With the election looming in the United States and uncertainty overshadowing the art market, Artfinder's CEO Jonas Almgren takes a look at Artfinder's recent American art sales. The results? Exciting!
Read on to learn more...
American art sales soar!
Artfinder reached an important milestone last month: for the first time, we sold more art in the United States than in any other region. We always knew that American art sales would provide huge opportunities but we did not expect it to take off quite like this before we even launched our US campaign. In fact, we’re still months away from opening Artfinder HQ in the US, yet the region grew a remarkable 235% last quarter.
This is partly the result of ever-increasing interest in Artfinder among US art lovers. In the last 12 months alone we’ve added over 100,000 new American members, bringing our total membership to over half a million. In addition to this, our cousins over the pond generally tend to buy more art and at a higher price. Impressively the average order value in the US last month was 50% higher than in the United Kingdom.
Key regions driving American art sales
Within in the US, California is our strongest region, followed by New York, Texas and Florida. Our strongest metropolitan area is New York, followed by the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose), Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta.
The United States and beyond
Going into the second half of the year with this strong momentum behind us, we’re looking forward to an incredibly interesting final quarter. We’re delighted to see that US art buyers are starting to realise that we have a broader and more varied selection of original art than anyone else (over 250,000 artworks) and that they not only enjoy browsing, but buying as well, safe in the knowledge that we have a generous 14-day returns policy.
What's more, we're very excited that our business development manager Angela will be continuing her travels from earlier this year and that her reconnaissance missions will provide further food for thought.
Trends in American art sales
I cannot complete a round-up of sales performance in the United States without mentioning a few of the quirks that we see in buyer behaviour in the US:
-
Landscapes and abstracts continue to be popular among our customers in the US
-
Portraits continue to outsell animals in the US, whereas the direct opposite is it true in the United Kingdom
-
Our US customers spend the most dollar on abstracts and portraits, whereas customers are most willing to spend on pieces portraying architecture this side of the pond
-
Buyers in the US prefer realistic works to expressive works, whereas the opposite is the case in the United Kingdom
Header image: 'Colors' by Bert Munoz
