Dmitry Afremov - How it was started

[Dmitry-Afremov]

Dmitry Afremov is the founder of Afremov.com, son of world-renowned artist Leonid Afremov, entrepreneur, publisher, and one of the people responsible for preserving and expanding the global legacy of Leonid Afremov after his death in 2019.

Well, let's start from the beginning.

I was born in October 1977 in Vitebsk, Belarus. The same city where Marc Chagall was born. The same city where my father, artist Leonid Afremov, was born.

What is my connection to Leonid Afremov?

A very direct one.

I am his eldest son.

My mother is Inessa Afremov. I also have a younger brother, Boris, who was still very little when our family left the Soviet Union.

There is not much extraordinary I can tell you about my childhood. It was the childhood of a typical Soviet kid. I was an Octobrist, then a Pioneer, went to school, played outside, and lived a life familiar to millions of children of my generation.

At the end of the 1980s, our family emigrated to Israel. It was my father Leonid, my mother Inessa, my younger brother Boris, and me.

Israel quickly became home.

I went to school, learned Hebrew, and within a few years I spoke it almost like a native. Unexpectedly, that made me useful to the family business.

My father painted.

I helped sell the paintings.

I started helping almost immediately after we arrived. I was twelve or thirteen years old. We traveled to exhibitions, participated in fairs, and often displayed paintings right on the street. My father painted, and I talked to people.

Since my Hebrew was better, I became the translator.

I was incredibly proud of it.

I still remember those exhibitions in Rishon LeZion.

I remember the sun.

I remember the paintings.

And I remember the tuna baguette.

Every day my father would give me a little money, and I would buy the same baguette.

To this day, I can still remember the taste.

Honestly, half the extra weight I carry today probably came from those baguettes.

There was one thing I absolutely hated, though.

Packing paintings after the exhibition.

It was a nightmare.

So I always tried to sell as many as possible and as quickly as possible.

The more I sold, the less I had to carry home.

In the early 1990s, we started selling paintings door-to-door.

Most young people today probably can't even imagine what that means.

You put a bag full of paintings on your shoulder.

Walk through new residential neighborhoods.

Knock on doors.

"Hello. I'm selling paintings. Would you like to take a look?"

And people actually bought them.

Many said I had a talent for persuasion.

Maybe I did.

Back then I was incredibly outgoing.

I could talk to anyone.

Getting me upset was almost impossible.

I'm not quite the same person today.

But back then?

Absolutely.

My father painted.

I sold the paintings.

That was our life.

Until I turned eighteen and joined the Israeli Army.

After finishing my service, I decided I didn't want to spend my life selling paintings.

I wanted to find my own path.

I had big ambitions.

The problem was that I had absolutely no idea where to apply them.

For about a year I drifted around.

I got into debt.

Made plenty of mistakes.

I even learned how to make picture frames.

But none of it felt right.

Eventually my father and I decided to move to America.

America greeted us the way only America can.

Everything.

Or nothing.

I took my father's paintings and started visiting galleries.

"Hello. Here are some paintings. The artist is very talented. Take a look."

And something incredible happened.

Within just a few days, I sold almost everything.

Roe Gallery purchased a large number of paintings.

Several other galleries bought works as well.

For the first time, we had some real money.

We had startup capital.

And we moved to Florida.

At that point, I still wasn't completely convinced that paintings would be my future.

I thought I would eventually find something bigger.

Something different.

Looking back, it's funny.

Because I never did.

In Florida, things became difficult again.

The galleries weren't interested.

I have to be honest — I've never liked dealing with galleries.

They're complicated.

Incredibly complicated.

At some point, I simply ran out of places to sell paintings.

Then one of my father's friends, a movie actor, gave us advice.

"Go to eBay."

Today I would probably build a monument in his honor.

Back then, I thought it sounded ridiculous.

We didn't go.

And that was my mistake.

Instead, our entire family spent nearly a year selling ice cream from an ice cream truck.

Yes.

One of those trucks.

The ones that drive around playing music.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daaa...

And selling ice cream.

It was a terrible time.

A year spent driving through poor neighborhoods.

Through ghettos.

Places where most people would never willingly go.

A lot of it was my ego.

I thought I needed to succeed in some other way.

Then the truck crashed.

To this day, I don't know whether it was fate or just bad luck.

The truck was totaled.

Thankfully nobody was hurt.

But our money was gone.

Completely gone.

I applied for every job I could find.

Newspapers.

Warehouses.

Anywhere.

Honestly, if someone had offered me a role in adult movies back then, I probably would have taken it.

That's how desperate things had become.

We ended up living in a shelter.

Essentially a hotel for people with nowhere else to go.

Drug addicts.

Prostitutes.

Chaos everywhere.

It was awful.

Truly awful.

And then something happened that I will never forget.

Israelis helped us.

As strange as it sounds, there always seems to be an Israeli somewhere willing to help another Israeli.

Then a rabbi got involved.

Then another acquaintance.

Then another.

Eventually we were introduced to a man connected to a major gallery that sold artwork on cruise ships.

I met him with absolutely no expectations.

Just a casual introduction.

And he bought approximately seventeen thousand dollars worth of paintings.

Seventeen thousand dollars.

At that moment, it wasn't money.

It was a new life.

We rented a house.

My father got a studio again.

For the first time in a long time, we could breathe.

And that's when I realized something important.

Paintings weren't the thing I was trying to escape from.

Paintings were the thing that saved us.

If it hadn't been for that period — the shelter, the ice cream truck, the constant worry about what we would eat tomorrow — our family might never have become as close as we are today.

Hardship has a strange way of bringing people together.

Especially family.

Around that same time, I finally discovered eBay.

And once again, I was shocked.

I suddenly realized that a website could sell more paintings than galleries, exhibitions, and door-to-door sales combined.

I became obsessed.

I watched orders come in.

I watched numbers grow.

And I couldn't understand why nobody else seemed to be talking about it.

I felt like I had discovered a gold mine.

From that point on, I thought about almost nothing else.

I wanted to sell art online.

But life rarely follows the ideal script.

A few months later, eBay suspended our account.

Today I understand these things happen.

Technical issues.

Competitors.

Documentation reviews.

Anything.

Back then it felt like the end of the world.

My father suffered enormous stress.

Then came a heart attack.

And once again everything collapsed.

Just when we thought we had escaped.

Just when we thought we could finally breathe.

We were back at the beginning.

And that was the moment I developed a philosophy that still guides me today.

Never depend on a single platform.

Never.

Not eBay.

Not Amazon.

Not Facebook.

Not Google.

Nobody.

If your business lives entirely on somebody else's platform, then that business doesn't truly belong to you.

It belongs to whoever can push a button and make you disappear.

That's why in 2004 I bought the domain Afremov.com.

Myself.

No investors.

No developers.

No team.

I sat down and started learning.

HTML.

Marketing.

Advertising.

Everything.

Mostly through trial and error.

Usually more error than trial.

The first website was terrible.

People would probably laugh if they saw it today.

But at the time I thought I had built a spaceship.

I still remember the first lines of HTML code.

The first painting photographs.

The first order.

The excitement of every customer email.

Back then, almost nobody believed expensive artwork could be sold successfully online.

Especially without galleries.

Especially from an artist few people had heard of.

But little by little, it worked.

Then it worked better.

Then better still.

We continued selling through Amazon.

We continued selling through eBay.

We continued working with every platform that could bring customers.

But the website always remained the center of everything.

That's why I still don't trust any single platform completely.

We have multiple payment systems.

Multiple marketing channels.

Multiple suppliers.

Multiple shipping solutions.

Because life taught me a simple lesson:

If you have only one source of customers or one way to accept payments, sooner or later you will have problems.

Many years have passed since then.

Today we are no longer the family selling paintings door-to-door.

We are no longer the family selling ice cream from a truck.

We are no longer the family living in a shelter.

Today we are an international company.

Offices.

Warehouses.

Shipping centers.

Fulfillment centers.

Marketing departments.

Customer support teams.

Millions of website visitors.

But inside, we remain much the same.

We're still a family.

We still argue.

We still make important decisions together.

And we still work for one person.

My father.

Even though he is no longer with us.

When Leonid Afremov passed away in 2019, many people said:

"That's it."

"The story is over."

"The artist is gone."

"The business won't survive."

I always smiled when I heard that.

Because those people didn't know our story.

They didn't know about the ice cream truck.

They didn't know about the shelter.

They didn't know about the years when we barely had enough money to eat.

They didn't know how many times we had started over.

If we survived all of that, we could survive anything.

Yes, losing my father was the hardest blow of my life.

But it was also the moment I truly understood how much this business means to us.

To some people it's just a website.

To others it's an online store.

To others it's a collection of paintings.

To us, it's our life.

Our entire life.

Sometimes people offer to buy the company.

Sometimes they offer partnerships or mergers.

And yes, occasionally I think about it.

Then I remember the first website.

The first HTML code.

The first painting sold online.

And I realize I can't do it.

Because Afremov.com isn't a business we bought.

It's a business we lived.

And that's why I always say one simple thing:

**Only an Afremov can truly run Afremov.com.**

Quick Facts About Dmitry Afremov
Born: October 1977
Birthplace: Vitebsk, Belarus
Father: Leonid Afremov
Mother: Inessa Afremov
Brother: Boris Afremov
Founder of: Afremov.com
Occupation: Entrepreneur, Publisher, Art Dealer
Languages: Russian, Hebrew, English
Residence: Mexico / International Operations

[NorthStarBen]

Honestly, a lot of this reads more like a sales pitch than a biography. I respect the hustle, but when someone keeps talking about how only family members can run the business, it makes me wonder whether preserving the legacy is really the goal or if it's more about maintaining control.

[MapleRunner84]

Big fan here.

[BlueJeansMike]

What a story. Really puts into perspective how much work, sacrifice, and persistence went into building the Afremov brand. I have a lot of respect for the fact that your family kept starting over no matter how many setbacks came your way, and it's great to see Leonid Afremov's legacy still being carried forward by the people who lived that journey with him.

[CoffeeAndRoads]

Man, this is actually one of those stories that feels almost unreal but at the same time very human… the struggle, the ice cream truck, the shelter, and then building something huge from literally nothing. Respect for sticking through all that chaos and still keeping the family and the work together. Not many people could handle that kind of pressure and not break.

[AmberFields]

The post presents a long, personal narrative about building a family art business through many stages of struggle, migration, and entrepreneurship, eventually leading to the creation of Afremov.com. It emphasizes resilience, independence from third-party platforms, and the belief that their success is deeply tied to family history and continuity.

[RiverStoneJack]

That’s a pretty intense story honestly, you don’t hear that kind of full journey from street sales to building a global online art business very often. The part about going through all the failures, shelters, and then slowly building everything through eBay and your own site actually explains a lot about why you’re so focused on independence from platforms. I’m a young artist myself — would it be possible for me to sell my paintings through you guys or work with your platform somehow?

[SilverOakDan]

Inspiring story, Afremov is the best!