What is Saatchi Art
Is Saatchi Art worth it?
Based in Los Angeles, Saatchi Art is probably the most visited online marketplace for original works of art. Every month there are over 1.8 million visits to their site. They bring potential customers to their marketplace and charge a 35% commission.
If you are really into selling art online: check our article on the subject.
Saatchi Art pros and cons
1. No upfront fees
Saatchi Art allows you to access the global art market for free. Artists from anywhere worldwide can start selling on Saatchi Art without paying upfront fees. It is precious for artists who do not have an art school education or gallery representation. Without Saatchi Art, young artists might not have the same chance of getting their work seen by collectors.
2. Fair Ranking System
Unlike Amazon or eBay, you don’t need to pay to boost your presence on Saatchi Art. Your artworks will appear when entering relevant search terms (e.g., abstract landscape painting) or browsing artworks by category. It’s fair for artists who don’t have the money to promote themselves on a platform. It’s a level playing field for everyone.
3. Easy Interface
You don’t need any IT skills to manage your artist account. It’s easy to edit the title, tags, and descriptions of your listing page. There are some free analytic tools and blogs to help you boost your presence on Saatchi Art. The more time you spend maintaining your page, the more competitive you will get.
1. Saatchi Art’s legitimacy
Many artists know Saatchi Art because of the reputed Saatchi Gallery or Saatchi & Saatchi company. However, Saatchi Art has nothing to do with the Saatchi Gallery today. Originally Saatchi Art was a part of Charles Saatchi’s business called Saatchi Online. In August 2014, Demand Media, a New York-based company, sold it. Saatchi Online was later rebranded as Saatchi Art, with a slogan: Be original, buy original.
Saatchi art might lose its name
However, the name Saatchi Art needed to be more precisely original. Saatchi Art uses a British accent in its advertising, trying to use the misleading association with Saatchi Gallery as leverage. In November 2014, Charles Saatchi launched a secession of lawsuits against Saatchi Art, trying to stop them from using his family name. According to the news reporting, Demand Media might have breached an intellectual property agreement by using the name Saatchi Art. What if Saatchi Art needs to change its name one day? Could it still attract buyers? Would it affect your earnings on Saatchi Art?
2. Saturated marketplace
According to Wikipedia, approximately 110,000 artists from over 100 countries are selling on Saatchi Art. It’s a very competitive and saturated marketplace. If you are not getting likes and shares on Instagram or YouTube, you will likely not get discovered on Saatchi Art. When you come late to a crowded platform, you are not getting the upper hand.
3. Fixed commission rate
If you bring your collectors to Saatchi Art, you are still charged 35% commissions. It’s unfair to artists who put a lot of effort into bringing traffic to their page. You risk losing your collectors to other artists on the same platform. It doesn’t make sense for artists to promote their page actively. There are better ways to calculate the commission rate. For example, Udemy only charges you a 3% commission if you bring your students instead of the regular 50% rate. It gives you a lot more incentive to bring business leads, far more generous than some affiliate marketing programs.
4. Not loyal buyers
Saatchi Art is like the Airbnb of selling art. Buyers will browse through hundreds of works upon entering the site. They are constantly being recommended for similar works by Saatchi Art’s algorithm. Even after purchasing some pieces, collectors might return to different artists. They might even know the artists’ names they have purchased. Saatchi Art gives its buyers a lot of choices, but for the same reason, it’s harder for artists to cultivate a fan base.
5. Channel conflict with galleries
Some platforms work exclusively with art galleries. Some platforms work with galleries rather than exclusively. However, Saatchi Art doesn’t work with art galleries. An art gallery can sell on Saatchi Art, just like an artist. Their 35% commission rate drives most dealers away unless the gallery is willing to take just a 15% cut. Now that Saatchi Art and your potential gallery are not friends, you might still wonder why it is an issue for you. The problem you will encounter is called channel conflict.
What is Saatchi Art? Best for emerging artists
To conclude, Saatchi Art is great for emerging artists who are new to the global art market and do not yet work with art galleries. It allows you to be in front of collectors without paying any money upfront. However, you are just one of the hundreds of thousands of artists on a saturated platform like this. New artists constantly join and appear in front of potential collectors, competing for the spotlight. Are you ready for this modern rat race?
Saatchi Art tips for artists
You take an extra 5% commission if the painting is a resale. in the US, the law regarding artworks resale needs an authentication strictly from the site that was the first sale to validate it, and for that reason, 5% will go to the artist In some countries, copyright laws grant artists 5% of the proceeds on the resale of their works. The professional intermediates who sold the artworks will pay this artist royalty to the artists who created them. Saatchi Art sells original and authentic works; therefore, you might qualify for a 5% royalty when your artwork is sold on Saatchi Art as a resale.
Selling on Saatchi Art is a crapshoot as in any online sale. One shouldn’t pin any hopes of recognition or sales.
Just treat it as an additional outlet for your work. I posted for a couple of years before I got a sale.
Incremental yes, but still a sale. The buyer is also in the same predicament. They”re buying on trust and leap of faith.
What was supposed to be a 60-40% split (used to be 35%) netted me less than 50% on a $6000 painting Saatchi just sold. As an artist it is impossible to keep a consistent price structure when Saatchi discounts up to 25% to random buyers without the artist approval. We get no shows, no recognition, no reviews of the work which contributes heavily to our success. It is a money machine. Once again, Artist beware.
I totally agree. After switching to the 60-40% split, increasing the shipping costs to an unrealistic high price (without letting the buyer actually know how high these costs are) and then selling a painting with a discount without informing the artists prior to pushing the “available” button, I have lost my interest in selling large sized paintings via Saatchi Art. Even if you add an assumed amount of costs for packaging, it is difficult to estimate (especially if you have to also add customs duties), not to forget having to search for the availability of large boxes in the size needed, plus it is time consuming and stressful to get the packing done,. Last but not least I am questioning the ecological aspect of shipping a painting from Europe to the USA. As if there weren’t enough good artists in the States.
Saatchi Online is a terrible place to sell your Art. There are currently one million paintings for sale. The Curators decide whose art is placed in the front of the Website. If you are not placed in the first 20 pages nobody could ever find your Art. I notice the same Artists have been getting front placement for years. If the Head Curator doesn’t like your Art forget about getting recognized. Very few Artists are making any real money. I have purchased six paintings for between $300-150 dollars.
I recently made an offer on a piece of art and the artist counteroffered. The email indicated I had 24 hours to accept otherwise that offer would be void. I did not accept the counteroffer and received an email indicating there was a sale which I wrote back that I had changed my mind about the painting. Today, I received another email indicating the artist accepted my offer and my charge card was charged. My credit card company indicated that the charge is pending and to wait to see what happens. I’m very disappointed in the entire process.
Sadly galleries also like being the middleman. When I’ve sold through galleries, I also don’t receive info about the buyers – I just get a check, and hope that buyers reach out to me afterwards.
I haven’t had great success with Saatchi’s online platform, but I have had good success with the art fair here in LA at least. They’re definitely viewed as outsider and interloper by local art establishments, so they can look bad on your resume if you want to go the traditional gallery route. But they’re also far less gate-keepy than local art establishments (no Yale MFA or connections from Daddy needed), so if you lack the inside track to galleries and you’re comfortable selling in person I do recommend their fairs!
You forgot to mention that Saatchi art doesn’t give you any client or collector information, they are in fact Saatchi’s clients and not yours. You get a shipping label. Can you imagine selling a piece and not even getting the clients information to followup with them?
You also forgot to mention that they up charge shipping to include huge fees. Often quoting for a 1 pound piece to go across the street $60-100 for shipping and “handling” which they have no part in. Nor pay for shipping supplies and for huge canvas is rather expensive.
Saatchi Art and the other art fairs are nothing more than a data company that don’t care about artists. If they could get this much information on people selling pencils and instead of people they could just have booths of pencils and the same amount of people would show up they would do it. If they could make as much money and be “cool” they would. But with booths for some beginning at $2000 (while others are free or discounted if you came from the wait list and they need to fill the space….so weird playing field…) it’s hardly charity work they do.
They also give a discount often on saatchiart.com and guess who takes the hit on that one? You can’t even select for your work not to be discounted. How can you have collectors where one person gets it for 1000 and the next has a coupon for 900?!? That’s ludicrous. And it’s not that they take the 35% off their portion, they take off the top.
So, let’s do the numbers:
You list something for $1000 dollars
Customer gets 10% discount from Saatchi. So now $900
Saatchi takes 35%, $315
You get $585
You have to pay for shipping supplies and either have pickup or drop off. So let’s say $565 is what you gross then you have your cost to make which is maybe $130. That brings you down to. $435. It took you 9 hours to come up with this, sketch it out and put heart and soul into it. That comes out to $48/hour, but doesn’t include rent or space, storage, food, lights or heat or internet. Let’s average out that to $50/day. That puts you at about $375 minus state and federal taxes if you sell a bunch so that’s maybe 20% so all told around $281 from your $1000 painting.
Don’t forget that the client will have to pay sales tax and unrealistic shipping rates so they might pay $1075 after taxes, fees and shipping.
So, yeah Saatchi doesn’t work well as anything but a cash machine for the owners.
They care little about the experience, instead charging artists all the fees as if they promote individually like a gallery would (and the gallery would absorb costs like shipping materials). Saatchi is a for profit company that doesn’t give two licks about artists, despite their overt rhetoric.
We have spent thousands and thousands to be at shows, hotels, rental cars, shipping crates. They could give a toot. And the people that they invite consistently don’t buy artwork. Not just ours…but any. Also it’s overwhelming often too cold or too loud Again proving they don’t care about customer experience to help sell artists work.
They want hype without cost and without compensation. They keep all data when it’s a potential client for us but because the way they ticket any client you bring, they now can advertise to because they buy or get tickets from the event brite link.
If they weren’t opaque about this they would issue tickets for artists to give out, instead of demanding marketing information in order to get a paid or free ticket.
Wish there was a better alternative to them as it’s all cons from our close up viewpoint.