Renting Gallery Art

I ran across an interesting article on a new tech firm which is renting gallery art to clients.  The internet has been used for many different type of art and collectible based ventures, but here we see again a blending of legacy businesses with the new.  Art Remba is a web based club which rents gallery art to collectors for home or office use.

According to Business Insider, the idea came after a Sotheby's student and realized how much art was actually in storage. The ideas was to get the art out of storage and potentially producing income.  An interesting business model.

The Business Insider reports

Art Remba, a web-based club that allows members to rent pieces of art from top galleries and artists for their home or office. It's a luxury service, launched in the Spring of 2012, and already cash flow positive.

Art Remba takes its members to see galleries and shows, consults them on what will work well for their taste and space, and handles insuring and transporting any pieces.

Art Remba will even break down talking points about the art members decide to rent. Mehta's clients range from venture fund offices and young art enthusiasts, to seasoned collectors looking to diversify their holdings to new markets (think: Western Art collectors looking for pieces from Latin America).

"We're going after a demographic that the art world always wants to reach, but the secret sauce is making things accessible without losing the gallery feel of exclusivity. That's why it's members only," Mehta told Business Insider.

The idea for Art Remba came from something simple. Mehta, who was educated at Columbia University and Sotheby's' Institute of Art, hates the idea of works of art being locked in storage. Art Remba is an effort to ensure that pieces are always being enjoyed.

To accomplish that, Mehta is working with galleries and artists. She may have found herself in something she calls, "start-up free fall," trading French lessons for HTML training sessions, but Mehta is as Wall Street as she is Silicon Alley. Her Sotheby's master thesis, fo example, was called Trading Art: The Evolution of Art Funds and the Feasibility of Exchange Traded Products for Art — she was valedictorian of her class.

Source: Business Insider