It trades in markets and submarkets that can be quirky in the extreme, even for seasoned participants. Severely hobbled by an 18th century business model, the commerce in art achieves about $65 billion of retail sales annually—roughly one-fifth of its economic potential.
To make the 150 submarkets for art perform as efficiently as all other markets for capital—providing liquidity, transparency and fair access to all—demands stamina and new capital to overcome decades of significant underinvestment. Essential understanding—how to define and reduce the financial risks of owning art; how art prices correlate with other markets for capital; and how owning art or art-price futures can hedge problematic portfolios of other assets—requires an evidence-based level of comprehension that only ARTWIRE has developed and will deliver.
B round will build and beta test the new knowledge infrastructure: the datasets and analytic frameworks that will enable an underperforming sector to achieve its potential. Byproducts will include financial tools and state-of-the-art standards for measuring productivity, also providing high speed “traffic control” governance necessary for transparency and accountability.
C round, based on a subsequent round of financing in two years, will provide flat-out commercialization of the IP and acquire some strategic assets. By the conclusion of C round, all other economic marketplaces will benefit from a reciprocal ability to utilize art as a bona fide reservoir of value and risk reduction.
Some things will change; others won’t. A strategically and tactically outmoded commercial template will be recalibrated. But curatorial scholarship and the open-outcry auction room will be strengthened by new knowledge and know-how pioneered by ARTWIRE. And a unique characteristic will remain: In the economic ecosystem where art trades, modern guidance for the operation of marketplace precision, speed and accountability will be paired with connoisseurship on an equal footing.
A two-part document specifies how B round financing will proceed.
Fascicle 1 provides the background, goals and plan to execute a significant re-tooling of the art sector, enabling it for the first time to make use of 21st century analytic assets.
Fascicle 2 offers a far more detailed presentation, disclosing operational and other proprietary information developed to construct the data reservoir and analytic engine at the heart of sector-wide change. It is available to qualified readers of Fascicle 1—institutional and corporate investors and accredited individual investors—who then execute a Non-Competition & Non-Disclosure Agreement prior to receiving it.
Fill out the contact form below to receive a copy of Fascicle 1