Following a scary start, the pandemic has helped this Wichita company

His company may be called OverstockArt.com, but David Sasson didn’t start with a surplus of art when he began the business in 2002. He now has that and more, though, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sasson was working with some e-commerce companies in the early 2000s, and his brother worked for a business that dealt in oil painting reproductions.

“So we bought just a few pieces to see what it is because we didn’t know,” Sasson said. “We were pretty amazed. It was just so beautiful.”

The price was right, too.

“It was so inexpensive, I thought it could have a real market,” Sasson said. “Our vision was to sell this old world product . . . with what was a new distribution system.”

He started small from his house.

“Real small.”

Initially, he sold only art, and that’s still the company’s main product. Over the years, Sasson also added framing, artistic tiles, hand-painted ornaments and reproductions of contemporary art.

“Everything revolves around reproduction of famous art.”

He said he “would never have survived” if the business remained in his house.

The first space outside of his home was about 1,500 square feet on North Rock Road behind Havertys.

“It was pretty small, frankly, but for us back then it seemed gigantic.”

He was there two years, and then a couple of years later, he jumped to about 3,500 square feet in another Rock Road space.

Next, Sasson bought his own building with 8,000 square feet at 1401 S. Mosley.

“We were there for a long time.”

Then the pandemic hit.

“We definitely had some kind of scary weeks . . . because I think nobody was buying anything,” Sasson said.

“But then things kind of started blowing up.”

He said he believes sales jumped “because everybody was at home buying things for the house, so we benefited from it.”

Sasson said he saw more potential growth, but “the facility started limiting us.”

So after 11 years at that address, Sasson signed a lease for 17,000 square feet at a new facility at 1930 S. Hoover Road.

“We really wanted to own . . . but just could not find a facility that was the right size, that was a good fit.”

He said operations are more important than owning a building.

Sasson said he signed a five-year lease.

“We feel comfortable it will be good enough for five years,” he said. “We have a lot of elbow room.”

Sasson said the company can be more efficient in the new space, and the extra room allows him to receive larger shipments and save some on purchasing while also introducing new products. For instance, he’s adding hand-crafted mother-of-pearl mirrors.

It’s something Sasson could not have predicted in March of last year, but as he said now, “2020 was a really good year for us.”