The retailer, which achieved market dominance in the 1980s through the popularity of just two of its many designs – Tennis Girl and the biggest selling poster of all time L’Enfant or Man with Baby - closed its last shop, in Exeter, in September last year. However most of the 157 stores it had in its heyday were closed following its receivership in 1995.
Athena owners, Comarty, an MBO which bought the business out of administration, has spent 15 months tracking down the permission to sell the artwork of 22 bands including Queen, Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols and The Rolling Stones. Approval for 10 more including The Beatles, Roxy Music and Metallica is in progress.
The new Athena started printing on demand using three 12-colour Canon wide-format printers on Wednesday. The artwork is printed on heavyweight 240gsm matt coated paper in 46sqcm (£60) and 61sqcm (£90) sizes and is framed and sold as a ready-to-hang unit.
Comarty went into manufacturing for the first time three years ago with a frame manufacturing business, Vivarti, which retails online, based in its York factory where it also offers a 'drop ship' printing service.
Director Nick Morgan said Athena was the only library for licensed album cover art in the world.
“Everyone talks about the tennis woman and Man with Baby, but we think the strongest and most arresting art can be found on album covers. They are everywhere.
“It’s been extremely difficult to get the licences but we knew it was very important to be official. It’s been a long road but we’ve had great fun, some of the samples even went to the bands to get approval.”
As well as problems getting the licences, ensuring the covers were print-ready was also problematic. In some cases the original artwork had been lost, in many others it was not of high enough quality to use.
Morgan said the company had “lots of ideas for the future” but would focus on album art for now. “We want to make it a clear offering,” he said.
Director Simon Coates, who was part of the MBO team in 1995, said the test for the new business model would come in December.
“We’ve done market research and we’re getting a good steer, especially in the female-to-male present-buying group.
“We know an awful lot of this business is done at Christmas. Half the music gift sales happen in the last six weeks of the year and 43% in December. We have to get everything working perfectly by then. We’re hoping to widen the range all the time.
“In the old days we had to print a thousand posters on litho and hope they sold and then we had to hold the stock. Now we print on demand within 48 hours. We can carry a much bigger range there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go up to thousands.”
Athena founder Ole Christensen opened the first Athena shop in Hampstead in 1964, focusing on fine art reprints. It was most profitable at the end of the 1980s when L'Enfant was said to have sold 5m copies and Tennis Girl, 2m. By the time of its administration it was losing £5m a year.
