More Answers to “Five Questions” About CultureLabel

Simon Cronshaw, the Managing Partner (E-commerce), for CultureLabel, read my last post, about his fledgling website, and wrote in a few answers to points raised.

1. Enhancing income: In the UK, only 1-3% of retail turnover for institutions is generated online, with comparable sectors closer to 20-30%. We therefore did a lot of consumer research on why this is the case, and one of the most important aspects is that users are on a ‘visitor’ journey to sites, rather than a ‘purchasing’ journey. When users are on a purchasing journey, the category of ‘cultural shopping’ isn’t yet as well known in consumer minds as it could be (e.g. as in the case of ethical shopping). So, an aggregated site like ours can help tackle this issue.

2. US and International presence: We’re currently recruiting many of the major institutions in the US and in other key territories internationally, including Australia, Europe and Africa. These should be appearing onsite (in native currencies) within the next few weeks.

3. Individual artists: Curation is really important to us, so we currently sell through galleries and institutions only, rather than direct sales from artists. [Other] sites…profile and sell individual artist works as their core business model, and are better suited to the unique demands. As Rena mentions, however, profiling smaller institutions and galleries is critical to our onsite curation – you may enter via a Tate or British Museum, but then discover the Baltic or Central Illustration Agency. It’s therefore a great way to pool traffic and make it a very unique (and constantly evolving) destination for consumers.