Shop Talk Tuesday: Reinventing an Industry

You’ve been hearing bits and pieces about the launch of the AFB Art Marketplace.  We’ve really been focused on promoting all the great patterns for sale in there, but haven’t really explained what it’s all about – what we’re really trying to do with this launch.

It is scary to even write this, but the truth is that we are trying to reinvent an industry with A Fresh Bunch and the launch of the AFB Art Marketplace.  We are reinventing the way companies buy art for their products, and the way that artists sell their art to companies.

The fact is, companies’ budgets are smaller, and employees everywhere need to do more with less.   And yet, in the world of art licensing, companies are still dragging themselves to trade shows at great expense, or sifting through stacks of cold submissions, all to find the right art, or even a lead that might lead to the right art.   Designers are spending piles of money to be at trade shows in the hopes that the right buyer will walk by at the right time and they’ll land a deal.

Really?  This is still how we’re all doing business in a time where technology brings the whole world together 24/7/365?  In a time when we’re able to filter choices on Zappos to find the in-stock coral colored tennis shoe in size 9 (I just did this today!), shouldn’t we be able to sell or search and buy art for licensing the same way?  In our jammies, or at our desk, or at 5:30 pm on a random Tuesday in February when there isn’t a trade show in sight?  And in a way that separates “the crud from the cream?”

YES!  YES! YES!

Enter the AFB Art Marketplace.  Search for art by style, category, theme, color, artist.  On top of those filters, we’ve added some good old fashioned human curation to ensure that our always growing and changing collection isn’t just more stuff to look at, but great stuff to look at.  The result is hand-picked art from a bunch of hand-picked global talent, all ready for instant (and exclusive) purchase and download.

Come join us at the AFB Art Marketplace and see what an industry reinvented looks like!