Still a family business.

The company began with two people who painted. It grew because they noticed what everyone who paints needs next.

Valerian Grass was born in Omsk, to a family of the German minority. They moved to Kazakhstan, then in 1990 to Germany, to the town of Papenburg. Wherever they lived, there was little room for toys and always room for paper, paint and plasticine. A few years after school a friend from Snina invited him to Slovakia. He was already selling his own pictures on eBay, he liked the place, and he stayed. He met Dana there.

In 2007 the two of them were painting decorative pictures for interiors and selling them online. Orders grew, and other painters began painting to order for them. Then came 2008, and with it the crisis, turbulent currencies and cheap competition from China. The paintings stopped selling. The answer was not to paint less but to sell what painting needs: first canvases, stretched in their own workshop, then brushes and paints, then everything else. For a while they also sold wristwatches. They did not enjoy it.

The shop went abroad the careful way. Big markets like Germany were already crowded, so ARTMiE went first to the countries where a new name could still be noticed. During the pandemic, when people stayed at home and made things, revenue nearly doubled. By 2021 the company employed about seventy people, sold in twelve countries and turned over 7.1 million euro. In 2022 Forbes Slovensko told the story; in 2023 Valerian went undercover in his own company for TV Markíza.

Today ARTMiE Group is three brands under one roof: ARTMiE for art supplies in sixteen countries, Papilora for the wall art the company has printed and painted since 2011, and ARTMiE Real Estate, which builds homes and invests in the region where the story began. All three still belong to the family that started it.