You have PM

I will no longer support them as well.

Those guys are 25 year old millionaires....

I think they will be okay without our "support"......

Yup. Sure they will be fine without my 49 year old non-millionaire support.

You say you want to discuss the artist, but only ask if we are going to buy it. So what do you think about the artist and their work?

Cheers

What happened?

Didn’t you sell your Thomas S print from them?

You two crack me up.

i used to like Avant arte but i have a completely different opinion of them. Not that it matters to anyone.
They used to churn out quality stuff at accessible prices, the quality right now is still there yet their prices are just crazy thru the roof.

the latest JC release is just comical.

if Avante Arte is the future, then I dont want any part of it.

Hi guys

Really sorry to hear all the pissed off comments on this thread after our release with Javier. I wanted to just explain our thinking and intentions, as well as the challenges of a launch like this — we’re still learning and have learnt so much from this forum (including our very first release when the packaging caused loads of issues and you helped us with a solution) so we’re really open to ideas on how to handle a release like this in the best way.

As you know, there are way more collectors trying to get hold of Javier’s work than there are pieces available and some of those people want to buy a piece so they can resell it quickly and make a profit. We as Avant Arte and the artist always want their work to get to people who want to enjoy it and for them not to pay over the odds buying it on the secondary market on day 2. If lots of pieces come up on auction sites quickly, it can also really impact their overall market, especially when prices are going up quickly like with Javier. If we released every print on a first come basis with no calls, the risk is that lots of them end up on eBay — we saw someone on this forum offering to take people’s money for a piece before it was even allocated for example — and so we try to minimise the risk of this happening by selling to loyal clients we know already won’t resell like that and also having calls to understand a bit more about the collectors we don’t know who we allocated some of the pieces for. We did 300 calls, which was a lot of work for the team, because we wanted a decent number of people who were new to be in with a chance of getting a Javier piece. Maybe this was the wrong approach, and would love any ideas on how to manage it better, but it didn’t come with bad intentions or any lack of thought. I think we could do a much better job of managing people’s expectations up front and communicating in a good way afterwards.

On pricing, as you guys know we care a lot about quality and wanna do the artist his/hers best edition that they have ever done. And we are working with bigger and bigger artist, and also artist that we have worked with from the beginning are getting bigger and bigger and prices are starting to rise. So yes back in the day we did prints with Matsu for 700 euro's or with Michael Kagan and even works on paper with Robert Nava for 900. We like to build up long term relationships with these artist and it is just not realistic to still sell those same artist for the same prices (remember artist also have a huge influence in deciding the pricing). And we are still working with artist that are less hyped or known, last month we did Makiko Kudo print for 400 for example. But fair and good feedback that you guys still wanna see artist and their prints around this price point, this is something we will work on. But hope you guys understand that it won't be possible to release a print by Calleja for 500 euro's or a Haroshi sculpture for 1500..

On all of this stuff, we’d really love any suggestions from you on how we can do things better. As I said, we’ve learnt a lot from this forum over the years — from our first release till now. And I wanted to come here to reply, explain the challenges and the thinking, as well as hopefully communicate that we don’t come to any of this with bad intentions but we're sorry for all the frustration.

Well said. Of course I am also disappointed after a lot of releases as it's getting more and more difficult to get the chance to buy something but that's part of the game these days.

Nevertheless AA is quite transparent in how they plan to allocate the editions and they can sell to whoever they want in order to have the best control possible about who owns their stuff. No need to complain then if you are not one of the chosen fews.

I remain curious to see with what AA is coming up next and crossing my fingers to be more succesful then in the future.

I will start off and say I like what Avant is building, I only buy a little through them but it has been a good experience. Over time I want to find more up and coming guys to buy originals and maybe Avant IG or discord or whatever may help this.

There is no easy solution to supply and demand; that said communication between buyers and sellers (auction house) can help. I think Avant does a good job with buyers getting direct contact with sales reps. Also, the product is very good. Maybe it is expensive but if they mostly sell out then clearly there is demand at these prices even if some people don’t like them. Also, just build a proper secondary trading platform on your own site for people that change their minds or a piece of art becomes so valuable that the ownership should transfer etc. The seller will worry they could be blacklisted but if done on the right way (not a week after getting it) it should be beneficial to all. Charge reasonable/lowish fees and this could be a winner.

Avant are in business building mode and customer acquisition stage so talking to 300 people makes a lot of sense to broaden relationships and the buyer database, bring new people into the market etc. The potential buyer universe is clearly massive and this forum is just a tiny portion of it. I don’t think I see much Asian representation here whereas there is lots on the Avant Discord for example.

In terms of how could make it better? Best customers will get a first look, that is life, people will moan but that is the way the world works. So set a fixed proportion to that. You could set up a customer profiling solution where customers input their current and desired holdings by artist / style etc and then do some sort of matching magic to figure out who would be “good” buyers for certain artists and pre sale some to this. This would also give Avant info on artist popularity etc. and future print production targets. And the remaining after these allocations I would do an “actual” random lottery rather than who’s bot can get through the checkout quickest.

Some suggestions:

- Be nice to your clients (and potential future clients).
Many people who contacted you for Calleja and Haroshi didn’t even get an answer to their emails. A simple email thanking them for their interest and apologizing for not being to accomodate their request this time would have been nice.

When I started collecting, my requests got ignored by many galleries. Some others were nice enough to send me an answer explaining why they can’t help me get that specific piece I wanted etc
Over the years I stopped contacting the “rude” galleries who ignored me and stuck to the ones who were more professional and treated me with respect as a client even when they didn’t have something to sell me.

- Try to be more inclusive. Some collectors are not rich or VIP’s but they still want to have something from Avant Arte. Every now and then do some open editions, posters, timed editions, small sculptures in less restricted numbers to include these people who will eventually grow to be loyal clients.

- Be straightforward and transparent with your clients. Many people mentioned that the hand-finished Calleja print ls were not actually finished by him but by other people in his studio.
Whatever it is there should be nothing to hide especially when people are paying €9K for a print.

I really like aya Takano's art, I was not able to get the last print release due to half of them going to resellers with I hate, avant art has a great collection of people ( vips if you wish to call them like that ), I know chances are slim to buy an Avant Arte release but not a lot of them end up on eBay wich I like, and also yes, I wanted to know who is buying and the general interest for this piece from the UAA Community.