehouse is limited to returns, semi-finished products, raw materials, or original artist pictures from the ARTland Edition. In 2009, we launched our online shop www.artgalerie.de. Given the expertise we gained with direct shipping, this step was obvious. We were familiar with categorizing items, order processing, on-demand production, and single-item shipping directly to the customer.

Collection Size

Since the start of single-item production, we have expanded our collection to approximately 45,000 items in different sizes and variants, resulting in about 1,200,000 individual items. This was made possible through licensing agreements with art publishers, artists, and photographers. We also expanded our own ARTland Edition with new motifs and the purchase of stock photo archive motifs.