Thursday, September 15, 2005
Bead duplicated in the educational renewal [14]
The virtual Museum system and virtualTaos
Barry and Foundation Board
We are developing this concept a bit more. We have an investor who is interested in how the virtual Museum extensions might work. The investment opportunity is defined by several actions that could be taken, including
1) completing the software for display or the images, and for the
zooming in on "Painting within Paintings" (TM) and for taking orders
and maintaining records.
(approx $15,000 mostly in development costs and testing)
2) publishing all six of the novels as a set
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/16.htm
(estimate: $45,000)
3) creating the display case and virtualTaos Kiosk for virtual museum
"extensions
(approx, $20,000 for the first two or three prototypes)
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/7.htm
4) creating a streaming video capability that using a “video compression computer chip”, based on RIB technology (Hilbert Engine) , to allow 100 locations form Taos Valley to stream into the Internet. The steams are not bit streams, but linear transformations (Hilbert matrix equations) that when iterated produces a fractal which is exactly the same as, up to a fixed digital resolution, each frame in a 60 sec pre frame high resolution digital image. (unknown investment amount)
The Foundation is looking for $80,000 in investment. (see also [43] )
In this case, the "first" "extension" is a Gallery on Taos Plaza (where the Pruitt family had a large "Spanish Steps Gallery" between 1965 - 1975). The owner, Leandro, is an old friend of Kelly's and Native American. His gallery will be one of the first on the virtualTaos.net e-commerce system. There are likely to be several hundred Taos business within a year.
A second extension has been arranged. Our main limitation is investment funding, and expansion funding. (see [42] )
I have put a word document on my web site so that it is easy to download (zipped) it is 11 Megs.
www.virtualTaos.net/temp/brochure.zip
This brochure is for background informational purposes, and will be removed at one point. Note that one each of the six giclee on canvas (stretched) would cost $1,220 as a set. I estimate that the cost of these is around $350, or about $50 each, plus around $10 for the high quality thick stretcher bars. The ratio of production cost to retail is not what I want, but this is ok for now.
Later we will move the prices up or figure out someway to produce these in a production line so that the ration is adjusted both ways.
But if we take these figures and imagine Leandro selling 60 of the Pruitt giclees per year, then we have around 3500 in costs for your work, about 5000 in commissions and about 4000 in income to the foundation.
We need around $120,000 per year, in giclee net, to the foundation to reach our goals. So we need 30 outlets.
The issue here is to see the whole picture.
If the virtual museum system was selling 20*122,000 = 366,000 in Pruitt giclees per year, then the market for his originals would likely double or triple.
http://www.virtualtaos.net/Pruitt/home.htm
Having all six books published at once would also help the "whole picture" come into existence?
The next level of market development is when we are buying originals from the secondary market, obtaining the scanned images, and then placing the original into the museum's value. Thus we can reduce the availability of the originals.
If you look at any one of the Pruitt originals, one realizes that the 11*14 portrait (see brochure) might be worth what? (The sky is the limit of course). For now I can push the asking price of the 11*14 portrait to 2,800.
In the past, this painting might have sold for 1,500. I might have sold the painting for 1,000 if I really needed the money.
Here, then is the catch. The Foundation must get into a position where the Foundation can buy paintings at a low price and then virtually take the painting off the market.
Then the 11*14 might bring $10,000 or more. Given that the Foundation currently has 83 original oils, the expected raise in value could be from 250,000 to perhaps 1,500,000.
At the same time, the Pruitt family has an ability to acquire paintings from the secondary market, add them to the virtual Museum and increase the value of these re-purchased painting.
This will take time, but we are well into this process.