Oddly-Named Internet Art Business Raises $1.6m

COMPANY is a mish-mash of art-related businesses under one umbrella with a bizarrely generic name. But the firm—which was only created in March—has already raised $1.6m from angel investors, including the Reen Family Office and Ten Paces Capital Partners, based upon its success in generating revenue through renting out art to hotels and commercial real estate holders.

Here’s the firm’s press release:

COMPANY is the only online art market offering collectors of contemporary and emerging art a curated secondary market to sell and exchange artworks from their own collections as well their recently unveiled website expansion offering Limited Edition Prints from the hot young artists exclusively.

The business was launched only this past March and already generating a profit which made for a quick capital raise. In the coming weeks, COMPANY will debut its art rental business modeled on Netflix and AirBNB  catering to commercial real estate companies and hotel operators. Then in the fall its new reality show – The Collector NYC – debuts on cable fully underwritten by sponsors.

According to Founder CJ Follini, “This investment is a game changer for online art sales by allowing us to expand our unique offline networking events and digital content creation to become the only enterprise in our space with multi-platform ad and sponsorship offerings. Most importantly, these proceeds will catapult us into an extremely scalable art rental model for large commercial art consumers similar to a trade-only Netflix.”

Online Art Network Snares Major Seed Funding (Sacramento Bee)