hello - I'm Robin Molteno. 
I built this platform as a non-profit project, for young capetonian artists in the gap between their studies (a rock) and institutional support (a hard place).
kunst.studio was built in the first few months of the pandemic, and released with 60 artist stores - growing to over 400 in short time.

the project was always a personal mission to resolve issues affecting the arts.
as a personal project, this 'about' page will be a personal account. 

a scrappy start - in video.
in 2019, there was simply no video media on the local south african music scene, even though I felt video media was the future. hence the birth of 'casualsex_', a scrappy team producing artist interviews at festivals. here's the first.
we made ~30, with bands across SA, all videos appearing on the now dissolved 'IG TV'.
 
but it was too slow, and too early. 
 
then covid came and demolished every nascent form of selling & support the young artists in my city had: especially those early in their craft.
no websites - no exhibitions - no infrastructure. 
with covid also obliterating my other business, I began working on kunst.studio.

the platform launches.
you can read about it here, posted on launch-day.
I kept the name 'casualsex.store' for launch. the video-project had renown, and the name - punk and playful - carried .
kunst.studio offered the infrastructure that was otherwise missing from South Africa at the time: etsy-style store creation; automated door-to-door shipping; online payments in local currency; zero conversion-fees, non-warehousing, printed-on-demand-merch, etc.

However, it was a miracle to see kunst.studio sustain artists' lives, pay rents, advance careers and buy tattoos [the most important one].

As a non-warehousing, multi-disciplinary platform, it was the first of its kind - worldwide. 
kunst.studio was made to give back to a niche that had given me so much. I have since moved on to other work, and sunsetted the platform once global platforms began serving south africans. 

If you run any community-centric or non-profit project focused on south africans, I would gladly consider aiding you in the setup of a similar system, or the takeover of this one under various conditions.


ORIGINAL TEXT //

welcome to casualsex.store 
yes, there are platforms similar to this - in the us; the eu - and they’re used by hundreds of south african artists. but, the thing is, they’re not built to actively grow artists in any local sense… they’re built for overseas artists, and to line international pockets. make a single sale, and by the time the money gets back to you, you've lost 30-40%.

cslsx is here to fight that. cslsx is here to make sure that the talent, inventiveness, and tenacity of south african artists has a fighting chance. 

so, what you’ll find here is sa’s first fully-functioning, online artist market - integrated with secure payments, low-cost door-to-door shipping, an artist directory, collect-from-artist and artist-centric video content - with even more innovative features yet to join the ranks. principally, it is a toolset.

so, it’s clear what cslsx is here to do.
BUT our goal is a shared one - understood by countless other south africans: artists, promoters, labels, studios, booking agents, listeners, buyers - and now, hopefully, by you too.

if you like something you see, buy it today, or send it to a friend. 
if you see anything amiss, please let us know here. 

100% of the store's commission [10.5%] on sales for December + January go toward distributing bio-degradable, cotton sanitary pads in western cape + gauteng informal settlements; sanitary products created by women-owned sa companies. on average, that's 10 sanitary pads every time you support a local artist.

built and founded during capetonian lockdown by robin molteno, and fed by over 100 separate conversations with artists + industry, this is casualsex.store . 

+ all photography, design and copywriting on the site by Robin Molteno.
+ logo (casualsex.store) by Cam Lofstrand.
+ all images of items-for-sale are added and deleted by the artists.

happy hunting.

here's a texx & the city feature
here's one from bubblegum club
find cslsx in the print edition of the lake, on 10and5, in cape town etc, in sludge underground and various other creative community publications.
text checked + edited by Arlin Bantam