Creating artificial exclusivity and artificial scarcity – ThousandLotsOfSand.com
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 19 Dec 2006, 7:41 AM – Leave Comment
Dimitrios (who has cool artwork on his site BTW) sends me a link to his new project.
Here is the offer on his website
The idea is pretty simple. You can buy a lot of land, why not a lot of sand? This Caribbean beach is divided in 1000 lots of approximately 0.945 square meters. Each lot of sand is transferred on prime stretched linen canvas and duly numbered. I ship your lot of sand worldwide.
The value and personal satisfaction of owning this conversation piece that you’ll soon hang on your wall is just unbelievable. And the best of all is: not everyone can own his desired lot of sand, but you can, if your order your lot number right now. That is, if someone hasn’t already. Check the ‘availability link’
The value and personal satisfaction of owning this conversation piece that you’ll soon hang on your wall is just unbelievable. And the best of all is: not everyone can own his desired lot of sand, but you can, if your order your lot number right now. That is, if someone hasn’t already. Check the ‘availability link’
The way I look at it is simpler than that. You create artificial exclusivity (why – first of all, there is no demand for these lots, Dimitrios just created the concept and unless patented, someone else will copy) and artificial scarcity (as the lots start getting sold, you may have to pay higher so why not buy now) in your offer to the marketplace.
Dimitrios may very well win. If he does, he will earn close to $800,000 for his work.
My $.02
Whatever money Dimitrios makes on the sand lots is a really not for the sand lots but for his creativity. We can debate on whether the idea was worth $800K but the marketplace will determine that. For me, though, the artwork on Dimitrios site is far more valuable than these lots of sand. One option for Dimitrios is to use the attention that this site generates to get some traffic for his own artwork and sell his work (which I think is exclusive and scarce) and actually give away part of the proceeds from the sale of “lots of sand” to his favorite chairty. In summary, use this creative concept as a fundraiser for his charity and use the attention that his creativity has generated to sell his artwork.
Have a great week ahead all of you!
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