Type Private Area served Worldwide Founded 2002 Number of employees 3 | Industry Art Gallery Motto Adventures in Asian Art Number of locations 2 | |
Key people Sandy Cheng (Founder), Gary Westergren (Founder), Hua Ling (Operations) Products Asian art, Chinese calligraphy, and Japanese calligraphy Website www.OrientalOutpost.com | ||
Oriental Outpost is a privately held discount Asian artwork and calligraphy gallery, headquartered in Beijing, China with an office/studio in Spring Valley, California. The majority of business is online sales of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy custom made to customers' specifications. The company employs 3 people at a wall-scroll-building workshop in China. Company stakeholders run all U.S.-based shipping, web development, and manufacturing.
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History
Gary Westergren and Sandy Cheng, founded the business in 2002. At the time, Gary was teaching English in Beijing, and Sandy had connections in the art community from previous work in Chinese art galleries and an uncle in Xi'an, China who is a famous artist. For the first year, the business was run from Gary's apartment in Beijing with sales exclusively on eBay. In 2003, a photo studio and workshop was opened, and the business went completely to an eCommerce direct sales format.
Artists
Oriental Outpost sources directly from over 40 independent artists from Japan and China. These artists include, Bishou Imai, Bo Yang, Cao Quan-Tang, Chen Shi, Chen Zheng-Long, Huang Xin-An, Kougetsu, Le Ran, Li Dan-Qing, Li Ran, Li Shui-Yi, Li Tian-De, Li Yu-Jun, Liang Dao, Lin Yuan, Liu Da-Lu, Liu Qian, Mo Nong, Wang Chang-Ming, Ou-Yang Guo-De, Pan Xiao-Ling, Qin Xia, Qing Jing-Bin, Qing Ping, Qing Yu-Dian, Ren Bao-Zhong, Tang Zhong-Lin, Uesugi Tomotsugu, Wang Jian-Qiu, Wang ShuoSheng, Wang Wen-Hua, Wang Xia, Xiao Meng, Xing An-Ping, Xu Xue-Qin, Yang De-Wen, Ye Ying-Xing, Yin Yi-Qiu, Yu Gong-Quan (Mao Zhi), Zhang Jun-Guo, Zhang Qing-Yi, Zhang Xiuzhen (San Yang), Zhang Xuan-Fei, and Zi Shi.
Website
Oriental Outpost's website went live in 2002. It had a modest selection of artwork, a brief "About Us" page, and some stories about China and Gary's travels to find artwork. In all, the original website had 120 pages. The current Oriental Outpost website has over 245,000 indexed pages. It sells over 1,000 different in-stock artwork pieces online, and boasts custom Asian calligraphy options with over 6 billion possible combinations of phrase, silk colors, paper color, calligrapher, size, format, etc.
Philanthropy
Oriental Outpost donates some profit each year to charities such as Challenged Athletes Foundation, Special Olympics, and disaster relief donations for various calamities in Asia.