TPD4166 - Design 8 - Strategy Bram Goosink
Rannveig Carlsen Sofie Bjørnå
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This report is written for the subject Design 8 - Strategy at NTNU
for the spring semester 2019. Design 8 focuses on converting
insight collected thought a variation of design methodology into
business comprehendable strategy - deciphering user needs into
short and long term action points to be taken into operation. This
is done in collaboration with an enterprise, Locarto AS, lead by
Jan Kindem. Since the company is not situated in Trondheim our main
contact has been through the consultancy company Enlight. Our
supervisor for the course has been Andre Liem.
Preface 0
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7. The Rift
8. Strategic Advice
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Who is Locarto? Locarto is a recent startup in the art industry. It
aims to connect artists, galleries, and museums as leverage to grow
the value of art pieces. It’s fundamental goal is to see art and
the art world flourish, reaching a broader audience. The company
has found that the art industry lacks proper documentation on
provenance - a piece’s chronology of ownership, location and other
information not deducible from the canvas.
A piece’s provenance is a key factor in determining the value of a
piece, and so is of vital importance to the three aforementioned
art industry players. Currently the art world relies on artists to
keep track and maintain their work’s provenance. Not all artists
care for this, and this has lead to significant chunks of history
disappearing in time. Today galleries, collectors, and museums
often jump in to fill the gap, spending great fortunes on
unearthing their collection’s provenance.
As art moves between actors, they each create part of a piece’s
provenance. Each actor therefore possesses some key information
about a piece’s history, but this is not worth anything on its own.
Only when the entire timeline of a piece is put together, when its
provenance becomes clear, does it contribute to the piece’s value.
By connecting artists, galleries, and museums, Locarto hopes to
relieve all these actors from the burden of maintaining provenance
in isolation. Instead of busying themselves with keeping track of
history, the art world can focus its attention back to what it’s
all about, the making and appreciating of art.
The Status Quo Locarto has recently gone through a revamp of its
product. The above description of the firm outlines its new
direction in art provenance and its focus on the three art world
actors. Due to the recentness of this new development, Locarto is
still in the middle of clarifying the exact service it wants to
provide. The firm is currently testing the waters, focusing on the
acquisition of funding as proof of concept. This means there is no
strategic direction set in stone yet, nor is there any concrete
product or prototype.
Objective The firm’s new direction has come coupled with a
multitude of questions and uncertainties. Considering Locarto is a
very small firm, an outside perspective on these questions and its
new venture is more than welcome. This is the message we were left
with after our first two meetings with Locarto and Enlight - a
consultancy commissioned to help the founders. To obtain a clearer
sense of direction, and as a yardstick to measure up our success,
we derived our own goal:
“To translate the company’s vision of leveraging provenance into
value
propositions fitting to the art market.”
Introduction 1
Locarto has a strong sense of what it wants to achieve - assist the
establishment of provenance to see art flourish - and is planning
it’s product revamp accordingly. However, besides the basic concept
of linking key players in the art world, there is no detailed
outline of the new product, nor is there an indication of a
concrete market fit. Therefore, our self-derived goal is to propose
more concrete value propositions for Locarto that can be translated
into a concrete product.
The objective consists of several sub-goals: A strategy outlining a
sustainable approach to client acquisition. Market fit alone is not
sufficient in guaranteeing success. It must be channeled to the
target audience appropriately. This means the value proposition
must be presented in a way that resonates with potential clients.
The strategy defining such outreach needs to be considered.
A design perspective. A focus on approaching the market as a
designer. Locarto and it’s stakeholders are comfortable with the
business and art side of the product but would appreciate input
from the design perspective. The approach should be established
accordingly.
Distinguishing factors. What aspects of Locarto’s vision and
eventual project should be spearheaded to set them apart from
potential competition.
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Approach 2
As stated in the previously mentioned sub-goals, our aim was to
provide insights from a designerly perspective. The approach was
therefore devised with an emphasis on empirical research methods
often found in design processes. The following describes this
chosen approach.
Understanding the Art World Desk research. To better understand the
art world, desk research was conducted to build up a foundation of
knowledge on the art world. The material consisted of
documentaries, journalistic articles and a general exploration of
the online art world. Besides the aim of obtaining a grasp on the
functioning of the art industry, this research introduced a more
expert terminology, beyond the everyday layman terms.
Stakeholder mapping. Combining the insights from the desk research
together with information provided by Locarto, relevant
stakeholders were identified and mapped out. Several different
versions were produced, with and and without Locarto as a mapped
stakeholder.
Paper review. Once sufficient understanding of the art industry was
acquired, white papers and industry journals became more
accessible. A reading of this material translated into improved
stakeholder maps and preparation for interviews.
Understanding the Users Interviews. To understand the perspectives
of the key art world players - artists, galleries and museums -
interviews were conducted among the Trondheim art scene. Interviews
took a semi-structured from and aimed to reveal how participants
perceived their role in the art industry. Significant emphasis
was
placed on finding the positives and negatives of their perceived
role and how they approached provenance.
Events. Visiting art openings to understand the networking
environment of the art world. Art openings feature the presence of
artists and their related entourage, providing low-key, informal
opportunities for discussion. Leads to new interviews were derived
from here.
Workshop. A workshop was conducted at KIT, the art academy in
Trondheim. After a brief presentation we were given the opportunity
to question a room filled with art professors and students,
moderating a discussion between them.
Strategy & Value Proposition Value Proposition Canvas. To
structure the collected insights from the aforementioned interviews
and desk research, the value proposition canvas was used
[REF].
Formalizing Strategy. With an understanding of the value
proposition and its market fit, an accompanying strategy was
outlined.
Outreach Outreach advice. Having experienced the art world from
various perspectives, an outreach plan was made to accommodate the
strategy.
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Ecosystem analysis3 Competitors For our ecosystem analysis we
decided to focus at competitors related to the market. This was
mainly desk research, but also based on the information collected
during the Trondheim municipality interview (A.a.3). Two of the
competitors were mentioned in Locarto’s application, provided by
Enlight (A.b.1), and the rest was discovered through our own
research.
Primus Primus is a professional system to register art used by for
instance the municipality of Trondheim. It’s developed by a
Norwegian company run by different museums. The system is also
developed for the municipality, but they don’t require as many
registrations as the museums. It costs around 100 000 NOK a year,
which by the municipality is not considered expensive. Primus is
used by approximately 200 museums and cultural institutions in
Scandinavia. (1)
Art Galleria Art Galleria brand themselves as being “Designed for
the art world”. They have mainly three user groups: galleries,
artists and collectors. The price varies according to each user
group, galleries being the most expensive option, and the payment
is month based. (2)
Artlogic ArtLogic targets the same three main targets as Art
Galleria, but is considerably more expensive. They brand themselves
as “The definitive
database for art world professionals. The world’s leading art
inventory software.” They both have a website, inventory management
system, a mailing system and a mobile app. Both Art Galleria and
ArtLogic give the client a possibility to try their product for a
month for free. (3) Artbase Artbase is similar to Primus. They have
been around since 1993 and is thereby the most experienced
competitor, but also the most expensive one. One thing they do well
is the instruction on how to use their systems. They have small
informative videos and animations describing how to optimally use
their service. (4) Persona.co Persona.co has a bigger focus on the
artist displaying themselves in a way that is true to who they are
as an artist. It’s a more artistic approach and does not include a
database, but more of a portfolio for the artist. (5) None of these
solutions offers the user an efficient mobile tool that simplifies
the process of documenting the artist works the way Locarto aims to
do, which the company considers one of the most important component
of their system. The competitors neither provides a seamless
transaction of data between the different stakeholders and thereby
don’t contribute to the value-creation process in the art industry.
None of the competitors have a specific focus on authentication
either.
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Trondheim, Norway Design students
Kiev, Ukraine UX designer and developer
Oslo, Norway Jan Kindem’s Oslo residence
Vestfossen, Norway Morten Viskum, shareholder
Oslo, Norway Bjarne Våga, shareholder
Lyngby, Denmark Hans Abrahamsen, shareholder
Stakeholder mapping4 As mentioned we have structured both the
internal and external stakeholders of Locarto into maps. This was
done to understand the connections and interactions within the
industry - focussing Locarto’s field of interest in
provenance.
Internal The internal structure of Locarto is relatively simple due
to the very few people involved. Despite the low number of
employees, those engaged in Locarto are located quite far apart.
The founder and CEO of the company, Jan Kindem, is based in London.
He has almost a lifetime worth of experience in the industry, where
he has worked in authenticating art pieces. This work has given him
a large network of artists, gallerists, collectors and art
connoisseurs.
Since January 2018, Morten Viskum, Hans Abrahamsen and Bjarne Våga,
have been shareholders of Locarto. Eidsaa Invest AS (Appendix A.b)
also has a stake in the firm. Morten Viskum is considered as one of
Norway’s controversial contemporary artists, and has also founded
Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium (6). Hans Abrahamsen is one of the
leading composers of the Danish contemporary music stage, and one
of the most internationally profiled living composers from the
Nordic countries (7). Bjarne Våga has a master’s degree in art
history from the University of Bergen, and has been the leader of
the Equinor art programme since 2015 (8).
Jan and his team of art experts possess significant knowledge of
the art industry, integral to the success of locarto. A potential
challenge lies in the lack of UX expertise within the business.
Fortunately Locarto has reached out to a developer in Ukraine.
Enlight AS is also being consulted for guidance considering
applications in funding.
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Present Near future Long term future
External From this map we see that the various stakeholders have
different needs, and can provide different things to satisfy each
other’s needs. First of all we want to point out that the artist
may struggle to find support within this structure. This is most
important to take into consideration for emerging artists who have
not yet developed their network. In some cases the emerging artist
might be taken under the wing of a curator who sees
After mapping out the present situation of the art market, we
clearly see that the interactions between the stakeholders are
mostly based on personal connections. In a worst case scenario, an
artist may be connected to an art curator who in turn is connected
to a gallery, and that gallery may have a collector as one of their
clients. So in the case where said collector wants an artwork from
the artist, he or she might have to go through two other
stakeholders to get to the artist. This is where Locarto comes in
as a
In the long term future, we imagine that there is a significantly
larger uptake of low key art by the average Joe. From interviews we
understand that the art market for everyday households is
increasing as people place more emphasis on their surroundings. We
believe this will lead to the rise of online art markets, an
industry already on the rise. Online art markets are cheaper to run
than galleries and justify a cut in the price tag on art.
their potential, but they’ll still not be equals due to the power
position of the curator as gatekeeper for the artist. In other
cases the artist may be a part of an art collective and thereby
feel the support from a bigger group of peers. The artists can in
many ways be seen as the fuel that drives the whole industry, and
without them there would be no art world. Nevertheless it is the
emerging artist that struggles the most in this structure.
We assume the pricing of low key art purchased by the mass
experiences elastic demand, and the lower prices associated to web
purchases will mean spur online markets. Whilst the price of the
art sold to the masses may be low, the volume of sales is large. We
see potential for Locarto to participate in this market by placing
itself at these points of sale.
common hub, to replace the redundant links in the structure.
The grey dotted line represent interactions that the stakeholders
may still have outside Locarto, and these may and should of course
also include the artist. We would discourage Locarto from trying to
replace all of these human interactions, but instead be a tool for
the stakeholders to reach out to people they don’t yet know.
provides art
provides exposure
provides material
provides sales
Interactions between stakeholders
need for security
need for security
need for security
Other stakeholders’ possible interactions outside Locarto
Locarto can provide independently from other stakeholders
Can provide if need is satised
need for security
need for security
need for security
Other stakeholders’ possible interactions outside Locarto
Locarto can provide independently from other stakeholders
Can provide if need is satised
Future possible interactions with Locarto
online buys
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Stakeholder analysis 5 The stakeholder map provides an overview of
the key players in the art industry and the relations between them.
These stakeholders were selected for interviews, to dive deeper
into the roles they fulfilled in the art market and to infer their
pains and gains in the process. The deduced insights provided by
these interviews are summarized below, a detailed synopsis of each
can be found in the appendix (B).
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Artists The variety among artists and their interests is great,
each trying to find or create a market niche for their work. Among
all this variety there does appear to be a certain hierarchy
according to popularity and relevance. This includes anyone from
the old master’s that have long passed to up and coming instagram
artist. This is not an ordinal list and can best be described with
the following analogy.
At the bottom of the list is the pond. The vast majority of artists
find themselves here, unrecognised and unheard. Artist’s here
strive hard to set themselves apart from the crowd so to be
recognised and leave the pond. At the top of the list is the
stratosphere, this is where well known names reside such as
Picasso, Ai Weiwei or Barbara Kruger. Artists here have established
their market, their work appeals to and has reached a very large
audience. This is where the most part of artists want to be. From
interviews with artists that made it out
of the pond, we learned that it was important to establish a plan
or strategy on how to do so. A prerequisite on doing so is for an
artist to understand themselves, what their identity is, and how
they wish to use this to reach out to an audience. This is an
important development to undergo in art school according to
interviewees. This identity is what defines the market the artist
should look for, acting as a goal to strive for.
The students at the art school said that being an artist goes
beyond producing work. An artist is more comparable to a one-man
company. Besides the making of the art itself, artists have to
create a market for themselves, forge relationships and connection
with the right people, and think about protecting their art from
duplication. Artists often disliked the idea of being commercial -
the production of art for profit - but recognised that this was
needed to survive.
It is worth noting that the established artists we interviewed were
among the older generations,
they emphasized that there progression towards the stratosphere
would have been very different today, where the internet plays an
important role. Since they have made it out of the pond and can be
considered established, they have the contacts they need, and have
less need to market themselves extensively.
Galleries Galleries each focus on their own industry niche,
adapting their strategy accordingly. The classical gallery setup
involves building relations with popular artists in the area,
setting up informal agreements with the artist, and then selling
their work according to those agreements. The gallery receives a
cut for their effort. This type of agreement exists throughout the
industry, both with emerging artists as well as world famous
artists.
Since the gallery takes a cut of the sale, it’s in the best
interest of the gallery to find a buyer. This could help drive the
career of the artist, as well as put them in contact with more
patrons then they could reach by themselves.
Collectors For the purpose of simplicity, collectors come in two
forms. There are patrons, individuals with significant funds to
support an artist and commision work, and there are everyday
collectors, the average Joe purchasing art to hang up at home and
enjoy. Patrons are often high value individuals whose name carries
weight, especially on the CV of an artist. If an artist’s work is
purchased by such a collectors it could drive up the overall value
of the artist. Some patrons even purchase as much art from a single
artist as possible, so to control the market and make the art
appear in high demand. This is rarely done out of appreciation for
the work. This kind of investment, seeing art as a asset-class
rather than a cultural artifact, is becoming more popular among
investors.
The everyday collector has less impact on an artists CV. However,
there is a far greater number of these collectors than patrons.
This means that as a collective, they purchase more art which
enables more artists to create works.
Museums Most museums carry two responsibilities in the art industry
and society in general. One of these is to purchase, store, and
preserve art of cultural relevance that would otherwise be lost in
time. The other is to present this art to the public, often with a
certain theme, purpose, or vision.
Within museums, the curator is responsible for selecting art,
either to expand the current collection, or to setup exhibitions.
The art selected by these curators will enjoy a boost to their
provenance, and act as evidence that these pieces are indeed
noteworthy. It is therefore highly desirable for artists to be
selected by curators, especially those representing prestigious
institutes. Successful curators can be considered the gatekeepers
of the the art world. Those who want to leave the pond must be
selected by a curator as proof of talent, earning sufficient
recognition to stand out.
However, it is not easy to become a curator, especially in
established institutes. Curators will need to prove they have a
good eye for talent to be hired. This means curators themselves are
always aiming to be the one to discover the next great talent. The
drive to find new talent combined with the will of young artists to
find exposure is what brings about fresh talent.
Once working in a museum, curators often have to balance their
wishes with those of the museum funders. The investment made in
museums, whether public or private, wants to see some kind of
return, and the curator has to bring together content that will
meet these expectations.
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An artist’s story 6 What do artists want When asking artists what
they want to achieve with their art, the answers varied greatly.
Some simply wanted to put out great aesthetic pieces, others wanted
their art to provoke thought about complex societal issues. Each
artist had their own idea about what they wanted to express and
what they defined as a successful art piece.
To provide a general statement about what artists want to achieve
with their art is therefore impossible. It is important to remember
that when approaching artists. Each has their own vision in art and
that must be respected by a company like Locarto - being careful
not to group them together as the same. However, whilst it may not
be possible to conclude what an artist wants to express, it is
possible to conclude that all artists want to have the ability of
expression. Artists want to be able to convey their vision.
The capacity of art to express an artist’s vision is an important
factor in what gives the art piece value. This is not necessarily
an indication of how much value, but certainly a value beyond the
sum of the raw materials used to make the piece.
This also brings about the concept of success from the artists
perspective. As seen with the diversity of purposes with which
artists work, their
notion of success varies greatly too. This notion of success is
also a better definition of what value the painting has from the
artists perspective. For some, the value of their work may be its
capability to provoke emotion, or to generate thought among
viewers. For others, success may simply be weighed in the more
straightforward sense of monetary value.
The underlying dependency on exposure To be able to express an
idea, emotion, or vision; artists need an audience. If no one is
listening then there is nothing to communicate. To find an
audience, an artist must place their pieces where people will look,
where it generates a presence, gets talked and written about.
Artists need to find ways to expose their work in order for it’s
expressive capacity to mean something. This underlying dependency
on exposure is one of the few universal characteristics among
artists.
Their are different ways to achieve exposure, they are elaborated
on in the next section, but in general it can be summed up by the
following. Exposure is acquired by displaying works in prominent,
authority bearing institutes, collections, galleries, and museums.
However, for an artist to be allowed to place their work in such
places a curator needs to select it first.
Curators, as described previously, act as the gatekeepers of the
art industry. To get a curators attention, artists must either have
ground breaking work (unlikely) or a good CV, demonstrating in
which locations their art has already been displayed and what has
been written about it (more likely). A combination of both is best.
This is where provenance starts to play an important role too, as
the quality of an artist’s CV is almost a direct representation of
their work’s provenance.
This is a problem for newer emerging artists, that have yet to
wrestle their way out of the pond. These artists have very little
history to place on their CV. For the emerging artist the formation
of an exposure strategy can play an important role in catching the
attention of a prestigious curator. Every time an art piece is
exposed or exhibited somewhere it provides new entries for the
artist’s CV. The challenge is finding, choosing and applying to the
right exposure opportunities.
What is exposure? The exposure strategies taken on by artists can
take different forms. This can cause occasional confusion as to
what activities are considered relevant for exposure. During the
various discussions held with artists certain aspects of exposure
always came back around for discussion. Following are the three
most common aspects.
Displaying works, building a CV. As described above, a proper CV
makes it more likely a curator will accept an artist into a
collection or exhibition. Artists often need to build their CV over
time,
exhibiting work at more and more prestigious locations.
Manifestation of identity. Whilst individual pieces of work at
exhibitions communicate some sense of the artist’s identity to the
audience, it does not convey the full depth of this identity. It is
important for artists to manifest this full depth identity in an
accessible manner, it is what distinguishes them in the art market
and creates coherence between pieces.
Networking and collaboration. A lot of the art market is based on
insider information and connections. This counts for all actors in
the industry. An artist that puts time in setting up a network
among these actors will have the advantage of knowing about
important events ahead of time. A network also brings about the
same advantages seen in any other field of work.
Besides networking among art industry actors, it is also very
important to link up with other artists. Collectives are one way of
achieving this. Especially for emerging artists, working in a group
is more influential than working individually. Artists mentioned
that there is a misconception that they work alone in their
studios, isolated from the rest of the world as they focus on their
art only. In reality, artists look for each other to collaborate
and bounce ideas around, and that this often acts as the foundation
of their work. Collaborations can also have a beneficial impact on
provenance and the artists standing in the art world.
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A Buyer’s story
To get a bigger picture of the role played by exposure and
provenance in the art world, the other side of the story must also
be considered too, those who purchase art. When purchasing art,
especially expensive art,it is important for a buyer to know the
complete history of a piece, it’s entire provenance. Provenance
acts as an indicator of price, an insurance of the right price, and
some insurance of authenticity.
As an indicator of value, provenance shows whether previous owners
have been influential collectors or museums. This may have a
positive or negative spin on the value. When provenance is
incomplete or inaccurate, it may be that some event in the past not
yet associated with the piece will be unearthed, possibly affecting
the price. It may be that a piece was sold at an auction house
known for forgeries, which would result in detrimental devaluation.
A complete provenance mitigates this risk.
In the same way that provenance insures an accurate valuation, it
also insures authenticity of the piece. If it’s entire chronology
can be retold and verified, then there can be little doubt of its
origin. These insurances in of themselves are enough to have
buyer’s pay larger sums for a piece, even if the provenance is not
remarkable in one way or another.
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THe rift 7
When observing these two sides of the story, there appears to be a
rift between artists and buyers on the topic of provenance. Whilst
it’s agreeable that provenance is of importance to both these
stakeholders, they reap the rewards from it at different points in
time. For artists, keeping track of provenance is an investment in
the future, and provides little reward at the beginning of a
career. For buyers it is part of the buying process, and so the
presence of provenance with a purchase is an instant
gratification.
This difference in perspective can be explained by the following.
Provenance only comes into play in the secondary art market, art
that is being resold by a collector, as opposed to the primary
market, art that comes straight from the artist’s studio or
gallery. Art that comes straight from the studio is unlikely to
have any provenance, and so there’s nothing to deduce from it’s
history for buyers. Only after the initial sale does the piece’s
chronology start playing a role. The dilemma is that once the
artist has sold their work, it is not evident to them that the rest
of the piece’s journey through history should be tracked. From the
artist’s perspective the piece has been sold, so why bother keeping
too close an eye on it?
This perspective changes for some artists as they emerge beyond the
pond. Once an artist becomes more known, the provenance of their
work has
greater impact on their prominence. If an artist’s previous work
has been displayed in important institutes or bought by prestigious
collectors, their future work will be more recognized and rise in
value. If the artist has not kept track of their art, they are
unlikely to benefit from the same advantages.
In summary, a work accompanied by proper documented provenance is
valued more by buyers. This appraisal may also benefit the
reputation of the artist. However, works that are accompanied by
provenance only appear in the secondary market. Artists sell in the
primary market where provenance plays less of a role. Here there is
little urgency for artists to keep track of their works, even
though it is likely this would benefit them in the long run. This
is the rift in provenance between artists and buyers.
The Link The challenge is to link the desperate need for better
provenance documentation from buyers with an urgency to push
artists to record it. The responsibility of provenance
documentation does not solely lie with the artist, but they benefit
most from it if it’s all in their possession. Considering the close
link between the exposure strategy of building a proper CV and
documenting provenance, selling provenance as exposure is an apt
practice to close the rift.
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With an understanding of how artists and buyers interact with
provenance the opportunity for Locarto to enter the market becomes
clearer. Together with an exercise in value proposition design, it
was possible to deduce a facet of provenance that bound the various
stakeholders together. This deduction was formulated into a concise
mission statement to act as strategic direction.
To facilitate the artist’s exposure strategy.
Breaking that statement down, exposure strategy is the plan put
into place by artists to display their work to an audience. To
facilitate refers to Locarto’s role in helping artists achieve
proper exposure strategy. Principly, Locarto should provide a
foundation for artists to show their work, be seen by and connect
with the right people, and help with organising their work
accordingly.
From the research we have found that the most available market for
Locarto is the emerging artist. These artists are starting from
scratch and are likely to have few connections within the industry.
Finding exposure opportunities was identified as the most pressing
endeavour for success among emerging artists. With a focus on these
artists, Locarto can have a large impact on the industry as a
whole, lowering the barrier for talent to reach the right set of
eyes.
Besides the aspect of impact, emerging artists are also most likely
to accommodate Locarto in their workflow. Emerging artists are
still developing their work style, and so it is a lot easier for
them to experiment with new tools, especially in comparison to
established artists with concrete work flows. Emerging artists can
also be considered younger than their more experienced peers, which
makes them more flexible and comfortable around new technologies as
used by Locarto.
Value Proposition The information gathered in the value proposition
canvas was then structured into a set of features we mean to be
included in the Locarto platform, to realise the demands from the
stakeholders. These features are shown in the illustration to the
right. The top three symbols represent the organisational, database
part of the platform, while the five lower ones represents the
exposure and networking features, in addition to some other
functions to ensure user safety and support for legal issues.
Income Model An important aspect in the pricing of Locarto is to
find the balance between generating sustainable income for Locarto,
and not being too expensive for the user. The cost of using Locarto
should be affordable for both established and emerging artists,
like students. Most people today are used to subscription models to
cover various streaming medias for music and entertainment, such as
Spotify and Netflix, which cost 109 NOK/month and 89 NOK/month per
person respectively (9, 10). In addition many artists are probably
already paying for the digital tools they need to do their work,
such as the adobe package.
Whilst the Adobe Creative Cloud goes for 590 NOK/month for
individuals and 191 NOK/ month for students, Locarto may not be in
the position to price their service as high (11). Adobe has been on
the market for almost 40 years and has more than 30 years
experience with their products. Through these years they have
developed a reputation as a professional system provider, and most
people are familiar with the opportunities that lies in their
program packages.
Public profile page
Easy portfolio/ applications
Legal document templates
Details about each piece
Exposure and connections to get you to the stratosphere
Locarto
Illustration of the proposed features of the Locarto system.
Locarto, on the other hand, has to build this reliability from
scratch. Therefore, we would recommend Locarto to offer their
services to a price similar to Spotify and Netflix; around 100
NOK/month for artists. For galleries and museums the price should
be higher due to their financial capacity. We would also advise
Locarto
to offer a free trial period for potential customers to try out
their systems before committing to a payment plan. This free trial
may be long enough to create a dependency on the product, once an
artist has done all the work of uploading their material, the
barrier to drop the product becomes greater.
32 33
Turn of events 9 After presenting our strategic direction to
Enlight, we learned through their feedback that even though they
found our advice to target emerging artists interesting, they
believed our focus was too much on the emerging artist and not
enough on the value chain of the entire art industry. They
explained to us that if the general value of art in the world is
increased, this will automatically benefit the emerging artists
too. To us, this gave connotations to the trickle-down economics
theory, which by many have been debunked as a system that mainly
benefit the already wealthy and privileged. This may not have been
the point that the guys from Enlight wanted to bring forth, but it
left us under the impression that Locarto is meant to make art that
already sells for millions sell for even more, and that that
somehow will benefit young artists just graduating from art
school.
This interpretation of Locarto’s vision may have been used to
challenge us on our thoughts around Locarto’s business, and to
create an interesting discussion on the forces in the art industry,
which it definitely was. With that said we would highly discourage
both Locarto themselves and Enlight or other possible collaborators
from using this approach to explain Locarto’s intents in
public
purposes. We see it as extremely important that Locarto take a
humble and helpful, yet professional and skilled role when
promoting Locarto to potential clients. Many, especially emerging
artists, may be put off by the thought of joining a system created
to make the wealthy wealthier.
A week later we did the same presentation for Jan. His response to
our work was unlike Enlight’s. In fact we had made similar
conclusions about the specific features of Locarto, and he showed
us the beta version of the service which had been developed over
the previous few months. It already included all the features we
had proposed, which was uplifting to all of us, having our
assumptions and research based claims confirmed. In collaboration
with Jan, we listed some possible opportunities for improvement and
features that could be added or developed. These then became our
design brief. After this conversation we also better understood the
value of the catalogue raisonné, and gained greater insight into
Locarto’s actual vision, which is to create a massive network of
information to tie the loose ends of the art world together in one
all-an- artist-needs service.
34 35
Understanding the Importance of the Catalogue Raisonné
A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all
the known works of an artist either in a particular medium or all
media. They may provide some or all of the following:
Title and title variations Dimension/Size Date of the work Medium
Current location/owner at time of publication Provenance (history
of ownership) Exhibition history Condition of the work
Bibliography/Literature that discusses the work Essay(s) on the
artist Critical assessments and remarks Full description of the
work Signatures, Inscriptions, and Monograms of the artist
Reproduction of each work List of works attributed, lost,
destroyed, and fakes Catalog number
In earlier years, the catalogue raisonné was mainly reserved for
very valuable artists, due to their risk of being forged, but also
because of the cost of producing the catalogue, which were high.
The catalogues have tended to be made towards the end of an
artist’s life, or even after their death.
Another reason for having catalogue raisonnés is, for artists that
run workshops, to reveal whether a piece is actually done by the
artist, or his or her assistants, where the latter is less
preferable (13). On the International Foundation for Art Research’s
(IFAR) webpage it is possible to search
for catalogue raisonnés by the artist’s country of birth (14). When
searching for Norway, only three artists show up. Compared to our
neighbours in Sweden and Denmark, they have respectively nine and
twelve. The UK has, in comparison, almost 200 artists listed in
this database. Of course we have to take into account that the
population of the UK today is 13 times bigger than Norway’s, but if
we a assume that a given percentage of the population of any
country are artists, the number of registered catalogue raisonnés
from the Scandinavian countries should be higher.
According to statista.com, there were 67 000 artists in the UK in
2018 (15). This number is vastly higher than the 200 registered
catalogue raisonnés, and we also see this as a great opportunity
for Locarto. Also, as previously mentioned, it is a tendency that
the catalogues are made after the artists’ passing, which is
something Locarto should strive to change. By giving their users
and easy way to document every move and transaction related to
their works, this digital catalogue raisonné will be created
automatically.
One artist that has managed to keep proper documentation on his
pieces is Gerhard Richter. In addition to publishing several
printed catalogue raisonnés, he shows the complete provenance of
all his art works on his personal webpage like shown in to the
right. According to Jan Kindem, this is a part of the reason for
his great success in the industry.
Overview of complete provenance of “Two Candles” by Gerhard Richter
(16).
36 37
Design concept 10
We learned through our Skype meeting with Jan that Locarto had
concluded with a strategic direction similar to ours. Jan had even
started the development of a product accordingly. It didn’t appear
beneficial for us to develop an app proposal ourselves, as the work
would be almost parallel to Locarto’s current efforts. What
Locarto’s strategy lacked is an approach for acquiring users
sustainably. Therefore we decided, with Jan’s blessing, to
translate insights from our Trondheim art world emergence to form a
client acquisition recommendation. Besides the acquisition advice,
new features are suggested in the long and short term for Locarto
to take up in their plans.
38 39
We are on the same page, but we would like to develop some specific
features as follows.
1) A two-way validation system that helps authenticate changes in
the value chain when art is passed on.
2) Helping artists understand the importance of a catalogue
raisonée.
3) Thinking of the future and being including of all types of
art.
10.1 Two-way validation This is one of the features that will make
Locarto stand out from the competitors. We want Locarto to have a
function that lets artists, collectors, galleries and museums
confirm the movement of an art piece together. This could be
similar to the blockchain concept and will help the artist to
create a trustworthy catalogue raisonné. This step will make it
significantly easier to keep track of your provenance and provide
better credibility for it.
An important aspect of this feature is that if an artist decides to
stop using Locarto, the validated transactions of art involving the
artist remain in the system. This keeps everyone else’s catalogue
raisonné intact, without loosing the validation provided by the
leaving customer. Importance of provenance/catalogue raisonné One
of Locartos’ main focuses is to help creating catalogue raisonnés
and to show the importance of provenance. For this to work they
need to be able to explain to their potential clients why keeping
track of their work is beneficial to their career and business.
This should be part of Locarto’s sales pitch, especially when
targeting emerging artist, but should be considered for every user.
This should for instance be a part of the main site on the
application webpage and can be visualised by video or animation.
The visualisation of provenance could help explain to artist why
they need Locarto without them having to read a huge amount of
text.
10.2 System security A big part of Locarto’s vision is to create a
large network of information about art. For this to work, it’s
important that the information imported to Locarto’s systems is
secured. Like with blockchain, all the pieces of information that
builds up the system, should be impossible to
extract. This means that Locarto’s storage system needs to be
protected against invaders trying to change or remove information.
This in turn puts some limitations on the users ability to edit
their information. If the presence of a painting at an exhibition
is confirmed through two way confirmation, neither party should be
able to change the validated information by themselves.
Some months ago, in the middle of a data migration project, the
formerly popular social networking platform Myspace lost all the
music uploaded to their archives between 2003 and 2015. This means
an estimated 53 million files were lost to history (12). Incidents
like this is crucial for Locarto to avoid when storing numerous
files and images, and this places demands on the security of the
system. 10.3 Locarto community/support For the user of Locarto to
feel supported, regardless of occupation there should be
explanation on how to use the service. This could be in the form of
FAQs, a forum and short video explanations. This way the users feel
seen and are able to manage the webpage and app independently. A
good example of this is the budget software YNAB who have a general
support page with link to videos, guides and podcasts (17).
10.4 Ready for other medias The art world is constantly changing,
and artist are looking into new ways to express themselves,
therefore it’s important to keep up with these demands. As Locarto
is today it’s more focused on painting and prints. To remain
relevant, Locarto should explore other aspects of art and how to
present them in the best and most user-friendly way possible.
concept development
40 41
10.5 Outreach plan In and around the interviewing, many subtleties
were observed particular to the art scene. These subtleties and
formalities form a somewhat unspoken etiquette as to what is
acceptable in the art world, and influence how the industry will
respond to Locarto. The subtleties that were uncovered have been
translated into points of interest below, each relevant to customer
acquisition and retainment.
The points below are split into two groups. The first group is
about the message send out by Locarto, and focuses on the conveying
a likeable image and ethic in the art scene. The other group is
about actions Locarto can take to acquire more customers and prompt
the market for better provenance documentation.
10.5.1 Message Vision It is integral that Locarto communicates its
future vision of the art world. It conveys the companies
sense of duty towards the industry. The art world is unfortunately
tarnished by several negative stories, where emerging artists are
taken advantage of by larger, more powerful players. This was
certainly something interviewees liked to remind us of. Artists in
general were reluctant to questioning if they didn’t believe
Locarto to be a small start up, probably under the impression that
a larger firm was backing us. It is therefore imperative that
Locarto is not perceived this way, and that whilst they may be a
corporate player, they are not using artists purely for
profits.
Facilitator Artists are independent, or at least want to appear
that way. They have their own mind as to how they want to achieve
exposure, and their own ideas about how to present their work.
Locarto should therefore take the position of a facilitator, rather
than a creator of exposure. This means they should be flexible to
the demands of the artists that are using it. The work recorded on
Locarto’s system should be easily manipulatable,
flexible for different types of downloads, and provide control as
to how it is shared.
10.5.2 Actions Awareness at art schools During the workshop at the
art school it became apparent that few students had given their
exposure strategy any extended thought - this was to the stark
surprise of several professors present, who had mentioned in
earlier interviews that students should think about exposure as of
day one. If exposure is an unlikely topic of urgency on the mind of
art students, then it is unlikely the idea of provenance has come
to light.
This cues an excellent opportunity for Locarto to act on. The art
school expects it’s students to know about exposure, and
indirectly, the recording of provenance to support it. Locarto
could help the schools in teaching students about exposure and
provenance, either by stepping in entirely to teach directly to
students, or by teaching staff to teach students. It may also
be
smart to accompany this with free licences to locarto.
Word of mouth However Locarto frames it’s value proposition,
potential users will always have some level of doubt as to the
effectiveness of the product. It is one thing to promise an
improvement in (artist) workflow, many services in other industries
already do, it’s another for new customers to actually believe
this. This is where word of mouth will play an important role to
bypass such doubts.
Potential clients can be reached in this fashion through different
channels. The most likely is true to the classical sense of word of
mouth, a friend or colleague suggestion Locarto. The connections
Locarto possess with the art scene could be used to induce such
behavior among artists.
The word of mouth principle could also be used online, where
websites such as Reddit or Medium are regarded as trusted sources
for
42 43
recommendations. Having a presence on these platforms may create a
better sense of trust in Locarto from potential and existing
clients.
10.6 Potential Challenges The main problem for Locarto would be
lack of customers. It will be hard to reach a critical mass before
the service is up and running. Luckily the leaders of Locarto are
well connected in the art world and have already started testing
their service on well known people in the art world.
We have also advised them to focus on emerging artist. This will be
easier to achieve if Locarto is already used by established artist,
ensuring credibility of the service. This again will also be a
challenging task, but one that will hopefully be lessened by Jan’s
contacts in the industry.
As mentioned in the outreach, how Locarto presents itself will be
crucial in how customers will respond, especially when it comes to
artists. Emerging artists are at a vulnerable stage of their
career, they don’t want to be exploited. As time goes by this
problem expands towards the other actors too. Museums and galleries
will need Locarto’s outreach to adapt to their needs, it is
unlikely this will be identical to that of the outreach towards
artists.
A plausible issue leading up from this is that users perceive
Locarto to favor one of the actors within the industry. This could
severely discourage the other actors from trusting Locarto to do
what’s best for everyone. Especially in the case of artists, taking
actions that grow profits at the cost of their work will be
detrimental to customer retention, or Locarto’s vision of
connecting stakeholders and provenance.
Locarto faces two potent competitors, and besides the way it
positions itself in the industry, it also need to place emphasis on
good design to distinguish itself from them. The main touchpoint
customers have with Locarto is through their (web)app. This means
that most customers will base their opinion of Locarto on their
experience with the (web)app. Expectation of apps today are high,
customers expect them to be designed intuitively and effectively.
Hiccups can quickly lead to irritation, especially since the use of
Locarto is a change in the day to day operations of an artist. To
ensure this change fits in the workflow of users, their workflow
needs to be examined and learned from. Proper design processes that
build on such knowledge are needed to achieve an app that is truly
pleasant to use. This and the mindset that an app is never really
finished and can always be improved are key to keeping up with user
expectations.
Besides the UX design of the (web)app, the customer support needs
to be dependent. Entrusting an online entity with your data is
currently not very popular. Entrusting an online entity to be the
backbone in cataloguing an artist’s life’s work can be assumed to
meet the same suspicions. Proper, dependent customer supports shows
user that Locarto can be trusted. This becomes especially important
when Locarto moves towards features such as two way authentication,
where the provenance it authenticates starts to have significant
impact on art valuing.
Another challenge that follows closely is the price for the
service. As mentioned in the ecosystem analysis most of Locarto’s
competitors are on the higher cost of the spectrum. Even though
Locarto wants to offer their services to a significantly lower
price, they have to make it worth the fee. This is especially
important when it comes to emerging artist who are not know for
their flamboyant lifestyle.
44 45
Conclusion 11
Locarto is finding itself at at the verge of a new market, and
whilst we have come to the same conclusion as the firm, we hope the
insights accumulated through interviews will bring about more
success. In the short run, Locarto should aim to produce an app
flexible enough to facilitate whatever outreach strategy an artist
chooses. In the long run we hope to see Locarto acquire enough
artist users to justify the joining of galleries and museums.
If Locarto manages to bring these players together it will be a
first. From this point out it has the ability to provide many more
supporting services. The two way validation, or peer reviewing, of
art transactions could lead to a much stronger documentation of
provenance world wide. The firm could look into blockchain
technologies to help artists and buyers keep track of their work,
creating registrees that would even outlast the life span of the
company.
46 47
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