Statue Sculptors In Salt Lake City Achieve International Recognition

SALT LAKE CITY — Like all civilizations, every business starts out small. The one sculpted by Victoria Karpos and her husband in Salt Lake City has spread far beyond the Aegean Sea, thanks to a little help from the internet.

“We were importing sculptures and artifacts from Greece,” Karpos said. “We were selling to small gift shops that had the Greek kind of historical gear.”

For her, every step has meant striding forth into new ways of selling statues.

Now, you’ll find everything on their shelves, from David to Diana.

But sometimes, building a business takes a bit of clairvoyance.

It was long ago, in the ancient days of the internet, when an idea sprung forth from the mind of Victoria’s husband.

“My husband Vasily was just fiddling around with the Internet,” Karpos said. “He noticed that there were these dot coms selling at the time, and he punched in ‘statues.com.'”

That fateful day in the mid-90’s was a turning point.

“We were slowly getting inquiries about, ‘Could you make this for me? Could you make maybe 10 of those for me?'” said Karpos.

As for the purchase cost of that domain name, Karpos couldn’t help but laugh — she thinks it cost them about $10.

She credited their success to their online presence, adding that it’s difficult for a business like theirs to survive just by selling locally.

Their acropolis grew, until a pandemic caused business to plummet.

“A lot of our retail buyers had closed their stores,” Karpos said. “Immediately, some orders were put on hold, and then eventually canceled, because we didn’t know what was going on.”

And so, a company built on traditions of the past turned to their own history for a solution.

“If you’ve ever been to Google and put in a search term, you might see the first three results with the little word ‘Ad’ on it,” Karpos said, referring to Google Ads.

Companies are able to target certain keywords and pay for their business to show up at the top of search results using those words.

While the couple used these ads in the past, Karpos credited them with helping the business survive.

“What increased was the request for custom work, and the increase of people visiting our site and having inquiries about a special project, a custom work, a public art,” she said.

The Karpos’ continued to refine their ads and their keywords, which led to a major milestone.

“We got featured to be in Google’s Economic Impact Report,” said Karpos.

Out of all the businesses in the state, Google picked theirs to feature as an example of a business that’s seen benefits from buying their search result ads.

“Feels good as an entrepreneur that we’ve had success in what we’re doing,” Karpos said.

The wings of victory have bestowed blessings on their business, all thanks to a small purchase in the mid-90’s and a continued interest in marketing their products online.

Now, a small business built on tiny statues has managed to spread far beyond Greece, and across the entire world.