Navigating Startup Challenges and Lessons from Early-stage Support and Hardships

Martin Hosking co-founded art & design website Redbubble to put visual artists’ creative output directly in touch with consumers. But for its first 3 years Redbubble went virtually nowhere, with no traction and few sales. But little by little, with the support & belief of the artists themselves, and a few funders, Redbubble began to make headway. While initial scale up was so difficult, Hosking and his team have built Redbubble into a global design market juggernaut. Starting and still based in Melbourne, it has 300 employees, and offices now stretching to San Francisco, New York and Berlin.  A staggering almost 7 million customers bought on the website in just the last year alone.

When COVID hit, Hosking was as shocked as anyone else, worried about his staff, artists, customers and yes, his global business. But Redbubble has boomed in corona times. Since COVID, Redbubble has seen 100% year-on-year growth. And Martin Hosking believes it won’t stop there.

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