King and McGaw

King and McGaw

Founded	1982
Headquarters	Newhaven, Sussex
Key people	Gyr King (Founder) Marc Lickfett (CEO)
Products	Art Prints, Frames
Revenue	£6.5 million (2013)^[1]
Website	www.kingandmcgaw.com

King & McGaw is an art publisher and online retailer, founded in 1982. It supplies high quality art prints and products to museums, galleries and retail stores as well as art prints direct to consumers through its online retail site. Production is based in their 50,000 sq ft factory in Newhaven, Sussex.

The company currently holds licenses for many contemporary artists (e.g. Hormazd Narielwalla, Mario Testino, Simon C. Page), artists’ estates (Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring), museums (Imperial War Museum, Sir John Soane's Museum, National Railway Museum), galleries (Courtauld Gallery, The Lowry), institutions (The National Archives, Royal Horticultural Society) as well as established brands (Penguin, Vogue, Ladybird Books).

History

The company was set up in Sussex in 1982 by three brothers Gyr, Quentin and Perry King under the name King Publishing, as a silkscreen printing company. The company designed upmarket posters for art galleries and small boutique shops. The brothers negotiated the rights to works of art by new artists and photographers, as well as established artists such as Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkin and Terry Frost.^[2]

The company rebranded to King Posters by the late 1980s with the business developing into other areas including framing and product development for museum shops such as the Tate, National Gallery, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.^[3]

In 1989 King Posters was making annual sales of £2 million but later that year a fire destroyed the warehouse and resulted in £3 million worth of stock being lost.^[4] The company’s bank loaned an additional £5000 so the stock could be reprinted and an American supplier, Bruce McGaw, offered to replace some of the missing stock for free, which, in turn, triggered a business deal. As a result the company was renamed in 1990 to King & McGaw.

During the 1990s, King & McGaw’s focused on turning to supplying department stores with pictures and posters as well as museums and galleries resulting in partnerships with John Lewis, Next and Debenhams. As a result, sales had reached $35 million a year by the end of 2000. Further developments occurred in 2007 when the company switched to digital printing, allowing them to print-to-order.

By 2011 the company to decide to expand into retail by acquiring the online retailer Easyart.com. Easyart was set up by Simon Matthews in 1999 during the dot-com boom and in 2002 faced legal allegations from Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, over its use of the easy name, accusing Easyart of “passing off” on easyGroup’s good name.^[5] Easyart won the court battle when easyGroup discontinued its legal action, saying it had bigger targets to go after.^[6] In March 2015 the company discontinued the Easyart brand and merged the site within the King and McGaw brand.^[7]

Partnerships

King & McGaw have worked in partnership with several charitable organisations over the last couple of years. In 2013 they partnered with Art Everywhere a charitable project putting on the world's largest art exhibition, filling 22,000 billboards across the UK with art prints. The profits went to the Art Fund, which helps museums and galleries buy and show great works of art to the public.^[8]

In 2014 King & McGaw distributed artwork for Do the Green Thing , a charity which encourages people to be greener in their everyday lives. All proceeds from the artwork were donated back to the charity. Later in the year, the company offered exclusive prints from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to members of the public giving 25% of sales to the Alzheimer’s Society.^[9]

References

External links

Official King & McGaw website