242. Art entrepeneurship

Singapore has so many events that it is impossible to keep track of them when one is inside the surgery attending to cases. There is simply no time. Apart from veterinary medicine and surgery, I am interested in art and read many of the art magazines in the public libraries. It is just too expensive to subscribe to them.

One day, I was at the HDB Hub and there was "Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010" held by ACE - Action community for entrepreneurship and NUS - National University of Singapore.

I was surprised to see a booth about to close shop for the day. It is Artyii (www.artyii.com). The founders of this start up (incorporated in 2009) market artists and Asian art.

It helps artists to market their works online and manage framing, shipping and payment. Marketing is important as many emerging or unknown artists seldom can afford to do their own marketing and distribution. They rely on the support of art gallery owners who may not be interested in their arts. It is like new authors, e.g. Harry Potter, having great difficulty in finding a publisher when he or she is unknown.

Artyii focuses on Asian artists (not photographers, I was told). The company targets global buyers and have received strong European interest. "Do you have any marketplace art of Myanmar artists?" I asked Ms Ng Cai Lin, one of 3 founders. "No," she said. "There is a lady doing this." She was quite good in e-mailing to me some market artwork from Vietnam. Following up and keeping in contact with prospect is one of the factors of success in an enterprise.
I remember this young Myanmar lady whose concept is to market Myanmar artwork at the Art House in Singapore in 2008 and 2009. It is very expensive to do it. Now this must be the lady Ms Ng mentioned. I bought one small piece of artwork from her. I am looking for marketplace artwork but she has not many.

Being an art gallery offline is very expensive due to the high rentals in Singapore and therefore an online art gallery such as Artyii is a good concept. Ar5tyii's website was launched in August 2010 and has around 100 artists from Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and India showcasing over 400 original artworks.

From what I read in an Arts magazine, there is a similar concept in New York or California. It is like a co-operative for artists and helps them to sell art online. It helps them by storing some of their artwork so that they don't sell them at a great loss when they need morning. I can't remember this website.

CONCLUSION
1. Is there an online concept for photographers? I think there are but don't know any of them.
2. Is there an online concept for educational photographs in veterinary medicine and surgery? I know there a beautiful and expert textbook illustrators in medicine but am not aware of any online art gallery for this topic. Readers who know, please e-mail to me. Textbook illustrations don't reach a global audience and the beautiful textbooks are quite expensive and hard to find. I found one Singapore publisher printing such books but they are for the University and are very costly.