Case Study - Rise Art
In conversation with Scott Phillips
I’m Scott, and I'm originally from the United States. I grew up there and moved to France about 20 years ago to run a media business. That's where I met my wife.
I was going to go back to the US for business school, but ended up in London instead to be close to her, and I have lived in the UK ever since.
My background is in media business development. I have also worked at a couple of video-based start-ups.
By launching Rise Art, as well as being with Microsoft, I have been on this incredible journey, where we're aiming to help talented artists get more collectors around the world, connecting anyone interested in art with incredible art around them.
Inspiration
My main motivation was to try and make a difference for both the artists and the community. I've always had an interest in art myself.
But the art world in general is a very localised market, where artists sell to local collectors via local galleries or high street stores. We thought we could bring that online to expand the market, allowing these artists to start selling their work around the world.
The journey
Rise Art started about 10 years ago. We first launched it in the UK, but we now have artists and collectors all over the world. We also recently acquired a French business, and we're building the company on a global scale.
We started Rise Art to connect anyone interested in art with talented outstanding artists around the world. We feel that art should be discussed and engaged with as much as music and books, or any other artistic category.
But people often find it a little bit daunting and inaccessible. So, we wanted to try to really tell the narratives and share the stories of outstanding artists around the world with anyone interested in taking part, and give them opportunities to engage directly with the artists.
Rise Art works with notable artists worldwide, from rising stars like Kristjana S Williams and Dave White, to celebrated names including Richard Orlinski and Robert Combas.
The growth curve
There are no shortcuts when selling art. It's about time and trust. We must gain the trust of our global artists to work with them, and we must gain the trust of collectors, some of whom are spending £50,000 or more on the website, without seeing the art/artist in person.
It’s not an overnight success; it's 15 years in the making. Our growth is steady and it's building. But, like I said, there are no shortcuts to success. Our business is something that we've built with a lot of passionate artists, curators, and collectors. Over time, we've developed a strong brand to continue to grow steadily each year.
Challenges
There have been ups and downs over the last four years; it was crazy during the pandemic. The cost of living in the EU and in the UK has made it more difficult with inflation for both collectors as well as artists.
But there's so much opportunity for us. We were working with so many talented artists, and that’s something that we've now been able to grow. In fact, everything from Brexit to the pandemic made us look more broadly than just the local market and expand globally, which is an incredible opportunity for our business.
Using 1st Formations
I found the online purchase process super easy. I like the dashboard; it really has everything that you need for a company.
There are a lot of services that we didn't initially take advantage of. Some of them we now have, and we found that the entire process was quite seamless. I think we had a few issues in terms of billing, but nothing that your Customer Service Team couldn’t help us resolve quickly.
1st Formations today
We use 1st Formations’ resources like their webinars and blogs; they help our business, especially if we've got questions on specific things for filing, and we've always found those tools useful.
The most amazing thing is that we can get our mail easily delivered and scanned into one place. Especially in today's world, where more and more people are working remotely, it just saves us a whole lot of hassle to be able to just collect all that data and easily send PDFs to the team.
