Retail giant Walmart is buying Art.com
ARTinvestment.RU   12 декабря 2018

Goal — to lure in the intellectual stores of young affluent buyers who are interested in art. And to resist competing Amazon.com who already has their art-направление

For us it is sounds bizarre. As if "Magnet" bought, conventionally, Posternazakaz.ru. But the Americans are now another stage of development, and retail chains are ready for bold experiments after appropriate obtained of sociology. Now the typical buyer of Walmart stores (everything — from clothing to washing powder) — is 50-летняя white female with an average household income of $50,000 a year. These buyers are rarely wasteful. Walmart, like all, is now gunning for the audience that you call HENRY — High Earners Not Rich Yet (literally "earning a lot, but still not rich"). These include those whose income is $100 000-250 000. Such in America, a quarter of the population, but they provide 40% of consumer spending. Customers Art.com — people under the age of 45 years with an income of more than $100,000 a year, that is just the required "heresy".

Company Art.com was founded 20 years ago. Sells prints (of original oils and graphics I have not found it) for interior design. There are thousands of items, very affordable prices and lots of options for frames and ways. All made in the States, there is a friendly regime return, and among the "chips" — photo, simulating a fitting of a poster in the room. Prints are sold for 20-50 dollars and above. For example, it is possible to buy "the Girl with the heart-шариком" Banksy from 25 to 100 dollars depending on the size plus the frame (which may be more expensive). Business-модель Art.com today allows the company to print revenue at $ 300 million per year. It's 45 times more than the auction market in Russia in 2018.

the Transaction is expected to close in early 2019.

the Main competitor Walmart'and is considered to be Amazon. This is the largest online-магазина has its own unit of trade. Amazon Art. It aggregator, it brings together suggestions of proven galleries, so there is already painting and expensive draw graphics. For example, the signature "Girl with balloon-сердцем" of the same Banksy Amazon.com can buy $109 000.

Cross-marketing with the art can provide retailers not only a synergistic effect, due to the growth sales of the traditional range. Once they do that, then, is considered "sociology" and believed that the intellectual component of art will increasingly involve active thinking people. We, too, will eventually be the same.

V. B., AI

Source: news.artnet.com, cnbc.com