A wealth manager, a technologist, an angel investor, and art patrons walk into a bar, what do you get? No, seriously, what do you get? While this may sound like a joke to some investors in technology, to those who have been grappling with how to drag the current 2022 $55 billion art market out of the dark ages of analogue, managing art as an asset is no joke. In fact, it is as close to the holy grail as we are likely to get in a marketplace that has largely remained unchanged in the last 370 years.
The five-year saga to launch ATO Platform – a souped-up, tech-abundant asset management solution is bringing financial logic and pricing transparency to the art market. The ATO Platform has been built to lead in the areas of art sales tracking and authentication. Its mission – one that even James T. Kirk would have shied away from is to use technology and asset management practices, to support artists, encourage fair dealing, and create a sustainable distribution of profits within the arts ecosystem.
Filling a gap in the current market, ATO provides solutions to something that has plagued the art world since the 1650s when intermediaries – art dealers – came on the art scene: it is the near total lack of lack of accessible sales data from which to rely on as a basis for an honest sale and purchase.
Of course, the recent explosion of counterfeits is an issue. And the pinning down of the artist such that it is mostly those who trade in the artists’ life work who make the profits, is a problem as well. Though both issues are much more recent. Counterfeiting and the exploitation of artists only really took off in the 1860s and 1870s.
To say there has been a demand for this type of solution is a gross understatement. Why has it taken so long? For the exact same reason 96% of the companies from the 2016 FINTECT BONANZA is that the economics and the stakeholders in the art industry are extremely entrenched. A frontal assault – has many FINTECHs tried – simply won’t work. A business model needed to created where the artists, the dealers, and the collectors each had a path to a better business. And that’s what ATO built. The platform connects with artists and encourages fair dealing through transparent sales data and artist resale royalties. It discourages – or rather can help rapidly erase counterfeits through community-backed, and artist-supported tracking. Further, ATO supports artists’ need for capital; giving them the resources and tools to manage their creative works. And of course, the financial windfall for patrons and collectors is very attractive. What was once an uncertain, untraceable, hard to price collection is now managed much like any of their other investment portfolios. With ATO it is like jumping from a hand-written tag claiming authenticity and a price, to having a Bloomberg terminal report on their painting, their sculpture, and other l’object d’art.
The core of ATO’s mission is to advance artists’; careers while demystifying the experience of collecting art. Founder Carrie Christine Eldridge has developed the company’s holistic business model advised by an impressive list of executives, board members and advisors, including Lisa Koonce (President), Peter Classen (COO) Bennet Grutman, 2017 economics Nobel Prize winner Dr. Oliver Hart, and, Cathy Barrera and Guido Molinari, founders of Prysm Group, a Blockchain consulting agency and more. The company’s CTO Benjamin Stewart (formerly UBS, Betterment) will launch the platform on Polkadot’s newest parachain, Moonbeam, to ensure that ATO is secure and responsive to new developments within the blockchain space.
Eldridge is a former wealth manager at Morgan Stanley and one of the very few black female founders in the blockchain and art space. Research shows a staggering financing gap between male and female start-ups. The latter receive up to 50% less funding, and male founders vastly outnumber women. Business Insider notes that as of 2020 only 93 Black women had raised $1 million or more in venture funds. The stats for founders of color are dire. Eldridge comments: “We leverage technology to provide equal opportunities for artists. Statistics on representation of female and BIPOC artists are discouraging. Artists want to be recognized for their vision, not burdened with clearing additional hurdles based on their gender or the color of their skin. The same goes for tech founders.” To date ATO Platform is funded by art industry insiders, team members, and individual blockchain savvy investors.
ATO’s primary revenue streams stem from the tagging and tracking of physical and digital art and royalty collection on behalf of registered artists. According to an ATO survey of 3000 artists, over 89% are willing to pay between $50 and $300 to establish the authenticity of their work with the ability to receive a royalty when resold. Eldridge predicts: “The market potential is. massive, if we acquire just .1% of the target market of contemporary artists, we will earn $270M annual revenue 5-7 years post launch.” Active since 2016, ATO has consistently been at the forefront of developments in blockchain and art. In 2018, ATO Gallery facilitated the sale that established the world record for the most expensive physical artwork bought with Bitcoin. “As we launch the ATO Platform, collectors will continue to turn to us to securely track transactions and art value appreciation,” Eldridge comments.
The company aims to disrupt the industry from within, working with an extensive network of artists, galleries and residency programs, with close to 4000 artists who have expressed interest in using the platform pre-launch.