| As we all adjust to the new normal after having been sequestered in our homes, we're all finding alternate ways to make the most of our time.So let's ask ourselves: How can we use this time to get better? How can we be of service and use? I know, without a doubt that great art is being created around the world at this very moment. Perhaps by you! Our entire team is focused 100% on whatever we can do to help you market and sell more art. With that in mind, we're focusing FineArtViews on sales and marketing ideas more than ever before. The following article was selected from our archives as it seems quite timely in the current situation and provides ideas we think you can use to improve your own art marketing.
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PART 2
Is the Internet Ever Going to Disrupt the Art Industry?
We've all watched the internet completely disrupt many industries. Record stores are gone. Video rental stores are gone. With the advent of the Kindle, while bookstores still exist, the book industry has completely changed.
Why has this not happened in art?
Where is the Amazon or Netflix of the art industry? Or, in the brick-and-mortar world, where is the Apple Store of the art world? Why is the art world still dominated by many scattered, individual galleries rather than having consolidated into being dominated by a few large players? Why hasn't the industry been disrupted driving a wave of consolidation, or a wave of closures?
While it is true that a lot of art galleries have closed their doors, most of the major ones have survived and even thrived. In Game of Thrones speak, we've lost a lot of the small houses, but the "great houses", of the art industry are strong as ever. In fact, the one site people might claim is trying to be a "Netflix of Art", Artsyhas built their entire business model around supporting the big art galleries, rather than disrupting them.
So far, the internet has been far more of a boon to art galleries than a threat. I would even argue the internet is not at all a root cause of smaller galleries going under. It's much more likely that the 2008 crash and the following recession were far larger factors than any "disruption" by internet sites.
But what about artists selling directly on the internet? Isn't that driving galleries out of business? Let's consider the case of a new artist: one who has never been represented by a gallery. Certainly, that artist can set up a website and sell directly online. But how does that artist get noticed? As I'm fond of saying: It's never been easier to publish and it's never been harder to get noticed.
In the "old" days, that artist would need to get noticed by a gallery and, if the quality of the art was great, that wasn't too difficult: the artist simply had to enter the right shows, place a "seeking representation" ad in the right magazines, send a portfolio to the most likely galleries, or get a friend to refer them to a gallery. These were concrete steps that advanced the artist's chances of getting in front of the right people. And they were much more targeted steps than "set up a website and start posting on Facebook." The galleries were then able to discover the artist and to advance that artists career in a way that, so far, has been difficult to recreate online.
In fact, there was actually one advantage of the "old way": It forced artists to stop and think about achieving a level of competence in their craft before approaching the gallery system and beforeoffering their works for sell. As much as it hurt, being rejected by several galleries was a clear signal to an artist he needed to go back and improve his mastery further.
Today, because it's almost too easy to set up an online portfolio and store, far too many artists, avoid that painful but necessary process of feedback and move quickly into the marketing and selling phase a long time before they are ready. And the results are predictable: they don't sell, they are disappointed, and they bounce from online service to online service, frustrated. They keep looking for that one magic service that would only "do a good job marketing my art." But in many cases, the fix for lack of sales is to go back and fix the product. In tech, we get feedback from customers, and we go back and rework our software until we achieve "product/market fit." In the art world, it means getting feedback from master artists, gallerists, or other professionals, and going back and working on one's mastery of craft and improving the quality of one's paintings.
So, rephrasing what I said above, it's easy to put your art online, but difficult to get true art collectors to pay attention to it.
I've been wondering why that is. Why do art collectors still deal with art galleries? Why don't more collectors just find new artist websites and start buying directly? And pondering that question leads me full circle back to the more basic question that we opened with: What do collectors want?
As I said above, while in the gallery business, I implicitly knew what collectors wanted. But, if we're going to recreate it online and truly disrupt the art industry, we must go further. We need to know explicitly what collectors want.
And, after letting my mind grind on this subject for a while, I think I have the answers.
What Do Art Collectors Want?
So what do true art collectors want?
I think they want the following elements: Credibility, Curation, Spillover Effects, and Exclusivity. | 