Oscillating Wildly
Decisions, decisions….I’ll follow the up arrows.
Hats off if you recognize the nod to The Smiths instrumental song, pants off if you know what I mean when making decisions in your startup. (sigh)
Just when I thought I had a direction, the winds changed.
I just added five new branches to the ArtCube.nyc matrix: Toronto, New Mexico, Down Under (Australia and New Zealand), Seattle and Dallas. That makes 24 ArtCubes worldwide. Four countries, 21 U.S. cities… and now a graphics library the whole community can share.
ArtCube’s clients are freelance professionals in the “panic industry” of creatives in Film, TV, theater and events. The Art PA’s to the Production Designer are collectively called “The Art Department” and there are millions of us… and we spend millions upon millions for these shows and events.
The reason it’s a “panic industry”, for example, is because when a decorated a set for a Halloween is suddenly you have ten hours to make it Thanksgiving. Art Department goes into panic mode, and it’s so common it’s a niche problem that needs all hands on deck. That’s where ArtCube comes in, a harried decorator appeals to the community (that have all been there 400 times) and all throw their knowledge, tips, tricks and storage units into to help out. That’s just one example.
Recently, an ArtCubeNYC member posted this:
Hi Cube,
Looking for a prop fabricator to create a HAL-esque red light FAST for this Friday!!! Please let me know rates and building costs!
Panic Industry, indeed. She was approached by an available fabricator, Prop and Paint, almost immediately! But it could have been an entire day of her calling every fabricator in the book, instead of the available makers coming to her. The magic of community collaboration.
This industry makes and spends a lot of money and it is not harnessed in any way.
Men in Black 3, reportedly, had a budget of 215M. Art Department budgets range from 5–20% of shooting budgets, so, if MiB3 spent 10% of their budget on crew and the sets (60% and 40% respectively) … that means that the ArtDepartment spent roughly 8.6M million on ambiance. I happen to know personally that $100,000 was spent just on glass and I bet is was waaaaaay more than that. This is just a rough example.
Using that same rough, simplistic and general math: if 500 movies are made in the U.S. and the average of 10M per budget, 40% of that spent in stuff that’s 2 billion in throw pillows, lumber, paint, sofas and wallpaper. Where does most of it go? Dumpsters. The ill-fated non-profit Film Biz Recyling (full disclosure, I founded it) over 7 years collected and re-distributed of 600 tons of those purchases and generated $400,000 in resales of props and that barely scratched the surface.
ArtCube.nyc allows Art Departments to sell, give away or trade production to production. But, we have outgrown the platform. I need to build a better way to organize a million Art Department professionals globally, the sources that want them as clients and the stuff that can be exchanged, between them and the public, and the (very conservative estimate) of 4 billion dollars in spending power.
It’s not a $10,000 investment to do that. We’re not eligible for bank loans, we’re too young a company and don’t generate enough…yet. Our revenue inches up every day. We’re getting there.
What does that mean? We’re back to Angel investors! I went head first into the VC/Angel route and stepped right out again. I didn’t want to give up equity and I don’t want to have another hand in the community I’ve been building for just over nine years.
Well, I might have to bend a little. This mission is big and getting bigger and I might have to compromise on how it gets done.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
To be continued…
