Project Description (long pre Abby)

I’m really excited to introduce you to the project I’m working on, powered by the brains behind

Represent⁠

, the digital agency I’ve been managing for 12 years. We are a passionate team of creators, nerds and business minds, with focus on brand building and digital solutions.

Enough about us though, now to what really matters - you ;)

Artist like yourself have a unique gift of storytelling, that really enriches peoples lives. Our mission is to grow the reach of your stories, and get your artwork into the homes, hands and hearts of more people all over the world.

We are now setting up a shop, with great looking, high quality products (bags, decorative pillows, mugs, etc) featuring prints from a very limited selection of artists around the world.

The profits from a specific artist collection will be shared between us and the artist in a fair manner.

This project represents a new marketing and distribution channel to get your artwork into the hands and houses of more people around the world, who will then also be more likely to purchase original artwork from you.

Even though the objective is to get your artwork out to more people, the strategy will not be “as many people as possible at any price”. On the contrary, we believe our strategy should be high end and exclusive. So we’re selling “valuable art items”, not just “products that look good”, to buyers who really want/value the art and would be potential buyers of original artwork as well.

It wouldn't be good for your brand if the price point was too low and it's for "everybody" - that could negatively affect the percieved value and quality of you as an artist and your artwork.

Let’s say we create a set of 7 Vagnelind coffee mugs at $39. That would be something people could collect to complete the whole set over time, totalling $273 for the 7 mugs vs $7 total for 7 Färgrik mugs from IKEA :)

We have been discussing internally and with a few artists if we should make the products limited, but so far the idea is to make them limited/exclusive by price point alone - you'll just know not a lot of people will have the same because of the price point on the art product. Not sure about this though, so totally open for discussion.

The production is handled by a high end supplier of product printing services, with warehouses in both Europe and the US, so we will be able to sell worldwide. Quality products will be printed and shipped on-demand. This allows us to offer a wide range of products and styles (designs/colours/sizes), without the risk of stock piling up and potentially being dumped at discounted prices. The latter could damage your brand image, something we obviously want to avoid. Rather the other way around, we want to use our 18 years of experience in design, branding, e-commerce, business and marketing, to create a mutually beneficial partnership with artists.

BTW this is not meant to replace your own shop or sales channels, rather drive even more traffic there as well. You will also be able to order your favorites and the best sellers from the shop at wholesale prices, to sell locally at your gallery or wherever you please. That will land you more profits from your local audience, get the products into the hands of the buyer without the wait time of an online order, and save the world a little bit by avoiding unnecessary individual shipments. If you can't or don't want to store products, you could still order one of each product to showcase to potential buyers who would go on to order from your collection online.

Practically and financially our partnership would be pretty simple. We will handle everything from the technical platform to the digital marketing. That means no financial risk and no investment needed at all from you.

We will run artist specific digital marketing campaigns worldwide, that in addition to an increase in sales in our shop, will expose a lot of people to you and your art all over the globe.

There are a few things we would need, none of which should require any significant time or effort:

Get to know you and your brand image.

An initial agreement on what type of products we should focus on. Some art/styles work better for specific types of products.

Access to high resolution digital artwork files to be applied to the products.

Approval of any products designs we setup using the artwork, including both digital mockups and prototypes shipped to you at no cost.

Agreement on product pricing. We should agree on a range, and then we can do testing to determine what price point is ideal.

Access to any demographics (age, gender, interests, …) on your typical audience and buyers, for effectively targeted digital marketing on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Day to day though, this arrangement should require no work or focus from you, unless you choose to engage and to promote your new channel. It will represent an opportunity to earn some extra cash off of artwork already created, as well as a branding and marketing platform to expand your reach and also sell more original artwork through your own channels.

We will always treat you and your art with respect, and make sure your integrety as an artist stays intact. Our focus will be on quality over quantity, both when it comes to artists we partner with, which products we offer and how we conduct business. You will never see your artwork discounted alongside hundreds of other artists. This is very important to us - how we position ourselves as a brand, and you as an artist. We work hard to help strong artists become even stronger, to our mutual benefit. Generally we make sure that the brand and business is setup in a way where our incentives are perfectly aligned with the artists. If you win, we win. If we win, you win.

Almost last and certainly not least; we respect your trade and we are open to any suggestions and ideas from you - it’s not like we have all the answers, but we are really good at figuring them out with other talented people like yourself.

So far we have played with "Sketchy" as the shop name, at sketchy.shop. We find it cool and we’re playing off the “sketching” of artists, so we’re using it as a concept name for now at least 🙂 And then we’ll test it on some more people to make sure it’s not too sketchy and scaring people off :)

Sounds interesting? I have setup a live (password protected) demo VAGNELIND collection with some mockup products based on your artwork, so you can get a feel of how this could look and work, alongside some other great artists. It looks absolutely awesome with your style, so I’m super excited to show you in person or over video, and hope to get the honor of working with you going forward!

Here’s a teaser of how AWESOME your art looks on a few products, and I sincerely hope I’m not violating any artist code by taking the freedom to use your artwork for this personal showcase to you. This is not live for the public.

⁠

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