Back story of Caricature King

#backstory

This week, 17 years ago, I launched a simple little site selling caricature art services. I had one internationally awarded artist doing the work.

The original aim was to make use of the newly emerged phone camera technology to allow people to send a photo, pay using a telco’s payment service (cannot remember it’s name now). However the high percentage demanded of the telco meant it was not viable.

But the simple little website took off and artist numbers grew and orders came from almost every corner of the globe including the Green Zone during the Iraq war, tiny specks of islands in the middle of vast oceans.

Time and distance meant nothing. Customers were only the depth of the screen away and happened to sleep at different times to me. Outstanding customer service and meeting some pretty tight deadlines means waking at 3am to check the arrival of art from an artist is a distant place and get the final art away to the customer is just what is done.

Artist numbers in the team vary but are current 7, spanning 5 continents, 4 time zones, 4 native languages. Plus me, another ‘continent’ and another time zone.

So this week marks the 17th year people around the world have been using caricatureking.com to make gift giving fun, memorable and easy, for:

engagements, weddings, awards, retirement, leaving, thank you, pregnancy announcements, remembering the bereaved, mother’s and father’s days, birthdays from 1-100, humans, pets, cars and even houses.

The ‘family’ of customers includes some, who thanks to their position, imagination, trust and loyalty who have ordered close to 40 artworks, each. (Thanks Angelica, Chet, Jan).
https://www.facebook.com/CaricatureKing
https:www.caricatureking.com

Here is me and iterations by some of the artists over the years:

If you have any gift giving need, art for business use, want a memento – just remember .. we start with ideas, not templates. Every artwork is 100% unique.