Want to be an art patron? ArtZolo is here to help
With almost all businesses finding a version of themselves online, the high-price art trade is no exception. So far, it has been restricted to exclusive art galleries but now the artists are taking control of selling their own work. Meet ArtZolo, an online art gallery where artists put their work for display and people can directly buy or bid on the website.
Who they are
ArtZolo was started by husband-wife duo, Vishal and Preeti Singhal. Vishal comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has worked with several national and international firms. His family migrated from Haryana to Kerala to trade in spices, where spent his early years. The change in environment was a big factor in his growth as an entrepreneur. After college, Vishal worked at Infosys for four years before moving to Toronto for an MBA. He then worked as a senior business strategist at a reputed firm for two years before ArtZolo.
Preeti, Vishal's wife and Artzolo’s cofounder, spent six years working for her family’s business. That gave her insights into different aspects of running a business from operations to consumer behavior.
Vishal was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when he was working in the US, as he attended various networking events. He says,
"Before I started, I evaluated a lot of options. I prefer to engage in very challenging and non-repetitive tasks where there is a lot of room to push ourselves. After looking closely at few ideas that excited us, we narrowed down to 2 major projects - Education based and Art related. Since the dot com space was heating up in India, after due considerations we decided to pick the Art Project up. We were highly inspired by few supporting family and friends who were into the art scene and they helped us gather momentum at the start of our project."
How ArtZolo works
Once artists register on the website, they can upload a high resolution picture of their artwork without frames. ArtZolo's proprietary algorithm helps protect the image of the artwork thus making sure that the user do not have to put their watermarks on the images and the images are clearly visible.
Customers add the artwork they like to their cart and pay and confirm the order. Once the order is confirmed, the team from ArtZolo contacts the artist to make sure that the order is ready for shipment. Once the buyer receives the Artwork and confirms that he is satisfied with the product, the payment to artist is then released. This procedure ensures a great degree of transparency and also makes sure that the customer is comfortable with a high-ticket transaction online.
Apart from buying the Artwork, customers can also bid on high demand products which are put up for auction, thus giving a real life auction house feel.
Most of their revenue comes from the commission from art sales between 15% to 30% of the value. An artist can sell either open or Limited Edition prints on the site.