Al Marco has big plans.

The owner of the successful Marco Fine Arts publishing company in El Segundo doesn’t just want to take his business online, he wants to create the definitive Web portal for the art community.

“The biggest problem with the Internet is that people don’t have the expertise of the community they are trying to cater to,” said Marco. “I’ve been in the art industry for 16 years. I know everyone and I have a good reputation.”

His starting point is FrameYourArt.com, a natural outgrowth of his 16-year-old publishing company that has developed into a $4 million enterprise.

FrameYourArt.com, which officially launched Feb. 1, is, on its face, a consumer site. Shoppers can pick art from member publishers, including Marco Fine Arts, and choose a frame and matte. The site allows the consumer to see how different frames will look around different prints and posters.

The order is then given to a member art gallery in the consumer’s neighborhood. For every zip code, one art gallery can sign on with FrameYourArt.com for a yearly fee of $1,800. The art gallery buys the work from the publisher, does the framing and delivers the artwork to the consumer, receiving all of the profit from the transaction.

Since appearing on the Web in October, three months before galleries began paying for the service, Marco’s business has boomed. He currently has 22 employees at FrameYourArt.com but is hiring every week and expects to have 70 people working at the company by the end of the year.

Marco said he is presently signing up 25 galleries per day, and by the end of this year, expects FrameYourArt.com to be generating between $5 million and $7 million in annual sales.

Creating a community

As Marco signs up galleries, he is also creating an art community, which some potential investors say will eventually be Marco’s most profitable asset. Dealers can take advantage of a back room in the site where they can chat with other dealers, read framing tips and look for specific pieces of art. And soon there will be AllArtBiz.com, a place where artists, art dealers, framers and publishers can come together to trade information, read how-to articles and learn about everything from trademarks to the best way to use oil paints.

That community is what inspired investment firm AFA Management Partners to review Marco’s company as a possible investment. “We’re very interested in his ability to create a community in a niche market,” said Kurt Brendlinger, a partner in the firm’s Fleck T.I.M.E. Fund. “At a certain point, the Internet is going to be so crowded, the communities are what’s going to be valuable.”

According to Marco, it’s all in the name of saving the art business from going the way of the book industry, with small stores folding and large e-commerce sites like Amazon.com taking over.

“As a manufacturer of goods, I’m concerned about what’s going to happen to small galleries in the years to come,” said Marco. “They’re our bread and butter.”

Rather than taking over the gallery business, FrameYourArt.com actually helps the galleries grow. Revenues at the site are generated through the art gallery membership fees, and gallery owners receive $1,800 worth of vendor coupons in return for signing up.

“The model is very simple,” said Marco, “because all us vendors are concerned about losing those galleries.”

Good timing

Mike May, an analyst with Jupiter Communications, says the art world is poised for a dramatic change. Through e-commerce, May says, collecting will no longer be the sole province of the elite, as consumers use the Internet to research art on their own terms and at their own times. Any site able to bring together the fragmented gallery world will be strongly positioned to succeed in the emerging market.

“Most (art) buyers don’t know where to go to find what they want,” said May. “But there is the opportunity for a portal of sorts to emerge, whose function it is to help buyers connect with sellers of specific merchandise.”

Marco’s efforts have been somewhat overshadowed by Artnet.com, which bills itself as “the portal to the world of art” and is the only site that has attracted significant capital investment so far.

Marco counters that while he has no specific plans for outside financing or putting together an initial public offering, several firms have contacted him about investing in the company.

“We see dozens of new Internet companies every week that have nothing but a business plan and a promise,” said Gerard Cappello, president and owner of Cappello Capital Corp., an investment bank specializing in private equity placements. “(Marco’s) plan actually works.”

Time-tested formula

For FrameYourArt.com, Marco has applied the same principles that have made Marco Fine Arts such a success. A longtime entrepreneur (he started a hot dog stand business at the age of 19), Marco started his publishing company by buying all of the equipment he would need so none of the work would have to be outsourced.

When he decided to make a move to the Internet last year, he hired a team of full-time programmers, writers and designers to work on the project. “I don’t believe in outsourcing anything, which really allowed us to kick butt,” said Marco.

Marco financed the project completely on his own, with more than $1 million of his own money and about $1 million from Marco Fine Arts.

And he has more ideas for the future. When hiring programmers, he made sure they could all speak Japanese in order to translate their work to a Japanese FrameYourArt.com site that Marco plans to launch in March.

In addition, Marco is committing $250,000 per month to advertising the site, including spreads in magazines such as Architectural Digest and Art & Antiques. The ads feature “Pierre, zee French Art Guy,” a mustachioed cartoon character Marco hopes will help brand the site.

“I’ve never been so excited,” said Marco. “I can’t stop thinking up new ideas.”