Special Apps and Unique Tools Designed for the Professional Art Buyer
What is Serrace®?
The most innovative aspect of the FAE website is the Serrace Sales System. Instead of using the fixed price method, or the auction sales model - where prices start at the lowest acceptable selling price and are bid up within a brief time frame - Serrace takes an entirely new approach.
The Serrace Sales System places each artwork online at its full retail price, holds it there for a prescribed period of time to maximize the number of interested parties, and then, on a published schedule, systematically reduces its price until the artwork sells, or is about to drop below its lowest acceptable price. This way, each artwork placed on FAE receives maximum exposure at its highest price first,
avoiding the risk of any artwork immediately selling at its reserve, which often occurs in a traditional auction.
To keep the system as transparent and democratic as possible, up to seven price drops of the Serrace discount schedule are published so all potential buyers have equal access to the same pricing information. This approach allows buyers to make thoughtful purchase decisions, but, by waiting too long, buyers could risk losing the artwork to someone else.
FAE's Approach
Large estates and collections are not uploaded to the FAE site all at once, as some estate sale and auction sites do. They are campaigned in a thoughtfully planned manner. Each FAE Dealer, in concert with each Seller, carefully develops a customized marketing strategy using their experience and the Serrace Sales System to maximize the monetization of each artwork.
Special FAE Features
►See It in Your Room
To make buying from the site easier, FAE has
developed two unique applications: one for the
iPhone or iPad, and the second incorporated into
the FAE site. Each app, using its own printable target,
facilitates the creation of a View. A View is
the result of merging the photograph of a room with
an artwork image from ArtTracker—the FAE favorites
list. In each View, the chosen artwork will appear
superimposed over the target in proper scale and
perspective to the room. Any View can be saved and
shared with clients and other interested parties.
►Mobile App
By placing an FAE Live View Target on the wall
where an artwork is desired, the FAE iPhone and
iPad app allows the user to select an artwork from
ArtTracker, hold the device so the user can see
the target in the view screen, and instantly see
the artwork superimposed over the target on the
screen in proper scale and perspective from most
anywhere in the room. The combined image can be
captured and uploaded to the My Views area of the
FAE website, or shared.
►Desktop App
The desktop app uses JPEG format images of rooms with
an FAE Rooms Target placed where an artwork is desired
to facilitate the creation of editable Views. These room
images can easily be added to the My Rooms area of
the site using the Add a Room uploader. From there, the
images can be used to create editable Views in the My
Views section of the site. There, the user is able to adjust
the artwork's perspective and brightness level, as well as
the brightness level of the room image if necessary.
A simple frame can also be placed around the artwork image
and its color changed by selecting from a pop-up palette.
If the image is taken with an iPhone or iPad, the FAE app
will allow the user to seamlessly capture and name the
room image, assign it to a Project, and handle the upload
process directly to the FAE site.
Saved Searches and Artwork Alerts
On the Browse Art page of the site, the user can create
a complex personalized search using FAE's Guided
Search feature. If an initial search does not provide the
desired artwork, the user is able to name and save the
search, assign it to a Project, and schedule an alert to
automatically rerun the search periodically. The user
will be informed via email and by text when new works
that meet the saved search criteria have been added to
the FAE site. For instance, by setting and saving an Alert
on a named search, a user who is interested in still life
paintings created in France between 1800 and 1900 will
be contacted when new works of that description are
added to the FAE site.
Multiple alerts can be set for each artwork on the site.
By clicking on the alarm clock icon beneath each artwork
thumbnail, one or more alerts can be activated that will
let the user know via email and by text when a work is
about to drop in price, if another user places a Reserve
on a work, or if a work has reached its final Serrace price
level.
The FAE Money Back Guarantee
FAE offers a seven-day, money back guarantee, which
provides comfort and assurance to prospective buyers
who may have reservations about purchasing artwork
online. As long as the buyer informs the Dealer of their
intention to return the artwork within 7 days of receipt,
and it has been returned to the Dealer in its original
condition within 14 days of receipt, FAE will refund
the buyer's payment less a small restocking fee, in
accordance with the FAE User Agreement.
Documenting Artists & Their Work
A fundamental FAE concept is to make the information
we gather on the artists and the artwork available for
research well into the future. The artist detail page
contains relevant information about that artist and his/
her career, including biographical overviews, exhibition
catalogues, newspaper articles, photographs and other
ephemera.
Through our Dealer network, FAE is creating partnerships
with university special collections and museum archives
to be sure this information is never lost. If requested by
an artist, or their heirs, FAE Dealers will help facilitate
the donation of their papers to an appropriate art history
archive.
►Professional Artists
FAE provides the most logical solution for professional
artists, or their heirs, to sell the artwork they have
accumulated during their artistic careers in a thoughtful
and efficient manner. They can take comfort in knowing
that their artwork, rather than sitting in storage, is being
promoted and sold worldwide. Long after the artwork in an
estate is sold through FAE, images of each artwork and the
artist's biographical information remain on the FAE website,
creating an online archive that's available to everyone.
FAE is not a venue for contemporary artists to sell their
recent works. Most artwork on the FAE site is produced
early in an artist's career, is inventory remaining after an
artist has retired, is from an artist's estate, or secondary
market works. All artworks are vetted by FAE sanctioned
Dealers based on its perceived salability, quality and
condition.
►Private Collectors
The creators of FAE have the utmost respect for individual
collectors who have spent years assembling a body of
artwork that reflects their personal interests and points of
view. To honor these individuals, and to properly market
what they have assembled, FAE has added a special section
to the website where works, that are part of a collection,
can be seen together with related documentation about
each collector's history and philosophy. All consignors to
the FAE site are provided access to a personal dashboard
so they can easily track the status of all artworks they are
responsible for, consigned or otherwise.
►Foundations and Corporations
FAE's built-in transparency, ease of tracking, and automatic
status updates provide confidence to museums, foundations,
publically held corporations and those handling the
disbursement of estates, that they are meeting their
fiduciary responsibilities when selling the artwork in their
care. With the Serrace method of selling, responsible parties
can be assured that when an artwork sells on FAE it sold for
its true value, verified by the fact that the longer an artwork
is published on the site, the more exposure it receives.
FAE has made buying and selling fine art as easy and as transparent as possible.
For further information, please contact us at : [email protected]