Exhibition space finder for visual artists

[MichaelCash]

This is going to be a free website that helps visual artists find space to exhibit their paintings at galleries, restaurants, doctor's offices, etc. It will have two sections
1. for artists who wants to exhibit their artworks
2. for venues that wants to have artwork displayed.

in section #1 an artist can create a profile and upload his paintings he wants to display (along with bio, etc), so everyone can see them.

in section #2, any business, e.g. gallery, doctors/dentist's office, bar/restaurant can create a profile with contact info. This section will be visible only to registered members.

Artists will be able to view and contact registered venues and vice versa.

I know, there are a lot of artists who are struggling to find exhibition space... the difficult part would be to find businesses that wants to display artworks.

I appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

 

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[jon.a]

1. How do you know there are these needs?
2. How will you make money?

 

[MichaelCash]

1. How do you know there are these needs?
2. How will you make money?

1. a. there are a lot of artists who struggle to find where to show their artworks. I am a graphic artist myself in the past and I know this for sure.
1. b. I am not that sure how to attract businesses. But for them this is 1) opportunity to decorate their walls for free 2) attract people who want to see some art 3) If a venue/business sells something, they get some commission from the artist, however I would rather start without this option for the beginning

2. I would like to see this as a free service. But if it gets popular, then there might be some options... I don't really like paid membership model but this is one of them.

here is an example of a service that uses a similar model: wallspaceexchange. It's not very popular because of a bunch or reasons. But they didn't do any promotion and still got some traction.

 

[James Thornton]

Art dude here. This would be more of a need for artists (exposure), so that's who you could charge.

Although it would be tough to control taking a percentage of sales that happened as a result of the display. And I'm not sure artists would pay a reoccurring fee.

Nonetheless, there is a value exchange: exposure for decoration. Artists are generally bad at sales, so this could solve a problem for them. I've put art in businesses for exposure before, and made sales from it. Perhaps you can find a profitable/scalable way to middle man it.

 

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[HAL]

I think you're better off thinking more along the lines of a gallery rental / event space airbnb type thing. I recently needed to rent a space for a few hours for about 35-50 people and finding any reasonable space (under $1k) was very difficult. Finally located a gallery that would let us use the space for a reasonable price.

There are some people in this space (like https://eventup.com/), but the local selection is minimal and they tend to cater to weddings and premium events while all these galleries sit empty most of the time.

 

[MichaelCash]

Thank you for you feedback.

The main problem of this idea is that I don't know how to attract businesses that will want to display artworks. There are so many empty walls everywhere which can be used to hang paintings and maybe even sell some of them. But I know it's hard to get small business involved. I will need to contact businesses personally or cold call them which I don't want to do.

If not to involve the venues, will this website have a value if it has only artists, like a catalog of artists who wants to exhibit their artworks with albums of their art?

 

[BrandonS85]

It costs $10 to register a website and about $10 to host from lenode.

Build a wordpress site that looks decent, get a few artists to commit, or at least make it look like there are artists who are willing to make their pieces available.

Call businesses and then sell them on the benefits of having the artwork in their location. Put QR codes + Tiny URLs on the pieces with order instructions, take paypal/swipe/ect. Take your cut and write the artists a check for sold paintings. You could even give the businesses a cut or not.

Write down reasons the businesses don't want them, learn to build value to the weaknesses of your plan and promote strongpoints.

Call 100 businesses a week for a month - 400 businesses
Convert just 20% of those businesses - 80 locations to have art
Put 4x pieces of art per business, sell a few of them per location per year

We had a local business who had somewhat limited run artwork, median sale price of $150/piece. From what the owner told me, he sold maybe 10 of the pieces a year. This was in a cafe in a small town. He stumbled on selling art there when people started asking him how much he wanted for it. Initially he refused, but when people started offering him $150-$200 for the artwork he realized he'd be stupid to refuse it.

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

I will need to contact businesses personally or cold call them which I don't want to do.

There's your problem. Pick up the phone. The thought of rejection > rejection itself.

 

[MichaelCash]

Interesting... but I am still not feeling comfortable with cold calling businesses.

What if I get lots of local artists onboard first and then try to figure out how to connect with the venues?

Are there any way to avoid this?

E.g. if an artist wants to have their artworks displayed at the restaurant, (s)he needs to go to the restaurants first, have a dinner, see if it good fits and then talk to the owner. What if I will just schedule this meeting between participating restaurants and artists? But then the question is how to enroll restaurants that will want to participate in this?

 

[BrandonS85]

Interesting... but I am still not feeling comfortable with cold calling businesses.

What if I get lots of local artists onboard first and then try to figure out how to connect with the venues?

Are there any way to avoid this?

E.g. if an artist wants to have their artworks displayed at the restaurant, (s)he needs to go to the restaurants first, have a dinner, see if it good fits and then talk to the owner. What if I will just schedule this meeting between participating restaurants and artists? But then the question is how to enroll restaurants that will want to participate in this?

You need to ask yourself what you're bringing to the table if you're not the one actually making connections and doing the marketing for the artists. In your initial post, you stated that artists have a difficult time finding venues. Your most recent posts says you do not wish to contact the business owners via cold calling, so my question is what value do you bring to the artists to use you to broker?

Don't think of it as making cold calls, sending postcards, selling to business owners. Think of it as making friends with people in high places.

In one of my other threads I've mentioned that I have friends and business associates currently bringing very profitable deals. Not because they especially think that I'm the best guy for the job, but because of when they think of someone that invests in real estate, they think of me before anyone else. Not every single business owner will fawn over you, but plenty will if you show them the value of partnering with you.

If you absolutely, absolutely can't do it yourself, it is my opinion that your chance for success will be greatly decreased, because the most passionite person about business tends to get things done in the best possible way. You could hire someone to do the cold calling for you @ $12-$14 an hour, but if I were you, I'd want to be the one to make the contacts. Wouldn't you want some day to be 'the guy' that gets called FIRST when someone has 5 figures to drop on art?

 

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