The company was set up in Sussex in 1982 by three brothers Gyr, Quentin and Perry King under the name King Publishing, as a silkscreen printing company. The company designed upmarket posters for art galleries and small boutique shops. The brothers negotiated the rights to works of art by new artists and photographers, as well as established artists such as
Bridget Riley,
Howard Hodgkin and
Terry Frost. The company rebranded to King Posters by the late 1980s with the business developing into other areas including framing and product development for museum shops such as the
Tate,
National Gallery,
Louvre,
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
Museum of Modern Art. The company's bank loaned an additional £5,000 so the stock could be reprinted and an American supplier, Bruce McGaw, offered to replace some of the missing stock for free, which, in turn, triggered a business deal. As a result, the company was renamed in 1990 to King & McGaw. During the 1990s, King & McGaw's focused on turning to supplying department stores with pictures and posters as well as museums and galleries resulting in partnerships with
John Lewis,
Next and
Debenhams. As a result, sales had reached $35 million a year by the end of 2000. Further developments occurred in 2007 when the company switched to digital printing, allowing them to print-to-order. By 2011 the company decided to expand into retail by acquiring the online retailer Easyart.com. Easyart was set up by Simon Matthews in 1999 during the
dot-com boom and in 2002 faced legal allegations from
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of
EasyJet, over its use of the easy name, accusing Easyart of "passing off" on easyGroup's good name. Easyart won the court battle when easyGroup discontinued its legal action, saying it had bigger targets to go after. In March 2015, the company, then under CEO and co-founder Marc Lickfett, discontinued the Easyart brand and merged the site within the King & McGaw brand. In May 2015 King & McGaw used a
pop-up shop to showcase lithographic posters from the
Mourlot Studios archives on
D'Arblay Street,
Soho, London. Contributions from artists such as
Picasso,
Matisse,
Masson,
Leger,
Miro,
Le Corbusier,
Yves Klein,
Raoul Dufy and
René Magritte were included in the exhibit. Classes in drawing with artist Anna-Louise Felstead and
screen printing classes with Print Club London, a
screen printing company based in
Dalston were also held at the shop. == References ==