Indiewalls-A Network of Art Traders
Two years ago, a good friend of mine graduated from Cornell and founded a start-up called Indiewalls. Based online at http://indiewalls.com/, Indiewalls sets to meet the demand of matching artists with venues to display such art, like coffee-shops hotel lobbies and the such. They give these venues a chance to line their walls with professional artwork by renting art at a low cost for a small amount of time. This provides the artists with a venue to display their artwork for a more permanent sale, while also allowing venues to vary their décor and stay up with the times. Indiewalls makes money by charging a 25% commission for all sales, either to venues or permanent buyers. This year gigaom.com rated them as a top 5 start-up at the Dream-It Ventures Conference in New York City; see http://gigaom.com/2012/08/08/5-startups-to-watch-from-dreamit-ventures-nyc-demo-day-2012.
Not only is Indiewalls a successful-start up company their company structure is an interesting combination of the trader concept we saw in chapter 13 and the hub and authority scoring in chapter 15. One can model the Indiewalls business model as traders between artists and venues. The sellers are the artists willing to set a certain value for their art and ready to sell for 75% of that value, Indiewalls as traders gaining 25% of the value and the buyer paying the exact seller’s value for the art. However, Indiewalls due to its use of venues in New York City also can be modeled as a hub with many links. They have a large network of artists giving them a large hub score for venues, making venues more and more likely to do business with them and be hubs for the art. However, the venues themselves also give authority scores to Indiewalls artists with the permanent art buyers. The more and more a buyer sees Indiewalls at trendy venues the more authority their artists have and the buyer becomes more likely to buy the art from Indiewalls. Thus, Indiewalls has been able to become an online art hub and in a short time built a company that is a self-sustaining network of art traders.
I really like this explanation of the company. The understanding of positioning Indiewalls as a hub is an interesting one. I may use it at the next pitch.
Thanks,
Gavi