What is Minted?

Minted is a design marketplace. We source creative content from a global community of independent artists, then sell the best content in the form of Art, Home Decor, and Stationery, directly to consumers. An early pioneer of crowdsourcing, Minted has held art and design challenges monthly since April 2008. Challenges are open for both submission and voting, the “crowd” curates Minted's product selection by rating products, and Minted utilizes analytics to evaluate votes. Minted produces and sells winning designs, paying the artist a commission on every sale. Artists who win competitions automatically earn a Minted Artist Store, where they can self-launch additional products, utilizing Minted's manufacturing, fulfillment, and customer service capabilities to run their businesses.

Minted was founded by Mariam Naficy, a successful entrepreneur who was intrigued by the idea that there was hidden creative talent around the world whose work was not accessible to consumers and that the Internet could help surface. Read more about Mariam and Minted’s history here. 

Minted grows year after year, and as the company evolves, so do our benefits for artists.

How Minted benefits independent artists

• Minted is an industry leader in creating economic opportunity for artists. We pay artist commission rates that are at or near the top of each industry that we compete in for all of our product categories. We pay 6–10% commission for challenge-winning and self-launch products, which allows us to price our products competitively within each industry.

• Minted makes it easy for artists to participate, so you can focus on your creative work. We handle manufacturing, packaging, quality control, and shipping so you can focus on your creative work. Artisans in competitive marketplaces often spend more than 50% of their time on administrative work; whereas, the vast majority of Minted artists spend 20% of their time or less on administrative work. Artists submit design files to Minted, and we handle the rest. We provide outstanding service to customers that helps “close the deal” on artists’ behalf, so that you don’t have to do sales work.

• Through Minted Wholesale and other partnership programs, we develop retailer distribution with select retail partners who agree to support our artist-friendly terms. Our partners, such as West Elm, Pottery Barn Kids, PBteen, and Domino provide millions of dollars worth of free advertising for our artists and products. We reject proposals from retailers who are not willing to give artists sufficient compensation or exposure.

Minted cultivates and fosters a diverse and supportive community of artists that helps you learn, grow professionally, and build relationships with like-minded creatives. We facilitate valuable peer critiques from fellow artists, to help you learn and grow and to help artists create even better work.