Success Stories: Artscoops
Kick-starting our Success Stories series is Raya Mamarbachi whose unique digital arts platform Artscoops, has seen tremendous growth since successfully raising funds on Eureeca over a year ago.
Artscoops is the first dedicated digital arts marketplace for Middle Eastern and North African artists and artworks. Rapidly Artscoops has become the go-to place for both first time art buyers and experienced art collectors, as they provide a unique contemporary art platform like no other through themed online exhibitions and exclusive curated content.
Recently Artscoops celebrated their second anniversary, and this month they will be hosting their annual live Middle Eastern Contemporary Art Auction at Le Yacht Club Gallery in Beirut, which will feature pieces from up and coming regional artists. Previous auctions have featured extraordinary works from the likes of Paul Guiragossian, Tagreed Darghoth and Zena Assi.
With Artscoops successfully raising $130,000 a little over a year ago with us, we decided it was time we caught up with the founder and director, Raya Mamarbachi, to see what has happened since then.
Q1: What has successfully closing your equity crowdfunding round meant meant to Artscoops?
“The funding round has allowed me to expand the team, secure art-sourcing partners, develop the technology we have and implement a marketing plan to create a sustainable sales pipeline and further prove Artscoops’ potential growth.”
Q2: We saw you recently enrolled with Washington-based technology incubator 1776, how did that come about?
“I joined the programme as part of the second cycle of entrepreneurs from the UK Lebanon Tech Hub. They sent three of us to Dubai for 12 weeks to grow our business. It gave Artscoops more exposure and the potential to partner with more galleries.”
Q3: Is Artscoops where you envisioned it would be when you were raising funds?
“Yes. We had envisioned to grow both the number of artists and galleries on the platform. We now have 700+ verified artworks and over 30 galleries for the platform. We have proven our sales, and even created a European partnership with Gallerease.com!”
Q4: What does the future hold for Artscoops? What milestones have you set for 2017?
“Our milestones for 2017 are three things: to launch our very own online auction platform, to create and develop our mobile app, and to launch our secondary market.”
Q5: As an entrepreneur, what has crowdfunding done for you?
“It has created validation from outside the business and has allowed Artscoops to grow. With the additional resources, we are able to focus on scaling up our marketing activities to increase our visibility in key markets, as well as exploring our secondary market activities.”
Q6: Finally was equity crowdfunding the right choice for Artscoops, and would you recommend it to other entrepreneurs?
“Yes. Eureeca was great. The team was a great help and the on-boarding consultancy was brilliantly done. I would recommend it to all entrepreneurs especially if they are raising small seed amounts!”
The overall goal for us at Eureeca is to give entrepreneurs like Raya a platform to grow their business. We take pride in providing our loyal investor network with diverse businesses and enjoy seeing our successful entrepreneurs develop their businesses into what they have always envisioned it to be.
Be sure to keep an eye out for the next part of the Eureeca success stories series where we will be catching up with another one of the innovative businesses that have been successfully funded on our platform!
Click here to browse the new businesses now on Eureeca
Find out more about Artscoops at: