From Cory: Many of you saw the episode of Creative Insurgents where we interviewed the guys at ArtTwo50. Their company is now called Vango, and after being around for almost a year, they have some interesting data to share. I thought it would be neat to have them explain how they’re using technology to change the way that artists sell art.
You’ll notice that they have accumulated some very interesting data around how buyers are using mobile apps to purchase art.
Vango caters to what Brian Sherwin coined the Lower Art Market – lower price pieces accessible to people who aren’t rich, or who don’t attend gallery openings or art fairs. This is a workable alternative to the crapshoot of relying on the formal art galleries.
Our mission at Vango is to create a marketplace that enables more people to discover original art and for more artists to do what they love. To do this we looked at how we could utilize technology to improve the experience of buying and selling art, in a unique way, rather than just ‘putting’ art online. After debuting our initial concept as an iPad app ten months ago (under the name ARTtwo50), we learned, tweaked and launched a new brand, improved iPad app, and an iPhone app. Here are four interesting behaviors we learned, two from the buyer perspective and two from the artist.
Big Data Tracking Art Sales
For the buyers:
Support your Local Artist – similar to how people want to support their local farmer or buy from a boutique, mom-and-pop shop (even if they don’t know who they are), we found buyers wanted to do the same with artists (this was also driven by wanting a picture of the local landmark or landscape), but like local farms they didn’t have the time to go to open studios or art fairs. As a mobile platform, we were able to easily show local artists by using the built in GPS on our phone. From Cory: I asked Ethan about this and he told me that they were able to show an upward slope in the number of people buying locally, but that this is an early trend. I’ll point out that previously technology was not making it easier for artists to buy locally.
Art is Addicting [after you buy that first one] – For this audience, this is no shocker. But what we found in our initial research is that most people have either entirely original or entirely generic art in their homes. The one commonality we found was both sides had an intimidation around art, but those that had original art, bought/gifted that first piece at some point. So knew that if we could get people to buy their first piece, they would buy many more. This shows in the statistics, as 50% of Vango users are first time buyers, and of those 33% have become repeat buyers (returning after a month to buy a second piece…and we think that trend will continue).
From Cory: this goes back to what we teach about building mailing lists and marketing to existing clients. After you’ve been an artist for a while, most of your sales will come from existing clients. If you have a list of previous buyers, you should be marketing to them.
For the Artists:
Giving artists stats that matter – In talking to artists, we found that the problem with most sites is they can only give them views and ‘favorites.’ We wanted to give artists the ability to understand their viewership and buyers, giving them an intimate connection through the use of technology. It’s all about transparency and creating an open dialogue between artists and buyers. So we built in the ability to give artists more meaningful interactive stats (i.e. how long people look at each piece, when they zoom in, when they scroll to see the artist’s entire portfolio).
Removing the pain of pricing – The biggest pain point we found when talking to artist and buyers was around pricing. Artist hated the setting, justification, and negotiation of price, and buyers were confused by it. To address this we created unique pricing model where artist start selling for $100 or $250 and unlock higher price tiers the more they sell.
While we felt confident buyers would like this approach, we were worried about artist thoughts. Admittedly, we have a lot of artist that find it too low, but for those who do play, they love it. The feedback is that we made it a little more social and less arbitrary by creating transparent and public portfolio growth.
One very interesting behavior is that some artist are selling through Vango even in their studios or at art fairs because again it removes the bargaining as well helps them work towards unlocking higher price tiers.
This is very exciting for us but we are not stopping here. For buyers, we want to improve our recommendation algorithm and use GPS in more powerful ways (save recommendations to home vs office).
For artists, we want to provide more demographic as well as interpretations & guidance using stats (i.e. your ideal buyer is 28 year old female living in urban areas who like medium sized abstract blue art).
One of our core values is humbition – the combination of humility and ambition to achieve our lofty goal by constantly staying in touch with you. So please let us know what you think.
From Cory: modern tools like Vango are at the vanguard of what I see as a massive disruption coming for the art market. While early technology entries into selling fine art are initially catering only to the same old wealthy clientele, companies like Vango are showing that it’s possible to not only sell art using the Internet, but to also enable artists to get over the initial sale hump. If you want to check out Vango, you can visit their website at Vangoart.co.
I have been looking at their site and reading the Terms of Use. How do you feel about the part about granting them irrevocable rights to use, modify, create derivative works from, etc. for their use. I have copied the part I am asking about.
” If you post, exhibit or upload any User Content on the Site or otherwise provide any User Content to Vango, you:
grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable through multiple tiers, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide right and license to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, translate, create derivative works from, publish, publicly perform and publicly display such User Content and any names, likenesses or trademarks depicted in such User Content, in any media now known or later developed, only for the purposes of developing, promoting and providing the Site; “
I think the last sentence is key there.
“…only for the purposes of developing, promoting and providing the Site”
It’s essentially the same language Facebook uses. T&C’s are often scarier sounding than they really are. If Vango, or FB, or any other site just started stealing artists’ art and selling it for money without giving the artist anything they would go out of business quickly because every artist would pull their work and sue them.
Hi Marsha,
Thanks for voicing your concern. Cory is absolutely correct – both in the scariness of the sounds of the terms (I tried to work hard with our lawyer to rewrite this but it would have cost a ton) and that all it really means is that we can display your art on our site, maybe in a social media post, or in other ways to promote the site or the artist, but we don’t own the rights to the work and cannot reproduce it.
Please let me know if you have any other questions, comments, and concerns and we are excited about you joining Vango!
Can’t open my Vango listing.
They owe me monet for a painting I sold.
Anyone else with this problem?
Ray Johnstone
Mezin France
Last sentence turns it from a lu ability to an asset. If I was on their site, I would be honored if they chose/used my art to promote the site.
Meant liability…
Cory
How does one submit artwork to Vango?
Susan, please visit us at vangoart.co/sell-art.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Have a great week.
How do I get my account & financial information deleted from your site?
Hi Donna – You will need to reach out directly to Vango so that they can resolve.
Interesting data. I’d love to see some more specific numbers around these things. Those were my favorite parts of the article – not just the company saying something but them actually backing it up with the stats they’ve found. We don’t get too much of that in the art realm.
I’m not too sure about their pricing structure. What about artists who have proven themselves outside of Vango, selling very well or winning awards. If they want to sell on the platform that connects them with local buyers, they have to drop their prices down pretty low! Is it tied to size perhaps? Like could a painter choose just to sell maybe an 8×10-ish canvas on Vango for the $250 and as they unlock higher prices also start selling larger works on the site?
Hi Laura,
Thanks for the feedback. We intentionally designed our app so the viewer would see once piece of art at a time (iPad its primarily on your wall, and iPhone its in a card view), so that we could measure engagement in a much more meaningful way than most platforms. We can see how quickly you stay in one piece, if you zoom into detail view, how long you look at it, do you view the artist bio/portfolio. All of these are much better indicators than favoriting/wish-lists (which we have to) that other platforms rely on.
We are constantly challenging our entire platform to make it better, and the pricing structure is one of the most unique elements which lends it to get a lot of attention. The main reason we did was to build confidence in buyers through simplicity and transparency (confusion around price was the number one reason we found people don’t buy original art). We do however want to give artists flexibility so we can get more established artists. And the one thing our buyers to understand is bigger usually means more expensive, so we are looking into enabling new artists to upload more expensive art if its of a certain size. So stay tuned.
I hope that answers your questions. Thanks again for your questions and feedback. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Cheers,
Ethan
I want to sell artwork
Hi Padam,
Please do. Join us at vangoart.co/sell-art.
I absolutely understand that artists deserve much more money for the blood, sweat, tears & creativity that goes into their works of art.
I also applaud you trying to make art affordable for everyone. However, there is a large part of our population for which even the price of $100 puts it out of our reach. That doesn’t at all mean we are ignorant, nor that we don’t want exposure on a dat-to-day basis with meaningful art; especially want our children exposed to such & develop a lifelong appreciation of art that is beautiful & can feed the soul, along with art that makes one think.
Is there anyway you can find a way to somehow create a “Bargain Basement” that would keep some pieces at what I’m sure most would consider an obscenely low price of $25 or under?
Maybe by attracting promising Jr High & High Scool student? As a former teacher, I was privileged to see some of the beautiful pieces of art these young people created. Most would be tickled pink to both have their art purchased & have some pocket money. Additionally, at least in our state, youth 14 yrs & younger cannot legally get a job, so being able to sell something they created would make them exceedingly happy -as would it make those on severely limited, fixed income who still hunger for art.
Thanks for entertaining these ideas.
I sell art on Vango. So far the experience has been horrible. I sell a piece, they, notify me by text that a piece sold. Then I get no shipping info, no responses to multiple emails, there is no phone number that actually reaches a person only a machine and they do not return your calls. I have no idea if the person actually paid for this painting or not so I can’t ship it and don’t know where to ship it anyways. Their customer service is the absolute worst! Thinking about removing my art from their site. Willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and trying to be patient but it’s been weeks. NOT IMPRESSED WITH VANGO!
I recently became involved with Vango, and find some of the rules and bylaws to be extremely unusual, if not unacceptable.
Initially, I was informed by email that Vango pays for the shipping cost, “not expecting artists to pay for that.” Then, I was informed again by email that I was not only responsible for shipping…but SALES TAX as well. Attempting to explain to them that unless I sell something in my own state, I’m not responsible for sales tax…the buyer is, and Vango has to report to the state department of revenue wherever they are located. Furthermore, based upon the calculated shipping costs, it would also seem as though Vango is profiting from said shipping costs.
Now I read that even if a piece is sold, the artist: 1) Isn’t informed about shipping addresses; 2) Isn’t assured that they have or will be paid; 3) Is responsible for paying the buyer’s sales tax bill; 4) Presumably is required to forward sales tax funds to the buyer’s state department of revenue; 5) Has money/time invested in shipping a parcel to a potential buyer who may or may not return the art a week later (like a toaster oven); 6) Has language like the following within their user agreement: royalty-free, sub-licensable through multiple tiers, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide right and license to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, translate, create derivative works from, publish, publicly perform and publicly display such User Content and any names, likenesses or trademarks depicted in such User Content, in any media now known or later developed, only for the purposes of developing, promoting and providing the Site.”
Anyone who has ever signed a publishing contract knows that words like “Irrevocable; Perpetual; Reproduce; Modify; Translate; and Create derivative works from”…supersede anything written about promoting a damned web site.
I believe my decision has been made with regard to Vango.
My experience with Vango hasnt been a pleasant one.
I recieved a mail from Vanessa of Vango team that my painting is sold with address of the buyer.i promptly sent it and on the 7th day of the painting being delivered ,i was mailed that the buyer has requested for return and
that they could keep the painting till it is sold again on the site.I requested Vango to return it with no status update from thier end.when i mailed Vango regarding the status ,after asking me for the address to be shipped back…..there was no update on the same.
No response to the followup mails on the trail mail to vanessa of Vango team .The same with the mail to support team on the site.
With this experience i have learnt that this is not a site to be trusted.
i have lost hopes on recieving my paintings .writing this as a warning signal to other artists
I read this article with much interest. Very impressive and very progressive approach. I was disturbed to read the last few posts by disgruntled participating artists. I find them a bit hard to believe, people in business don’t put this much effort into building a business to just let it fall apart because of dropping the ball on the very basics. I’m inclined to believe that there was a misunderstanding, but I think that The folks at Vango would do well to address these dangling negative comments. I will poke around and see if I can find a few positive reviews from artists that have worked with Vangoart. Often times the naysayers are the first to comment and their comments are the loudest, and some people who find a good thing, keep it to themselves. 😉