Art & Wall Hangings sharing

So I heard a pitch at the NYC Entrepreneurs Roundtable event on Tuesday where I heard Laurence Lafforge describe her startup, Art We Love. She described her customer problem as "too many bare walls in peoples' homes that they would like to hang stuff on", and her solution is to contract with specific artists and galleries to provide limited-edition prints at affordable ($20-200) prices. This has led her to be the darling of amateur collectors with limited means, and her following is very devoted but very little in the way of casual.

This got me thinking about an alternative idea: A wall-hanging swap network. There are currently website networks out there in which people can swap video games, DVDs, and so on (i.e.: www.swap.com ). These sites could be generalized as places to exchange collectibles that we rarely use but often wish we could expand our variety of. Things which generally are "single-serving" in our consumption, but which we want to have around occasionally for showing off to friends or just to display a collection. It occurs to me that wall hangings work roughly the same way. People put them up in order to avoid being one of those uncouth bohemians with bare walls (you know, because there's nothing worse than putting your spending money towards, say, vacations or restaurants), but may find themselves bored or unsatisfied with the condition that results. I know I, for one, wish I had the eye of my architect roommate who paints, or the collection and taste of my parents or grandparents. It almost doesn't matter what's up there - it should probably be something, no?

Well, clearly I'm not the only one who wishes they had wall hangings but generally doesn't want to devote the time or money to collecting them. I guarantee there are people with more things to hang than places to hang them, too. Enter: a market-based solution! Here's the proposal:

• Set up a website where people can sign up for free, post what they've got, describe what they'd like to get, search, browse, and communicate
• Set up features whereby they can arrange to borrow and lend wall hangings, be they paintings, canvas, rugs, photo arrangements, or whatever.
• Give them an easily customizable set of parameters to contract these things for their security. They still own what they own, but they're shipping it out for someone else to hold for a set period of time. Maybe they charge some minimal rent, say, $1/month or even a few bucks a year (or more for something really exotic, big, or valuable). Maybe they just expect the borrower to pay for shipping to and from, and are happy to reduce the clutter in their closet - the happiness of the recipient is its own reward.
  
• The site provides a ready place to track these things, electronic signatures of promises to return them, enforceable contracts, and credit card numbers of borrowers (just in case of damage, theft, etc), and sells insurance products (hey, why not?).
• Maybe you can cut deals with good shipping-and-handling people - discounts in exchange for peace of mind by people who know how to treat a good painting. Maybe you can get a kickback from a FedEx or UPS for sending them new business.
  
• Eventually when you hit a critical mass of participants, you sell advertising.

So there's some nice advantages of this:

• No inventory held by the company
• Easy scaling to national or even international proportions
• Users can borrow locally (no shipping), or use shipping services (greater variety to choose from)
• Build a community discussing art and interior decorating
• Operating costs are tiny - this is a classic eCommerce play

So the real questions are:

1. Does this already exist? Swap.com is focused on electronics stuff, it's designed to appeal to techies, not to artsy types or the proverbial grandmother.
2. Can you build awareness and a community cheaply enough?
3. Could Amazon or Yahoo crush you if they decide you're getting too nice a market? Well, build the market first and it's kinda defensible by its very nature (see: eBay).
4. Can you avoid charging fees eventually? It certainly looks like it - Swap.com has a team of 15 and makes money on kickbacks from the USPS.

The biggest one, of course, is #2. Building a community is tough and most of the obvious low-hanging fruit has long since been plucked on the internet. A successful effort at this probably has to start with someone influential in home furnishing - a Martha Stewart-grade personality, who would want to invest and then help promote. This is not a luxury-type appeal, where people who know what they're talking about get together secretively and act superior (see: Gilt, RueLaLa, and similar names in fashion). This is a mass-market play, because its value derives from network effects, which as everyone knows, is the idea that for every new person who joins the network, the network as a whole is more valuable to each person there.

So, is this a good idea? Only with a solid plan for building a community. A team that's done it before or a mass media personality who's backing it. In my opinion, the other problems kinda solve themselves once you get the network in place.