Category: Online Presence

Evening Scene of MAPSandART's booth at Blue Hills at Round Top, TX

Antique Maps St Augustine, FL

Posted on by Katia Baizan

Some people may wonder where our shop is in St Augustine, FL. When participating in an antique show we are often asked where our shop or gallery is in St Augustine. I like to answer: “You are in our gallery right now”, even though we may be in Round Top, TX.  We also get the same question from our online inquiries.

The fact is that our business, MAPSandART, participates in antique shows and has always avoided the constraints of a shop or gallery. In this way we can offer a greater variety of vintage maps, works of art and antique prints to a wider audience. We have maps of Indiana when in Indiana, maps of Texas when in Texas and maps from all over the world when exhibiting at the resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek, Sun Valley or Jackson Hole.

Now you can visit our “stores” online from wherever you are and find an overwhelming and ever changing selection.  You can find us on 1st Dibs.com, OneKingsLane.com and Chairish.com.

So the question is, if you cannot find us in St Augustine where can we find you?
Easy! Just go to our Show Schedule to find dates and locations of our future venues, or visit our web site at www.MAPSandART.com

New Videos on How we Package your Artwork and How to Frame

Posted on by Katia Baizan

The new website is almost ready!

Posted on by Katia Baizan

Natasha and I have spent a very long time working on getting a new website going.  It has been quite a journey, but we are finally getting close to having a functioning website where you can actually buy an antique print, map or artwork.

It all started with the persistent requests of our loyal customers asking us to create a website with some items they could buy in between our shows.  A great idea, but how do you make a website?  Natasha had created a few webpages and a very nice site where one could follow our show schedule and see our happy faces.

Then we bought a book that promised to reduce our work load.  It was a book about work efficiency called “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss in which it was suggested we outsource the website development.  So we did and we were certainly going to spend more than 4 hours a week on this project…

We interviewed a great deal of web developers, some in Eastern Europe, a few in the Philippines and many in South Asia, mainly India and Pakistan.  Ever so frugal we opted for a lad in Pakistan who promised us the world, his name was Shazad.  Two months later Shazad gave us a website with an ugly presentation and a website full of bugs.  We fired him.

It seemed that a bigger company was required so we tried our luck with another kind gentleman by the name of Puneet.  With a twelve hour time difference we often found Puneet laying on his bed video conferencing with us about the in and outs of our future website.  It was going to be a gem.

However, with every day, week and then months that passed we were very slowly coming to have a functioning website although full of bugs and a presentation that was prehistoric by web standards.  Having spent a fairly large sum of money we were not ready to let Puneet and Co in India go and fire him.  There was a small detail that did bring us to do just that: fire him.  He could not program us a shopping cart!

We had no way to sell our products, all 2500 of them, which we took pictures of, uploaded and wrote descriptions of.  We were back to square one and decided to go “local”.  We hired Jim, another gentleman, this time from South Carolina.  He promised us a quick fix, but disappeared with the deposit.

Never abandoning a project.  Natasha and I went against all the recommendations of our famous 4-hour Workweek book and contracted a very local company:  right here in Santa Fe.  Within 2 months from the signature of the contract we have a new website and it works.  Not a single bug.  The cost was a third of our amigo in India, Puneet, and it looks professional.

Yes, it has been a long journey.  A two year journey… We threw away the book and are BUYING LOCAL.