PDG Art

PDG.Art — E-Commerce & Content Creation

‍> Building a curated digital gallery for one of Singapore's most passionate collectors of antique Tibetan rugs — designed not to sell online, but to attract the right custodians to come and see for themselves.

Live at: https://pdg.art/

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The Client

Giuseppe "Pino" De Giosa has spent a lifetime collecting. His journey began in London and expanded across continents, driven by a deep love for textile art and the cultural stories woven into every piece. That passion culminated in his book, Dream Weavers: Textile Art of the Tibetan Plateau, co-authored with renowned expert Thomas Cole and published in Singapore in 2004. Now in his seventies, Pino is devoted to finding new custodians for his collection of over 200 rare Tibetan rugs, horse blankets, horse saddles, sculptures, artifacts, and Japanese obis — pieces he has spent decades acquiring and preserving.

PDG.Art is his new venture — a carefully considered digital home for a collection that deserves to be seen, understood, and cherished.

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The Brief

This engagement required a different kind of thinking. Pino's collection carries high per-piece values — individual carpets range from €3,000 to €5,000 and beyond — and the nature of antique textile acquisition involves nuance that a standard e-commerce checkout cannot accommodate. International shipping logistics, customs risk, and the importance of a buyer experiencing a piece in person before committing made a conventional buy-now model inappropriate.

The goal was not to sell online at current, but to present the collection with the gravitas it deserved, build digital visibility, and create a channel that brought serious, qualified buyers to Pino directly.

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Scope of Work

Shopify build with price-on-application configuration, product photography across 70+ carpet listings, AI-generated room visualisation assets, SEO-optimised product copywriting with consistent naming conventions, collection architecture and navigation, inventory management across Shopify and Excel, GA4 and Google Search Console setup, domain and Google Workspace setup, video production including product reels and a hero splash video, and ongoing content and platform development.

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The Approach

Price on Application

‍The decision to hide pricing across all collection and product pages was deliberate and considered. Prices are invisible site-wide — instead, a prominently placed Contact tab channels all enquiries directly to Pino's email, where he can qualify the buyer, discuss the piece, and arrange a viewing. Sold and Reserved labels are applied to pieces that have found new homes, providing social proof that the collection moves without requiring a public price list. This model also protects Pino from Shopify's transaction fees on high-value sales — a meaningful consideration at these price points.

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Photography and Product Presentation

‍Each rug was photographed with the front, the back, and close-up detail shots to convey the texture, craftsmanship, and condition that make antique textiles worth collecting. Product names were structured with consistent SEO-optimised conventions — material, type, origin, and descriptive title — to build long-term organic search visibility for a niche with a highly specific global audience.

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Envisioned in Space - Artist Impression

‍To help buyers envision pieces in a living context, AI-generated room visualisation assets were created showing selected rugs placed in contemporary interior settings. The response from Pino and his peers was immediately positive — a practical and scalable way to bridge the gap between a flat product photograph and a felt sense of how a piece would inhabit a space. The plan is to extend this across the full catalogue.

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Video Production

‍A working relationship with Pino spanning close to 15 years — and over 160 reels produced together for a previous brand (DGA Threads)— meant the production process for PDG.Art was efficient and calibrated. Pino knows his collection intimately and speaks about it with genuine authority. The production approach was built around that: single takes under 90 seconds, with lighting set up to flatter the textile detail. Direction focused on pacing, and focus points. The resulting reels are authentic, informed, and unhurried in a way that suits the collector's market. Full post-production and publishing handled in-house.

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Inventory and Catalogue Management

‍With over 200 carpets in the full collection and approximately 70 currently live on the site, inventory is managed across both Shopify and a parallel Excel catalogue — the latter serving as Pino's own reference document and a shareable PDF for prospective buyers who want to browse pieces not yet listed online. Both systems are kept aligned and updated as the catalogue grows.

The Outcome

In the first month of the website going live, six carpets were sold for approximately €15,000 — to a buyer from Belgium who discovered the collection online and made the trip to Singapore. The website did exactly what it was designed to do: it surfaced the collection to the right audience and gave a serious buyer the confidence and context to act.

With 70 of 200 carpets now live and Phase 2 covering the remaining inventory, additional art categories, social media launch, and paid acquisition on the horizon, the platform is positioned to grow alongside the collection.

Tools & Platforms

Shopify, GA4, Google Search Console, Google Workspace, Adobe Creative Suite

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> PDG.Art is an ongoing Kickstack engagement. Phase 1 covers the Tibetan rug collection. Phase 2 will expand to additional art categories, social media, and performance marketing.

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