Introduction

Mary Grant is a UK-based landscape artist who studied Fine Art Painting at Kingston University and was shortlisted for the Natwest 90s Prize for Art. On 1st January 2021 Mary decided to start a new and personal project, where she would paint a little painting every single day for the rest of the year and so #littlepaintings365 was born. Mary’s landscape paintings are concerned with the painterly nature of a snapshot taken whilst walking or driving.

NFT Workx Ltd is a specialist consultancy that helps its clients to enter the Web3 and NFT space. We aim to be the global leader in providing automated and seamless Digital Collectibles (NFTs) of physical luxury items via the most popular eCommerce platforms.

NFT Project 2022

At the end of 2021, NFT Workx and Mary decided to offer a Digital Collectible (NFT) of each of her paintings sold in 2022. The idea of the project was to enable Mary to increase revenue from the sale of the physical painting and to also embrace and promote this new technology to her fans and customers.

The commercial set-up of the project was as follows:

1 x Little Painting (Physical) = £150.00
1 x Digital Collectible (NFT) = £49.00

Total Little Paintings (Physical) sold in 2022 = 121
Total Little Paintings (Digital Collectibles) sold in 2022 = 33

Twenty seven percent of customers who purchased the physical paintings also purchased the ‘Digital Collectible’ which is a real success considering the process of selling the NFT was a manual ‘up sell’ by the artist that was done after the initial sale and many of the buyers were completely new to the concept of a digital collectible and Web3 in general.

Problems Identified

● Time-consuming for the artist to promote the Digital Collectible of the physical item, post sale.
● Time-consuming for the artist to then obtain a wallet address from the buyer as in the vast majority of cases they did not have a wallet.
● Time-consuming for the artist to provide guidance on how to set up a wallet.
● Time-consuming for the artist to chase the customer for their wallet.
● Time-consuming for NFT Workx to manually mint each Digital Collectible NFT of the physical painting sold and transfer to the buyer.

Opportunity / Solutions

● If the buyer had the option to seamlessly purchase the Digital Collectible at the point of sale, i.e. at check out, we expect the number sold to be significantly higher, and it would completely remove the need for the artist to do the upsell, post sale.
● By giving the buyer the option to enter their wallet address at point of sale (if they have one) will facilitate the transfer of the Digital Collectible NFT automatically.
● If the buyer does not have a wallet, then we will create a Web2 version of the digital collectible that will have a unique URL that the customer will be sent so they can view their Digital Collectible at any time and then ‘claim/mint’ it once they have a wallet address in the future.
● Automating the entire process will remove all of the problems identified above and will significantly increase the sales potential of the digital collectibles, enabling the artist/creator/brand to increase sales revenue and add value.
● The artist/creator/brand could also offer the Digital Collectibles free of charge or for a very low fee to provide extra value to their physical item being purchased.

Conclusion

This project has validated the genuine potential for artists/creators/brands to sell their physical items with the option for the buyer to also purchase a Digital Collectible version of the product.

A 27% conversion rate via a completely manual process and from buyers who were unfamiliar with Digital Collectible NFTs, validates the huge potential that an automated solution will offer, both to the artists/creators/brands and to the consumers.

This solution will help to onboard a large number of artists/creators/brands and consumers into the Web3 space at scale.