I like to have art hanging on my walls.

Not prints. Art. Original art.

I’d rather have an original painting by a completely unknown amateur artist hanging in my living room than have a dozen poster reproductions of Van Gogh, Picasso, Da Vinci or Magritte.

And I actually do have original art hanging in my home. I have oil and acrylic paintings, as well as photographs and pencil drawings hanging on my walls. It’s all original art, but unfortunately, the only artist in my collection is me. I’d really like to take down a few of my own paintings, and hang someone else’s artwork.

But it’s hard to buy art. As an ordinary, non-millionaire kind of guy, it’s hard to find a place to shop for original artwork without spending thousands of dollars. When I was a student, I had friends in the visual arts department (I was a theatre student, so the visual artists were just down the hall), and most of them produced dozens of paintings and sculptures every semester. I also know that many of them would have gladly sold most of their finished pieces for very reasonable prices (within the $50 to $300 range, for the most part).

I’d like to build a website where individual artists could upload pictures of the artwork they’d like to offer for sale, and potential buyers could browse through thousands of different images from hundreds of artists. Individual artists would be ranked based on how many paintings they had sold, the average sale price of each of their paintings, etc.

Really, this isn’t so much of a software project. There would be a little bit of software to write, but for the most part, this would just be an ecommerce website. Much like an ebay, but much smaller, and much simpler.

As a side note: you can actually buy original artwork on ebay. There are actually thousands of original pieces on sale at any given point in time. But I don’t think ebay is a very good marketplace for art items. Ebay has a reputation as an online garage sale, and that’s not exactly the right setting for buying and selling original art. Besides, the short timeframe of the auctions isn’t very conducive to unique, slow-turnaround items like paintings.

I’d make my money, much like ebay, by charging a small listing fee as well as a percentage of the sale price for each piece. If I charged a 5% fee, and if the average piece of artwork sold for $200, then I’d need to sell 480 different items per week to reach my $250,000 revenue target. I think that’s certainly possible, but it would probably take quite a while to ramp up to that level. Even if there was sufficient demand, it would be difficult to maintain a broad enough catalogue to faciliate those kinds of sales figures. I think my primary marketing endeavours would need to be directed towards artists (and, in particular, art students), since I’d need to develop a steady flow of new artists willing to sell their stuff through my website.

Pros:

• You know how people ask sometimes, “If you were independently wealthy, what would you do with your spare time.” In my case, the answer is easy. I’d be writing, painting, and making music. Painting is one of my long-time passions, and I’d be so happy if I could build a profitable business from something that makes me so happy.
• The software development would be extremely simple. I’d need to develop a simple shopping cart system, and I’d need to provide registered users with the ability to add new unique products to the catalogue. I’d need to facilitate payment (from buyers, and to sellers), and I’d probably need to set up a feedback system. Nothing new or complex.

Cons:

• Buying art is a luxury, and I’m not experienced with the marketing tactics used to attract luxury-item buyers. I’d probably want to consult with an expert to get advice in this area.
• There are already a zillion places on the internet where individual artists (or individual bricks-and-mortar galleries sell original artwork. Then there’s ebay. I’d need to convince both buyers and sellers to do business in my marketplace, rather than in any of the existing channels.

…

This is the eighteenth of 30 business ideas that I’ll be writing about over the course of 30 days. Or maybe it’ll only end up being 19 ideas in 36 days. We’ll see. Either way, one of these ideas will become a product over the next six months, and the foundation of my new software business.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 1:27 am and is filed under biz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.