Business Plan Outline
Introduction
Art4Kids is a growing gallery of works suitable for children.
Imagine learning about art from an early age, sharing stories inspired by children’s curiosity sparked by a new understanding of the natural world, imagination, stories, animals, and activities that children and parents can mutually explore.
Objective
Art4Kids has an educational objective as well as an inspirational agenda. The value of treasuring memories from an early age that represent genuine values rather than exploding war toys or unrealistic expectations that every girl will be a princess or every boy a superhero.
Make-believe and stories are traditional development paths that parents too often miss the value of, instead of providing electronic nannies or mind-numbing comic book violent fiction, art4kids provides collectible works for children’s bedroom or playrooms.
Realising value
Art4Kids reproduces and frames high-value prints and makes budget level posters available. Midrange safe to hang (in rental accommodation) foam-prints provide a simple choice of mediums and reflect values of different types of buyers.
Art4kids.gallery has been realised with artist Fiona Scott-Wilson who has created a range of cut-paper and ink works that we can reproduce via printers and framers and have delivered directly to retail customers in the UK.
Payment
The artist will sign a license agreement with Software Antelope Ltd granting a renewable two or five-year window in which their work is available via the site. A deal can be made with the artist of a 10% – 30% royalty for each sale. If an advance is made to the artist, this would be a factor in the negotiation of the royalty rate. An advance is being budgeted for Fiona Scott-Wilson for tax efficiency.
Original works, commissions, and customisation
At the extreme high end, we can offer the original cut-paper or ink works as collectibles, the artist can be commissioned to create bespoke works, or prints can be individually customised. Although the artist has received two commissions, this is not seen as a major channel but is the most profitable. In these cases, the artist is not paid a commission but the website refers the sale to the artist and the fee is then realised by the artist. A standard gallery commission of 10% – 20% could be charged if the website processes the fee. As this is more of a service option and has no mass market scalability, these kinds of sales are not part of this project and should be handled directly by the artist.
Other Artist sites
The director of Software Antelope Ltd has created sites for other artists. Nicholas Alexander has a track record producing successful theatre and musical cabaret shows in the Edinburgh festival as well as building websites for art venues and advising artists, production, photography, film editing and art blogging.
Automation
The site is to be augmented with software that automates the process of ordering prints so that when we promote the site, and sales start to occur, there is no necessity for time being spent processing orders. In the meantime, orders are being placed manually.
The .gallery project is designed to create an opportunity for a web producer to work directly with an artist who has a range of works aimed at a specific market which are licensed as an exclusive sales channel. Art4Kids.gallery will only feature works by Fiona Scott-Wilson, other sites will have their own brand identity.
Expansion plans
Merchandise
As well as images being sold as art, we are ready with suppliers who produce cushions, duvet covers, curtains, mugs, tee shirts and other potential presents aunts, uncles and grandparents can gift to young children that match the collectible art-work range.
Illustrated books
A range of storybooks also is planned which will be reflected in the range of wall-art and merchandise. The first book has been completed: an illustrated work “Timmy the Tiger Cub” which will either be self-published (on an Amazon store) or published on the strength of presales by a major publishing house via Publishizer, either method requires a promotional budget. The synergy of a book, a poster or artwork, a mug or tee-shirt, or even soft furnishings can increase sales and involvement.
Digital Assets
The website art4kids.gallery has been created by Software Antelope Ltd in collaboration with artist Fiona Scott-Wilson. The marketing of her work via this website is secured by a license agreement. Other digital assets can be created when required due to the skills of the software developers available through the company and its subsidiary remotedevelopment.co.uk.
All digital assets are hosted on a cloud infrastructure using leading content management frameworks and kept up to date by our developers.
Future growth
Software Antelope Ltd own the infrastructure and software which art4kids.gallery relies on to be a scalable online business. Once this venture is operating with viability, we will package the infrastructure to offer it to other artists as a) their own website for a fee, and b) as a rented infrastructure for a monthly fee. At that stage, we will seek further funding to expand the business.
