E-commerce has infiltrated the rarefied world of the fine art galleries one finds in New York’s SOHO or San Francisco’s SOMA districts. A new business-to-business network, ArtUp.com, is offering galleries, along with wholesalers and end users like interior designers, a way to buy and sell paintings and other artwork online.
The site carries original works, prints and posters, and it provides framing services. ArtUp also will design and launch individual commercial Web sites for prospective sellers.
ArtUp gets inventory primarily from galleries and artists that are part of its network. ArtUp already has lined up more than 1,200 galleries to participate, a number “way ahead of projections,” says Michael Fisher, vice president of the Phoenix-based company.
ArtUp.com’s site makes money by charging 15% transaction fees rather than offering links to other Web sites, a common arrangement these days.
“Why would you want to attract someone to your site only to turn them away?” Fisher asks. “I hate links.”
>From these activities ArtUp projects $10 million in revenue by 2000 and >twice as much the next year.
The company also recently started Art Retail Technology Service Auctions, or ARTS, which enables galleries registered on the site to host their own online auctions. Customer support for bidders will be available via e-mail.
To promote the site, the company has made keyword linking deals with Internet search engines Yahoo!, Lycos and g-o-t-o-n-e-t.com as well as America Online. And ArtUp is running direct response print ads in the trade journal Art Business and in The New York Times.
The company has set up a 15-person inbound call center in Phoenix to handle anticipated business.
Parent company ArtUp.com Networks Inc. is staking a lot on the site’s success. The firm – which primarily markets prints and art publishing products through its Cimarron Studio and Signature Editions divisions – changed its name from Deerbrook Publishing Group in August.
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