ArtVndngMchn NFT Wrapper (Courtesy: Joe Chiapetta)
Bundling NFTs, offering a group of NFTs for sale for one fixed price, can be a way to increase one’s sales while turning a drop into an event. If you have not explored releasing NFT bundles, such as bags or packs, you may be able to pick up some tips from the well-established art of ‘product bundling.’ And if bundling a product sounds like too much for one artist, this is a particularly good approach for groups, as we can see from the ArtVndngMchn project.
Product Bundling
Product bundling, essentially selling a group of individual items together, is a popular retail sales technique for a variety of products and services. For major retailers, mixed bundling, selling bundled items that are also available individually, is often done with a discount on the overall price if purchased separately. However, as one explores the more relevant world of bundling for smaller shops both on and off-line, one finds more examples of pure bundling, in which the items in a bundle are not available individually.
Most examples of bundling NFTs, of which I am aware, are pure bundles, typically filled with single examples of larger editions that are offered in some sort of container. This approach, considered broadly, potentially includes bundles, bags, sacks, packs, chests, lockers, vaults, and other concepts, based on a container filled with goodies.
Before purchase, these containers may or may not reveal their contents. Sometimes making the exact contents of the bundle secret can be a way of heightening anticipation. In that case, revealing the artists and creating a sense of what’s in the bundle is key to drawing folks in. There’s a lot of psychology at play and checking out what other artists and NFT creators do and how their drops and secondary sales fare will teach you a lot.
In mixed bundling, discounts are often applied based on the overall cost of the individual items. In NFT Land, discounting may be appropriate for insiders, communities and whitelisted individuals in a presale or similar event. However, my opinion is that otherwise discounting editions of art, whether by well-known or emerging artists, may look like a sign of problems that one may have otherwise missed.
If you haven’t yet considered bundling a select group of your NFTs or the NFTs of a particular network of creators, ArtVndngMchn offers an excellent example of an individual artist bringing together a group of crypto artists for a successful series of drops. Keep in mind that, while there is lots of activity in this area, there is still room for artists typically focused on 1 of 1 art and limited editions, to make unique and compelling NFT bundles.
ArtVndngMchn: OGs and Emerging Artists
The title of this column promised ‘Fun,’ and so far I have failed to deliver. However, this piece was inspired by a discussion with Joe Chiappetta, an artist whose work and projects do have plenty of fun energy.
Chiappetta was preparing for the latest ArtVndngMchn drop on Wax, coming February 26th. It will feature packs of 5 NFTs each by a group of “Cryptoart OGs (Joe Chiapetta, Marko Zubak, Fabi Yamada, Richard Yates) and emerging artists” listed on the Series 3 webpage.
I think this is a great example of niche bundling of NFTs. These names will be especially familiar to those active in crypto art before the NFT boom which also gives the emerging artists the OG cosign. Though it is appropriate to price art more modestly off the Ethereum blockchain, due to lower gas fees and less developed NFT ecosystems, this project seems low-priced at $20 per pack.
For those interested in utility, there are some really nice examples in the ArtVndngMchn project, which also goes beyond NFTs. Series 3-specific elements include raising money for the education of blind youth in Kiev, the ability to mix and upgrade select NFTs using NeftyBlocks, and a concurrent metaverse event.
The NFTs themselves are hidden till packs are open. The wrapper, shown above, is animated and plays a role in the unwrapping, according to Chiappetta:
“After a collector buys a pack, if they choose to open it, a special 3D animation of an art vending machine plays to give them an extra special visual treat, and then they see what pieces of rare digital art are in the package.”
ArtVndngMchn now has a successful track record of bundle drops and shows that the wrapper can also be a creative part of the project.
NFT Creator Bundles
While established artists can certainly choose to bundle work on their own, bundling as a group is a way for emerging artists to stand out. In the case of ArtVndngMchn, we have an example of established and emerging artists working together. So NFT bundling can also be a useful tool to build community while strengthening marketing effects. And as we have seen with so many bundling efforts, artistic creativity can be applied to both the bundle and the container.
