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PARIS, Oct. 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The historic EGM meeting on 30 September 2019 has fully validated our strategy of changing our name and extending our corporate purpose from Artprice.com to Artmarket.com and all of the relevant statute amendments. All of the shareholders fully understood and voted to approve our strategy. thierry Ehrmann, Founder/CEO of Artprice, along with all his colleagues, wishes to thank them for their confidence and support.
To be called ArtMarket.com on the stock market (the mnemonic code is still PRC) represents a superb intangible asset adding enormous value to the company. Indeed, apart from the intrinsic value of the DNS, the new name will propel our group into the smallest interstices of the tentacular Internet and search engines all over the world.
Difficult to talk about the Art Market without using the term "Art Market"... What could be more unifying? We have become unavoidable? For us the two words represent Internet's Holy Grail... opening doors in a rational and scientific way to almost all the information on the Art Market.
Calling ourselves ArtMarket.com is the instant equivalent of a major global campaign of communication and promotion costing several tens of millions of euros... and there can be no doubt about its positive impact on the stock market, especially as we expecting a record result this year.
In 2019, Artprice and Cision (PRNewswire) are renewing their framework agreement with Artmarket.com so that we can send our proprietary content in real time to 5 continents in 18 languages reaching 2.1 billion individuals (notary registered 2019 data, Maître Pons). This unparalleled alliance between two world leaders in the Art and the Wire markets – after 20 years of collaboration – has effectively created the largest press agency on the Art Market.
As we accelerate towards the all-digital era, Artmarket.com allows Artprice.com to accompany the historical paradigm shift that dematerialization represents in order to become a global player in the Art Market.
We are also very proud to represent "French tech" (with the renewal of our state-sponsored innovative company label [BPI] for another 3 years) in a digital world where the global leaders are mostly Anglo-Saxon.
In June 2019, Artprice economists identified 37 companies worldwide whose corporate purpose was similar to ours and who raised more than $50 million since 2000. 100% of these companies have filed for bankruptcy or have ceased operating due to a lack of revenue. This means that Artmarket.com is now operating in a massive open field with colossal barriers to entry, both in terms of the capital required and the time needed to set up this kind of business.
Patrick Drahi's recent acquisition of Sotheby's is a starck reminder that the Art Market is not immune to digitization and dematerialization. Drahi is a Networks and Telecoms man.
Nearly 20 years ago, Artprice was far ahead of its time and it still is. While many doubted the Art Market would ever change and adapt to new technologies, we were convinced it would. Our position as World Leader in Art Market Information is the direct result of this firm conviction.
While some continued secretly recording sales result (thereby perpetuating the Art Market's opacity and its restriction to a caste of insiders), Artprice's historians and documentalists digitized and annotated hundreds of millions of historical documents, allocating IDs to every artist and every work. This massively time-consuming investment generated the largest existing databases which we made available to everyone on the Art Market so that artworks could be bought and sold under optimal conditions and people could educate themselves about the art market.
Over two decades, Artprice has seen its standardization accepted by the Art Market and it is now considered a vital and authoritative reference by all players in this market, whatever their size and wherever they are located.
It should be noted that Artprice has acquired a number of highly valuable scientific and historical documents around the world and that these assets will be fully exploited by Artmarket.com thanks to the extension of its corporate purpose and the amendments to its Statutes that have just been approved.
Our headstart has allowed us to win...
Our work, our ideas and our convictions have helped to make the Art Market more understandable and more democratic. The knowledge previously guarded by a small number of insiders is now accessible to all of our clients. Meanwhile, the volume of secondary market transactions has rocketed, massively increasing the Art Market's liquidity. As we have repeatedly explained in our communications over recent years, it is now an efficient market generating returns comparable to financial markets.
Since 2000, the Art Market's global secondary market turnover has risen 383% and its return on investment, according to our Artprice100® index, was 16% in the first half of 2019 compared with interest rates close to zero on the money markets.
As we predicted, the Internet has of course exploded exponentially. Whereas Internet consultation used to be only possible from desktop or home computers, now, with the mobile Internet reaching 5.4 billion smartphones in the world, one can access the same services anywhere: from galleries, auction rooms, art dealers, valuers, art fairs, museums, etc. Today 4G, Wi-Fi via optical fiber and now ultra high speed 5G networks make it even easier and faster for Art Market and its customers around the world.
According to our calculations, with our recent strategic developments – including the name change to Artmarket – we are currently at less than 10% of our economic potential with a horizon of 5 years.
In short, the Art Market cannot indefinitely ignore the digital era and the Internet. Compared to many other sectors in the economy, the Art Market is operating with a unique lag of nearly 30 years... and that lag will inevitably translate into Artmarket's future prosperity.
The future is in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Augmented and/or Virtual Reality, 8K, and Blockchain...
Artmarket.com has no intention of lagging behind these technologies. An article published in Les Echos (24.09.2019) gives a superb indication of where we are heading: "Artificial Intelligence enters the Museum World" (L'intelligence artificielle entre au Musée).
Artmarket.com's role as the spearhead of the Art Market's technological future is 100% legitimate considering that its head offices are located at the heart of the Organe Contemporary Art Museum (which manages the open-to-the-public La Demeure du Chaos (Abode of Chaos dixit the NY Times), ranked the top Contemporary Art Museum in France by Google reviews (notary registered ranking by Maître Pons on 4 September 2019).
During the recent European Heritage Days (weekend of 21 and 22 September 2019), The Organe Contemporary Art Museum (effectively Artprice/Artmarket's HQ) hosted 18,000 visitors thanks to our in-depth knowledge and use of social networks and new technologies. As a highly popular museum, we regularly experiment, in situ, with proprietary high-tech solutions to help our visitors discover the 9000 m² of our site containing 6,300 works. We have therefore demonstrated our know-how in the Museum Industry field, particularly on 360° vision in Pro2 8K by the global leader Insta360, for whom Artmarket's technical department has been a 'beta tester' and a Google referenced pioneer for many years.
Virtual tours of our headquarters, including via Facebook VR Oculus headsets, whose number we can already count on media such as Google, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram (with our 9 million followers), are increasingly popular around the world (there have been 8,100 media reports about the Abode of Chaos / Organe Contemporary Art Museum). All of this exposure is hugely positive for the growth of Artmarket.com and represents a massive and permanent advertising campaign.
Based on Google and Flickr counting of single virtual visitors in 360° 4K and 8k in the Contemporary Art segment, our head office, the Organe Contemporary Art Museum, is no. 2 in France with 4.5 million visitors behind the Center Georges Pompidou, followed closely by the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
Very soon Artprice Images® – which currently gives subscribers unlimited access to the world's largest Art Market database of 180 million photographic or etched images of artworks from 1700 to the present day (each commented by our historians) – will be accessible in augmented reality by Artmarket. Sotheby's Institute of Art, one of our loyal customers, will be the first to test this augmented reality service for its students.
High-tech 3D scanning studios are being set up for our clients, including the 6,300 partner auction houses. The humble 2D photo is destined to disappear making way for the visualisation of works in true AI generated 3D. Thousands of young photographers are already discovering this technology which represents a revolution in their profession.
Henceforward, when it comes to 'industrial' photography (including sales catalogues), artificial intelligence is clearly bound to replace the photographer. Anecdotally, the iPhone 11 Pro Max® instantly processes a trillion operations per second (source Apple USA) for each photo with its A13 chip.
Our knowledge and awareness of developments within the Images market has a long history. From 1997 to 2006 the CEO of our direct subsidiary Editing Server® was also President of SAPHIR which is a member of the French Federation of Press Agencies (FFAP). He was a member of the Joint Committee of Press Agencies Publications (CPPAP) and of the Professional Commission of Independent Photographers of the Association for the Management of the Social Security of Authors (AGESSA).
Our digital culture dates back to 1987 with Groupe Server, a pioneer of the Internet in Europe (see TIME Magazine 2001). We therefore have a massive technological lead that will inevitably accompany the Art Market (throughout the world) over the coming years. Our role as a global player in the Art Market is a logical result of our unique capability to format metadata flows with our proprietary algorithms so that they become increasingly intelligent, and to adapt to technological know-how in perpetual evolution... an evolution that has been a fatal obstacle for our competitors who were unaware of the need (or unable) to change quickly.
This natural and ruthless selection, over several decades, has today posited Artmarket.com as the global player in the Art Market, and its brand Artprice, as the world leader in Art Market information.
This position of global player in the Art Market has been built with more than 20 years of hard work and passion. This historic EGM has validated and endorsed the tremendous achievements of the Group and it has allowed us to change its economic scope completely.
For all other questions we invite you to read the press release of 9 September 2019 Actusnews
Copyright ©1987-2019 thierry Ehrmann – www.artprice.com – www.artmarket.com
About Artprice:
Artprice is listed on the Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.
Founded by thierry Ehrmann (see Who's who certified Biography ) (c) https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2019/03/2019-bio-whoswho-thierry-ehrmann.pdf).
Dicover Artprice in video: https://www.artprice.com/video
Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index databanks. It has over 30 million indices and auction results covering more than 700,000 artists. Artprice Images® gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of 126 million images or prints of artworks from the year 1700 to the present day, along with comments by Artprice's art historians.
Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information from 6,300 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and approximately 7,200 international press publications.
For its 4,500,000 members, Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace for buying and selling art. Artprice is preparing its blockchain for the Art Market. It is BPI-labelled (scientific national French label) Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report for 2018 published last March 2019: https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2018
Artprice is associated with Artron Group the Chinese leader in the Art Market, its solid institutional partner.
About the Artron Group:
Partners since 2009, in 2018, Artron and Artprice signed a historic agreement to create a "New Silk Road for Art". This initiative is perfectly coherent with China's "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR) or "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) launched in 2013 and known in Europe as the "New Silk Road".
Having produced more than 60,000 books and auction catalogues, Artron is the world's largest art book printer with a total print volume of 300 million a year. It has more than 3 million professional members in the arts sector and an average of 15 million daily visits, making it the world's leading art website."
Artprice's Contemporary Art Market Annual Report for 2018 - free access at:
https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2018
Artprice's press releases:
http://serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/pressreleaseen.htm
https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom
Artmarket News:
https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom & https://twitter.com/artmarketdotcom
https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom 4,4 million subscribers
http://artmarketinsight.wordpress.com/
Discover the Alchemy and the universe of Artprice http://web.artprice.com/video, which headquarters are the famous Museum of Contemporary Art, the Abode of Chaos: https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013
The Contemporary Art Museum The Abode of Chaos
https://www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999 3.9 million subscribers
Contact: thierry Ehrmann, ir@artprice.com
Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/817151/Artprice_Logo.jpg
