It has been a busy year-and-a-bit for Timo Niemeyer, the CEO of Artusiast, a website launched in December 2013 as an art sales platform for a select group of auction houses and galleries.Under his leadership, the site — founded by Berlin-based collector Christian Boros and Kilian and Alice von Seldeneck, the couple behind Cologne’s Lempertz auction house — has positioned itself both as an online nexus for the primary and secondary markets and as an agent of transparency, dedicated to schooling aspiring collectors in the intricacies of the art market.And it has been growing steadily. In June, the American auction house Swann, Italy’s FarsettiArte and the Swiss InkTree Edition joined the platform; at the end of December, Artusiast announced the arrival of two new associates: Munich-based auction house Karl & Faber and Christophe Maire, who has made a name for himself with prolific investments in promising start-up ventures in the German capital.ARTINFO caught up with Niemeyer to talk about his company’s first year and its plans for 2015.Artusiast recently celebrated its first anniversary. What comes to mind when you look back on the past year?Especially in the first few months there was a lot going on in terms of our learning curve and development. We tried out several things and of course we made mistakes, but mostly we succeeded. We were not only able to interest a growing number of visitors in our platform and to increase our sales, but also to attract two new renowned associates, in addition to cooperating with eleven top quality partners — including Lempertz, Farsetti Arte and Swann, among others. Our team continues to grow and shares the enthusiasm of the platform’s founders about the digitalization of the art market. Due to my previous work with a private London collection and Zurich’s Galerie Gmurzynska, sharing the power of art with a broad audience is also a great passion of mine which I bring to the table.You just mentioned the two new associates; how will their involvement affect Artusiast?These two long-term associations will help further consolidate our position in the online art market. With Christophe Maire we have undoubtedly won one of the most renowned and dynamic investors in the German start-up scene. Karl & Faber will support us as an associate and partner with high quality art and profound experience in the auction market. The vibrant interest our platform is attracting both from the German and the international art market shows us that we are on a good path with our unique concept and that our services are being well received.Artusiast presents carefully curated art and artifacts. Is this approach tailored to a specific clientele?A specific clientele? We don’t have one. We want to reach people who are enthused with art and who appreciate the transparency our platform offers. Our customers include art dealers who are well acquainted with the art market’s mechanisms, but also complete newcomers who visit Artusiast to purchase their first pieces of art. Art has a very exclusive, sometimes even elitist character today, this is established and furthered by various art market institutions and their events directed at certain target groups, as well as a very restrictive policy when it comes to the flow of information. Artusiast is open with information, both about the merchandise and our prices. With our regular workshop program [e.g. a workshop in May will be dedicated to the advantages of corporate art collecting] we also want to provide our customers with a more transparent art market and collection practice.You work with a very select group of galleries and auction houses. What criteria do you use?Artusiast wants to be able to vouch for the art we present on our website. We know our partners, appreciate that they have very high quality selection processes and also diligently analyze and estimate the art works which they allow us to distribute for them online. Our goal is not to grow as fast as possible and to win as many partners as we can, but to build and preserve our clients’ trust. For that, we need great merchandise, which isn’t always easy to attain on the art market. Admitting merchandise with ominous provenances and quality without filtering it first may boost sales temporarily, but users don’t forget. So with respect to our criteria for partners, we are a little conservative in our values, which is not always a common thing in the digital business.Swann, FarsettiArte and InkTree Edition, all in different countries, joined the platform in June. Are there plans for further collaborations in other regions?The Internet has no borders, neither does our market with our partners and clients. The big players, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have been dominating the art market for years, but concepts like ours can help our partners compete more efficiently. Many small and mid-range auction houses and galleries almost missed the step into the digital age in recent years. But it’s not too late: the Internet is the best chance to balance out the large auction houses’ dominance in favor of smaller competitors in the long run.Which countries is Artusiat especially popular in at the moment?Certainly in countries where the art market was revolutionized in the early 20th century — France, Germany and the Benelux countries — but we also have many customers in the United States. Thanks to the presence of Artusiast founders Christian Boros and Kilian and Alice von Seldeneck in Berlin, we have renowned ambassadors for Artusiast in the art world here, which of course led to a particularly large group of customers in Berlin. We can’t really identify regional preferences, though: on the contrary, we are experiencing an increasingly global art market. We sell works by Finnish constructivists to Australia, Dusseldorf School Photography to South Africa and British Pop Art to Korea.What are your plans for 2015?We are working on reducing inhibitions when it comes to purchasing art online. A part of that means further developing our platform with respect to information and transparency. Artusiast is currently developing digital tools that help users decipher cryptic art world terminology and provide them with a wide range of information concerning the artworks’ media and materials, their histories and their pricing. We are aware that the art market is a dinosaur in the worldwide economy. It is one of the few markets that are still incomplete, non-transparent and thus in a way also inefficient. It often requires considerable effort to determine an art work’s authenticity; in many cases records concerning the production and history of individual works have been lost. Prices waver and elaborate research is necessary in order to be able to compare prices. What then essentially has changed in the art market since the Renaissance? The crucial information about demand, offer and pricing is still communicated orally at fairs and auctions. That’s how it has been done since the Middle Ages. The digital revolution of the art market will change that; and Artusiast is a part of it.
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