Singulart’s is a curious case: an art gallery brought to eCommerce that has been generating income for hundreds of artists from all over the world since 2017, who manage to break the borders of their national markets. In May 2020 the platform has already enabled 8 million unique visitors to discover new artists. Now, its business model is endorsed with a capital injection worth 10 million euros.
A unique business model
In painting, photography or sculpture, the conception of borders seems obsolete. Open to the world, Singulart allows collectors to travel from one artist’s universe to another without leaving their living room. Going from Lithuania to Slovakia, from Mexico to Senegal has never been so easy.
For artists, the current situation means the cancellation of their exhibitions and all contemporary art fairs. The massive shift towards digital solutions to publicize and sell their works has allowed Singulart to detect a 15% increase in the activity of artists on its platform, especially to update their profile and their works. It is multiplying the webinars to support its community: accompanying them in optimizing the use of the platform and helping them sell is a priority for the Singulart team.
While more than 3.5 billion people are confined to their homes, Singulart sees its turnover grow by 86% on a monthly basis. It shows that culture, when everything stops, becomes an essential asset for the mind.
In total, Singulart has registered a 300% growth in sales in the last 12 months, which has led it to increase its team to the 55 people of 21 different nationalities that it currently has. In any case, it continues to grow in qualified personnel, with whom it considers it still has to cover – the majority, developer, web marketing and customer service positions. Singulart’s strongly multicultural team reflects the international nature of its business: 91% of sales are cross-border, linking collectors and artists who do not live in the same country.
In addition, in 2021 a new branch was incorporated into the business, Balthasart, which offers pieces below 1,000 euros and manages to reach a much wider audience.
The funding round
To persevere in this dynamic of growth and support efforts with artists, Singulart decided to rely on European and transatlantic funds. This round table brought together the Ventech investment fund – a European venture capital company present in , the Nordic countries, Germany and China since 1998 (which invests mainly in Believe and Vestiaire Collective); to the F3A fund of BPI France, which has been in its capital since 2017; Turenne Capital and the fund of American serial entrepreneur Fabrice Grinda FJ Labs (Blablacar and Farfetch).
The 10 million euros are intended to support the growth of Singulart, while allowing it to consolidate itself as a world leader in the direct sale of works of art by contemporary artists, continue its technological developments and, at the same time, deepen its international expansion, through a more complete artist base and the growth of its network of collectors. This growth will have a special focus on the Spanish market. As explained to us Maria Fountain, Marketing&Publishing at Singulart: «This will allow us to reinforce our support regarding the digitalization of artists at an international level and one of the main countries is Spain. In addition to having a large number of Spanish artists, it is one of our most powerful markets with the most potential».
For her part, Véra Kempf, Co-founder of Singulart, explained: » Get our Serie A with Investment funds fully open to international markets and specialized in the digital field will help us to go through all the structuring stages, from start-up to expansion, in the best possible conditions.”
This is the second of Singulart, which It had already raised 1.1 million euros shortly after it was born, in 2017.
Art in times of coronavirus
Artists are now, more than ever, sensitive observers of our world. Singulart brings together the works created by artists since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in Many of them have already been sold: collectors are aware of the importance of this artistic testimony to remember this period.
Stay informed of the most relevant news on our news channel
Facebook Comments
Disqus