Artquest

Selling shows are about turning audiences into buyers. This is an active process.

Selling shows are a route to short term financial gain from your art practice. You need to work out what you want from participating in such opportunities and also understand the types of audiences at the various selling shows around. You will then know whether you have a good chance of making sales or not. For annual or regular events this can be easily done by visiting shows and seeing what sort of work there is and talking to participating artists. If your work seems like it would be out of place, then it seems like your usual audience (or people like them) are not very likely to attend.

When it comes to talking to potential buyers unless they are regulars at this you can expect them to be unfamiliar and unconfident about how to buy a piece and it is your job to make the process easy, straightforward and make them feel at home. So you need to work out how far you want to go (or want the organisers of the show to go on your behalf).

So what do I do today?

Use section 3.1, the checklist for exhibitions, and also:

If you are organising the show:

• Agree the split of initial costs between participants and agree what each participant will do in terms of organising print, invigilation, installation etc.
• Agree any selling discounts that you are authorised to give
• Agree whether work can be taken away immediately or what the collection / delivery terms are

If you are submitting work to someone else's show:

• Confirm how soon after a sale you will be paid
• Ask to be given the details of people who bought your work fro your mailing list
• Check what information about you and each piece of work they will be providing to potential buyers
• Ask when the show will be hung (and see what you can find out about where your work will be displayed - prominently or in a corner - as this will affect sales)
• Ask if they require images/information for invites etc - prompt and see if you can get selected for these as again it should increase sales
• As ever, make sure you get all of this in writing (either a letter of agreement or a contract, see section 3.1.1).

3.2.1 Prices

Prepare your prices and any discounts you are willing to give so that you can stick to them and appear more professional to potential buyers. You will also be more accurate about the costs involved in the display and manufacture of the work and not forget items such as transport if you work out prices before a show. Be consistent in your pricing; consider the final price that a buyer will pay and how any commission charged or the cost of stand hire at an art fair are built into your prices.

Coming up with a price

Firstly look around you at prices of people at similar points in their career to you. This means being very honest to yourself about where you are in your career. You may need to look at graduation shows, group / solo shows, open studios, or shows by people who graduated many years ago. Ask your friends and contacts you know to have sold work already - how have they handled things, how did they take account of percentages charged by intermediaries etc. Also decide whether you would rather sell one or two pieces at higher prices or more pieces at lower prices. There is no right or wrong answer here.

Start with a blank sheet of paper on which you list all the costs involved in making, promoting and selling a piece of work. Include a percentage of utilities, studio rent, and travel as well as materials costs. The percentage of studio rental, for example, will therefore increase in money terms the longer a piece takes to make. Make sure you put a value to you time - an hourly rate is an easy way to do this. Then add a percentage for 'profit'. Compare the end result to the prices of other work around your professional level and see whether it's in seems about right. Would you be happy paying this price?

Working out prices this way enables you to develop a basic pricing structure that differentiates between large and small work, time-consuming and quick work, expensive and cheap materials. This pricing method does not take into account the quality (and thus value) of your ideas but does give you a benchmark from which to work and presses you to justify deviations from the norm you set for yourself.

Beware of raising prices too soon; think first what justifies a price increase. Here are a few things:

• Consistent critical acclaim
• Consistently high quality collections buying your work
• Demand exceeding supply
• Inflation

3.2.2 After the show:

Consider how many shows to you want to do a year and when are the best times for you and for sales.

Get in contact with all those who gave you contact details and find ways to develop their interest in you further so that they become loyal to you not to the show. Would they like to see more work? Visit the studio? Be invited to your next event? Make a commitment to them (which at worst is finding out that they're not interested and so promising not to contact them again) and be proactive.

3.2.3 Working with Commercial Galleries

This is a big area as there is much variation in how commercial galleries operate and how they work with artists. There are a few basics you can look for to help you separate those galleries which look to represent artists in the long term and mentor their development (here called 'long term representatives') and those galleries which essentially offer 'art retail'. Both have their place in the market but you need to be clear what sort you are looking for.

Use the following listing to compare types of commercial gallery. The definitions used are necessarily general, but should give you enough to think about for your own research:

Long Term Representatives:

• Interested your future potential
• Encourages change and development in your work
• Long Term Representatives commit time and resources to your career, so exclusivity is a fair swap. Sales direct from your studio will undermine this relationship and undermine a dealers efforts to place your work in good collections.
• Prefer to seek comments and articles from writers and critics as this shows other people within the art market showing an interest in your practice

Art Retail

• Interested primarily in what you have produced so far (and have available to sell)
• Prefers you to remain relatively consistent in your work
• While not expecting to see you in another nearby gallery, Art Retailers don't expect total exclusivity nor would they object to studio sales
• Ask you to write about your work as you can provide an insight that would interest a buyer who does not collect art regularly

3.2.4 Selling direct and how galleries will react:

An art retailer does expect you to sell from your studio and both they and the buyers expect this route to be less expensive than via the retailer. This has a couple of implications - it is not reasonable to poach buyers from the art retailer and to cut them out of their commission if they have spent time, effort and money attracting these buyers. It is still worth your while providing lists of people you want invited to the show to the art retailer, however you need to recognise that they are, in some ways, in competition with you for sales, and whilst they will be happy to sell your work to the people on your list they may also want to invite these people to other shows they put on which don't include your work. Is this acceptable to you? Is it acceptable to the people on your list?

The work of a commercial gallery who are your long term representatives would be undermined by sales direct from your studio as you are effectively reaping the rewards of their promotional efforts without paying them for them.