Managing How Many Artists You Represent
By the time I’d been in business for about a decade, my gallery represented over 180 artists. As the list of artists I represented grew ever larger, I would rationalize:
“That number includes musicians and authors, and those books and CDs don’t take up much room.”
“I just had to accept such-and-such artwork because it’s so wonderful and will sell well.”
And my old standby: “Let’s give it a try.”
After years of keeping manual sales records, we were using a Point of Sale (POS) system, which helped manage all those artists, but even with a good management tool, 180 is a lot. When looking at the year-end reports with so many entries, it was clear that there too many. I was giving a lot of artists “a try.”
Besides the reports and spreadsheets, something I hadn’t thoughtfully considered was physical space. My gallery was over 2000 square feet, so I thought that I always had room for more art. I had arrived at this place in good faith – I believed in my ability to sell the work, and I had this big space, so why not?
In reality, I was curating without limits, which isn’t actually curating well. More artwork is fantastic, but it overloads a gallery space, overwhelms customers, and creates extraneous work for you and your staff.
I wasn’t using my business brain to make the decisions on who to represent. For example, books and CDs don’t take up much room, yet they still need to be processed, priced, and displayed. They still need to be dusted. And they really didn’t sell well at all. They were costing me retail space and money.
And every new artist I brought in crowded the already too-crowded roster of talent.
I decided to put my business hat on and take a hard look at revenues. I examined yearly sales by artist, sorted by medium. Automatically, I decided to keep the top 5 best sellers in each category – pottery, jewelry, prints, etc. That would guarantee the variety of media I wanted. Then I set a dollar figure in retail sales, say $1000, and kept any artist who sold at least $1000 in that year. The remaining artists were evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
I took my time deciding who to keep, and when an artist was let go, I made clear that my decision was a business decision and that it wasn’t personal. After all, I’d admired and accepted the work in the first place. If an artist’s work isn’t sell well, you aren’t doing yourself or the artist any favors by continuing to carry it. The work might be a better fit in a different gallery.
Of course, you’ll make exceptions. I ended up keeping the books and CDs because I love books and music. And because those authors and musicians were my community, I loved them, too.
Art doesn’t lend itself to being reduced to numbers. The business of selling art can combine your intuitive love and appreciation for artists and their work with your entrepreneurship.
Limiting the number of artists that you represent is a smart business move and will allow you the freedom to focus on the artwork that is selling and that your customers want to buy.