Make money from the Demise in Art Dealers

    Most people have an art dealer or gallery that they are loyal too. Before the days of the internet and social media the art dealers really had an important role to play in the Art Industry. 

     Art Dealers today however are facing an issue. Just like Publishers for authors, dealers are having a harder and harder time finding that shining star artist before the public does. Traditionally art brokers would be on the road 90% of the time to art expos, fairs, and auctions. The same is still stand true today but what do you do about the artist that take advantage of social media themselves to promote themselves? Or hire an agent to promote them via these channels. 

     This occurrence is happening more and more of late mostly due to the fact that artists information as well as publicity can be controlled in house. An example of this is what I am currently setting up with Pascal Garnier or Arts Oceans. 

     I am putting the artist and the artists fans together in one place so the fans of the art can benefit from the increase of price that occurs when a painter goes from "who?" to "oh I can not wait for his next exposition". Normally an art dealer would try to strike a deal with the artist to be exclusive with a particular gallery and get the best pricing since this occurs before the artist becomes famous. With my new platform now the Fans of the artist will not only dictate the price of each artwork print (We release the Original to major Art Auction Houses); but also dictate the quantity of print the will be released in the edition. 

Let me show you an example of how this works. Take my client Pascal whom's art is featured in this post. He is a new artist and has never sold a print and only originals. He wants to start selling prints but I advised him first to build up a loyal following on Facebook and Twitter as we need an audience to sell to.

This took about 1 month and know we have a very active audience with 700+ members. We are constantly posting to these pages to see what the audience likes most. Well for know it appears like this painting below is the one that has hit it off the most. 

     So my plans are to auction the first proof print to out audience via Facebook on the arts oceans page. Now how do I make fans into buyers? ENGAGEMENT. 

     This Painting as oil on canvas would sell for about 3000 euros on auction based on historic auction prices. Based on this a print should be around $100-$500 depending on how many prints are made in the edition. So I devised a system to were the higher the price of the auction (open only to the exclusive audience of Facebook) closing price, the lower the amount of prints would be made. 

      For example if the Proof 1 print of the seahorses only sells for $100 dollars then we will sell an edition of 1/500. However if it sells for $500 then we are only going to make 1/10 prints in the edition. See how this will entice bidding as it incentives the bidders to bid higher on the first print in order to secure a lower number of overall prints. This works both great for the artist as well as the collectors and second hand market. 

      A new, living artists selling 10 prints for $500 and then having them raise on the second hand market, plus he can always keep or to just keep 1 or 2 of the prints for himself. The purchaser of the original print will also be so thrilled because only 10 other prints will be out on the market and supply/demand takes into effect.

     Here is just one way that new artist can now appear in front of you for sale without you having to go through an art broker and also letting you capitalize on the money the art broker is no longer making. 

For more info on Pascal Garnier please visit https://facebook.com/artsoceans

Paul Cwalina