The tech industry does not stand in a silo. In fact, it is integrating seamlessly with various other industries such as art and design, creating a harmonious dance between technology and the human sense of beauty.

The Artling, a Singapore-based art and design consultancy firm, is an example of such a company which business offer the integration between the art and tech world.

Founded in 2013, the company connects buyers with sellers worldwide, assisting users in their art and design needs by enabling their listed creatives to build their own “storefronts” and “shoppable portfolios”.

It highlights the best of contemporary art and design from both emerging and established studios and galleries, offering end-to-end art consultancy services for both private and corporate clients. Its notable clients including Google, Twitter, JLL, the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, and Swarovski.

The inventory value listed on their platform reached over US$210 million with over 3,000 artists and designers on board, including 300 local Singaporeans.

In addition to its offline services, The Artling also offers their expertise through online platforms. Their use of tech is apparent in their mobile app, where The Artling implements the use of AR to help clients visualise how an art piece would look like in their homes or offices.

Recently, The Artling introduced its latest innovation Artling Projects, a B2B art sourcing concierge for industry professionals, developed in-house by the company.

In this interview with e27, The Artling CTO Martin Brochhaus explains the vision behind Artling Projects, the work process behind the platform, and their ambition for the future.

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Making arts happen

The Artling Projects is described as a workflow management system that aims to become the go-to platform for art and design sourcing needs. It includes features such as art sourcing, budgeting, and timeline management that will also enable users to manage various projects simultaneously in one platform. Think Asana, but for art and design projects.

“The Artling now has two key components; the offline advisory business, as well as the online platforms. The offline component developed organically and came after the e-commerce platform gained momentum, thus the demand for advisory services came naturally,” Brochhaus begins.

The CTO continues by explaining that despite their focus in the art and design verticals, The Artling has always been a tech-centred firm. In addition to building its own entire software stack in-house for years, the company also has two e-commerce platforms, two mobile apps, and other tools and dashboards.

“Technology has been prevalent in our day-to-day workflow and has, in turn, created a company culture where the team constantly looks to our developers to use technology to solve any pain-points we experience in our daily work,” Brochhaus elaborates.

“When issues arise, the developers are consulted and we will brainstorm together with the team. We then gauge a feature’s urgency based on current priorities, to see how we can come up with solutions and new tools together. Artling Projects is a direct result of this iterative process, collaboration and company culture,” he continues.

As the number of consultancy projects increased in 2018 and 2019, The Artling began to figure out how to streamline the entire process, leading to the creation of an early version of Artling Projects in late 2019.

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When asked about the most challenging part of development, Brochhaus says that it is having a full overview of what everyone else in the company is working on.

“For example, if someone in the team creates documents for an advisory project, the development team needs to be aware of it as these documents contain crucial data that could be handled and dissected by our tool, Artling Projects … Given that many of us come from different backgrounds (e.g art history, architecture and technology backgrounds), these sharing sessions provide fresh perspectives on issues and pain points faced by the team,” he points out.

“This creates an amazing feedback loop, and opens a channel where everyone can contribute by giving feedback and suggestions to improve our software development capabilities and automate processes,” the CTO adds.

The future of the arts

When asked about the future potential of Artlings Project and the global art scene, Brochhaus shares some promising statistics.

In Singapore alone, there are over 1,500 interior design firms and more than 700 architecture firms. Globally, in 2019, the global interior design market size was US$135 billion –this number is expected to grow to US$270 billion by the end of 2026.

In the Artlings Project platform itself, the community of artists and designers is said to have grown by 42 per cent with a 62 per cent increase in listings since January 2020.

Artlings Project aims to continue on tapping this opportunity by improving its platform.

“Our machine-learning pipeline is another aspect that we will continue to build upon; we currently have a great model that has a powerful similarity search feature, but we will also use ML for a variety of other tasks, especially for our approval processes and for a recommendation engine that suggests works simultaneously while our users are uploading more project-related information,” Brochhaus elaborates.

He also noted upcoming trends enabled by consumer electronics.

“Lastly, with new iPhones now having Lidar sensors, the influence of AR and VR will only grow in the web-development industry, so we intend to constantly improve graphical tools that Artling Projects already has and make use of the better hardware that will soon be in the hands of millions of users,” Brochhaus notes.

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Images Credit: The Artlings

 

 

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