Rey Rey Rodriguez, The Entrepreneur Turning His Visual Art Into NFTs

An article on entrepreneur Rey Rey Rodriguez on MenaFN Magazine.

With a huge surge in demand and popularity, the world of NFTs is quickly becoming the new hub for photographers, musicians, visual, graphic, and all other kinds of artists to target.

What is an NFT? “NFT” stands for non-fungible token. In short, NFTs represent a real-world digital asset you can own, sell, and / or buy (usually paid with cryptocurrency) the exclusive rights to. Photos, drawings, GIFs, clips of videos, a song, games, tweets, online posts, and anything else in a digital format can be an NFT. Although they have been around for over seven years, they have gained mainstream popularity in 2021, and have become one of the biggest trends.

In 2019, many artists had converted into social media creators and influencers. The art community had reached a point where less art was being bought and sold, so the focus for artists became sharing their artwork as a way to gain recognition online, mainly on social media platforms. Then in 2020, the COVID pandemic restricted many artists everywhere from creating artwork outside, forcing them to either create art indoors, or to figure out what could be done with their old or already existing art. This is where the NFT conversions became popular with both collectors and creators.

One such creator is the American entrepreneur Rey Rey Rodriguez. At the start of his solopreneurial career, he expanded from photography hobbyist, to selling graphic art and fine-art photography worldwide in galleries, auctions, stores, and online. Soon, the commercial photographer looked to create a business. In 2014, he founded and set up his venture The Mind of Rey Rey ® in Plantation, Florida. The multinational business management company, which has three subsidiaries, focused on helping their clients market and expand their brand worldwide. Each subsidiary focused on a particular specialty used for brand enhancement: multimedia, digital and creative marketing.

Due to the time constraints from the constant demand for new artwork and disputes over pricing, Rodriguez decided to stop the sales of graphic art and fine-art photography. While frowned upon by many at first, it was later regarded as a great strategic move as the brand “The Mind of Rey Rey” gained international recognition.

But now, with the current NFT trend, he has returned to his art selling roots. Rodriguez states, “It’s a whole other world with NFTs. There’s no managers, agents, galleries owners, art community organizations, auctioneers, or other middlemen to deal with. You set your price in an NFT trading platform, give them their percentage and call it a day. Every artist should be doing this with his or her new or old artwork, even if selling art isn’t his or her main priority.”

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