Discussion Paper
Last revision: August 8,
2004
Our plan involves many decades of experience with galleries and the art business, as well as with the unique environments of Taos New Mexico and Southwest Texas. The family is seeking a qualified investor to provide seed funding to complete the development of a Virtual Museum System for representing New Mexico art legacy.
An e-commerce system is being developed based on potential that now exists, but which is not yet exploited. This potential is based on
1) The advent of highest quality fine art reproductions using digital photograph.
2) The re-definition of the purpose of fine art reproductions from
a. Investment in potential future value of a limited edition
to
b. Enabling the appreciation of an image of an original
The Founder of the Safe Net is Paul Prueitt. One of the personal motivations for his development of the concepts and technologies of the Safe Net was to create a process that will eventually acquire all known images of painting created by various artists.
As the Virtual Museum System is being developed; trademarks and proprietary code will be declared and protected to support the development of a franchise property.
A potential exist due to the following facts:
1) An artist has created a rich legacy of painting, stories, drawings and bronzes, estimated to be worth at least $40 million if properly archived. Around 4,000 6,000 canvas exists with an average present value of $10,000. Four to five hundred bronzes exist, with average value of perhaps $12,000. These items are scattered in private collections in various parts of the world. The collectors have never been communicated to as a group. The distribution of paintings over the past five decades has been random. If these collections where to be represented in one of several Virtual Museum System , based on Safe Net software, the total value of all of the works of art might increase substantially. The increase in the total value of all work will be one point of leverage for a sought initial investment of $10,000,000.
2) The Founders of the SafeNet has the ability to organize a New Mexico centric presentation of original artwork. This presentation will be founded on the principle that each artist has a separate message and independent channel for expression. Within the channel, the artists viewpoint and work will be developed in a clear and transparent fashion, protected as much as possible from the negative effects that sometimes develops due to commercialism of artistic expression. The Safe Net acknowledges a recognized social responsibility by supporting artistic expression. The Safe Net will support social processes that are consistent with artistic expression.
3) New digital imaging technology has been recently developed that allows inexpensive production of exact color reproduction onto archival papers or canvas. The Founders have observed the development of this technology over a long period and is now satisfied that the technology has reached criterion of quality and cost.
4) An economic/cultural process produces a museum dedicated to specific artwork, literature and stories about the history of the artwork.
5) Authenticated fine art reproductions are made available one at a time. These authenticated fine art reproductions are not limited but are to be numbered sequentially as they are produced, and a record of the reproduction history maintained by the Virtual Museum System .
6) Frame shops and interior decorator small businesses now make large investments in fine art reproductions. Just-in-time, right-size inventories of images would reduce costs and increase selection. The principles of just-in-time, right-size inventories have become well accepted in the market place and yet this concept is not yet readily available for images of fine art. The reproduction technology that we have identified will produce one at a time images and ship for next day delivery. The Virtual Museum System software is designed to run on a computer and can be installed in thousands of frame shops.
7) Up front investment is almost zero. A new outlet for Virtual Museum System products occurs with signed agreements regarding credit lines and contact information. Outlets for Virtual Museum System products can be developed as part of existing coffee shops and other selected product chain outlets.
8) The Taos community is a spiritually and culturally rich environment where many opportunities exist to develop virtual presence within the Safe Net concept. The existing software is a visual environment where rooms and locations are navigated using mouse clicks. In some of the rooms paintings hang on the wall. Histories of each of the paintings are preserved and extended by the Museum staff. In some of these rooms we are able to provide streaming video of a location, such as an artists studio or a waterfall.
9) Year around virtual access can be made between individual collectors and the artist, or the museum staff.
10) The Taos centric Safe Net will develop distance learning about Native American Old Way and will provide several fixed views of Taos valley and mountains streams in the Taos valley.
Comments
1) The Safe Net concept was developed by a group of innovators involved in developing next generation technology related to the use of B-2-B and B-2-C transaction mapping. This technology is designed to develop product marketing and delivery to consumers in more efficient ways than is current practice.
2) The Safe Net is implemented in an existing Multiple User Domain (MUD) based on software that is proprietary but which is related in nature to several Open Source systems. Given the current technical expertise, we are able to evolve a software derivative of one of these MUDs to be the Safe Net system. This software system support all concepts discussed in the Virtual Museum System .
3) Because there is literally no cost related to the acquisition of the code base for Safe Net , the investment structure is flexible.
4) Reasonable operating expenses for the months of Sept 2004 December 2004 are $10,000 per month.
5) The following year, 2005, will not require any additional investment, unless a decision is made to accept 250K in seed investment income.
6) The Founders prefer to limit the total outside investment to that 250K but will look at reasons why an additional scaling of the franchise system might be useful. We are also open to compensation via equity in management or legal work related to the development of the franchise product. The Safe Net will continue to be developed, as well a franchise concept that clones the operational details of the Virtual Museum System and makes this available to artists under VMS franchise agreements.
7) The franchise business plan is based on management discussions. The actual nature and structure of the franchise offer will be negotiated with the seed money investor. Virtual Museum System can be structured in any way that is deemed reasonable by the stakeholders..
8) The Safe Net license and web hosting costs might be $1,000 for the year, per artist.
9) Profit over this cost of business will be distributed as income to stake holders, or decisions will be made to make specific investments.
Ownership of the Virtual Museum System will be negotiated with the investor who brings the seed money. As indicated in equity assignments, the Founders are willing to assign up to a 45% ownership of the Virtual Museum System properties, as well as intellectual properties related to ownership of copyrights and other properties.