NEW YORK—Lumas, the German-based outfit we’ve known principally as an online gallery (and occasional visitor to art fairs in the States), has long been an ArtInfo favorite. When we listed our top five favorite Web galleries last year, we gave them our “Finest in Photos” award and even made them “Site of the Week.”

(No, there were no under-the-table kickbacks for that bit of recognition; we really did fancy them.)

So when Lumas recently established a bricks-and-mortar presence here in New York City, on Wooster Street in SoHo, we were particularly interested to take a look.

After all, their Web site, www.lumas.com, was launched in October 2004, a few months before the first physical gallery opened in Germany. And now, a little more than two years later, there are eight Lumas galleries in that country, as well this latest one in SoHo, intended to be the “flagship for the U.S.” An organization that started out with a staff of four now employs 65, and they offer more than 650 editions by some 90 artists.

A Spark of Genius

Julia Heinemann, portfolio manager for the Lumas Gallery, and one of the original four to help establish Lumas, told me that from the outset it had always been intended to operate online and on land.

The founders, Stefanie Harig and Marc Alexander Ullrich, are themselves collectors of photography, and the Lumas concept came out of conversations they had with visitors to their home who would admire their collection but be shocked at the prices they had paid. So with the intention of establishing a market niche somewhere between a poster shop and a high-end gallery, they set out to make “top-class, museum-quality art photographs affordable to everyone.”

Clearly, their formula seems to have worked.

In the first month of operating on Wooster Street, the Lumas Gallery sold more than $150,000 worth of prints, which Heinemann describes as “overwhelming—definitely above our expectations.”

Not that the decision to expand operations to New York wasn’t thoroughly researched. According to Heinemann, online sales were always strong in this country, and visits to the Photo NY, Photo LA and Affordable Art fairs met with huge success, so New York was decided upon as the location rather than, say, London, Paris, or Zurich—though galleries in all of those places are scheduled.

Fueling the Fire

So what’s the Lumas secret? Well, for starters, they work directly with the artists. They commission, publish, exhibit and sell the work themselves. (Though they don’t physically produce the editions, they work very closely with trusted print studios.)

There are also predictable economies of scale. Edition sizes are between 75 and 150, allowing them to produce hand-signed prints for between $100 and $600. And they don’t compete with the artists’ galleries, which handle unique works or smaller editions and which are, for the most part, grateful for the attention that Lumas stimulates.

Then there’s the online presence, which accounts for about one third of Lumas’ sales (a fact that perpetually surprises Heinemann, who is clearly touched that people trust them enough to buy work without physically seeing it. The galleries were always meant, she explained, “for people who want to see the artwork in front of them before they make a decision.”)

Lumas also works hard to encourage new collectors. They produce a free magazine three times a year, and their gallery exhibits change six to eight times a year, with a full-scale opening event and artists’ talks each time. (The official opening of the Wooster Street gallery is set for Feb. 22, when it launches a show of landscape photography called “Horizons.”)

On the Path of Enlightenment

Now that the gallery has put down roots in New York, I have to wonder at their expectations for the future.

Their success in Germany really doesn’t surprise me. As Heinemann pointed out, there’s a more enthusiastic, middle-class art buying sector there than in any other country in Europe. There is a “great awareness and support for young contemporary artists, and there has been for a long time,” she said.