Gallea
Gallea is an online and offline art distribution platform and is the largest online art gallery in Canada. The company aims to be the largest art distributor in the world. They host more than 2000 artists with 14,000+ pieces, partnering with exhibiting venues, showcasing artists’ works on the walls of hotels and restaurants.
Gallea provides artists with a platform to market themselves and enable their art to be used on a rotational basis in establishments so that they benefit from a more professional brand image. The company takes care of logistics and finances on behalf of the artist in exchange for a commission.
Traction
Gallea is currently selling around 25 art pieces a month with buyers in 20 countries and their projected goals are to reach 150 pieces sold per month. Following Gallea’s successful traction, they have been able to achieve an artist sign-up increase of 110% MoM, and have garnered 680 new artists on the platform in October.
Gallea holds 50 exhibit venues in Montreal and has recently signed two more in Vancouver, which will be their first outer-province venue presence.
As a recent alumnus of the prestigious FounderFuel and Zu incubators, Gallea is graduating on to greater successes. They are currently in partnerships with multiple companies including Stradigi AI for artificial intelligence projects, Ottomata for AR projects, and ArtxTerra for artist training programs.
Gallea plans to create the world’s first venue marketplace so that venues can create exhibition opportunities for artists on their own, through Gallea’s platform. This would allow the company to blitzscale its Art for Enterprise service all over North America in the next year. Of course, this requires improvements in operations and technology developments, and COVID-19 is obviously a hurdle, but they are confident that they have the necessary pieces to make it happen.
Funding
Previously, Gallea had received $120k from the FounderFuel accelerator, $25k from Front Row Ventures, and $15k from the founders. In suit of their positive growth trajectory, Gallea will be raising $1,200,000 for their Seed Round starting in January. Secured capital will be used in two main sectors:
Product Development:
Plans for further development will be to automate Gallea’s venue operations to create a marketplace between venues and exhibiting artists. To optimize time, they plan to develop a state-of-the-art back-end system (shopping cart, automatic artist payment commission, etc). In addition, funding will also be used to optimize UI/UX for art lovers, artists, and venue accounts along with fulfilling the gamification of their platform.
Marketing:
Resources will be allocated toward developing a detailed content strategy for artist distribution. Gallea also plans to market their “My Wall” initiative whereby platform users can send a picture of their wall and Gallea will offer curated recommendations.
Revenue Model
Gallea receives a 20-30% commission from the artists who use the platform to share and sell their art, which is less than the competition. This allows artists to get a bigger piece of the profits. The company also provides services for Premium and Pro artists who pay a monthly subscription. Finally, venues pay a monthly subscription as well for the Art for Enterprise service.
Team
Guillaume Parent, CEO, and Co-Founder – Comes from a family of artists, engineering and product management background
Linzi Shang, COO, and Co-Founder, artist and curator
Michael Sun, Chief of Staff, interim CFO and Co-Founder, ex-Hackathon director
Gallea’s team is comprised of 11 passionate individuals with backgrounds in art and technology, from artists and people who worked in galleries to developers who worked in companies that went from the startup to the scale-up stage.
Details
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