Artefact London, a custom suit company that made the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 List, is now accepting cryptocurrency in exchange for well-tailored suits at its Westminster store.
Tatyana Kozhevnikova, the company’s 28-year-old founder, was inspired last year while discussing cryptocurrencies with a customer who lives in South Africa. He said that many people there stored their assets in cryptos due to the area's unstable political, banking and fiat systems.
“He told me, ‘If you introduced it, I would pay in Bitcoin every single time,’” Kozhevnikova said. “I thought it something quite risky, and I didn’t entirely understand how the value was working, and we had this whole debate.”
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Kozhevnikova contacted her accountant who told her that, as HM Revenue & Customs does not yet have guidelines for business done in cryptocurrencies, the currency remains free from government regulations – so the duo devised a system for how customers could start paying in cryptos.
Artefact London is the first tailor shop that will transact with cryptos and is now one of two clothing and accessory shops in London that does so. Kozhevnikova said she is excited to begin and just opened her first wallet with Kraken, though she’ll have to immediately convert most of it to fiat – in euros and not GBP because the latter’s exchange rates are too high – to pay her suppliers and bills.
“I want to see how it goes and if it’s popular — or even if it’s just a small percentage, that’s fine,” Kozhevnikova said about people adopting the new payment method. “I’m just really, really curious to test how much it is in demand, just because the whole area of cryptocurrency to me is so interesting.”
Her new payment policy is available online, and Artefact London will accept Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum to start.
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