Some artist art fairs are unscrupulous at marketing to artists. Put up a picture of walls and lights, videos of ‘good’ pieces of art, the more vast the venue the better, throw in a couple of case studies from the best sellers, and most of the time artists are hooked. Artists somehow think that if they like the art on show, they will do well too, like looking at a catalogue model and imagining you’re wearing the same apparel. Some fairs are so adept at this persuasive strategy that they not only get away with charging artists thousands for relatively small spaces but even encourage them into debt or crowd funding. And the same conclusion tends to happen. They don’t sell anything. How is it possible that an artist can be persuaded so easily to invest three to four grand completely blind to the difficulty of selling their type of product? Let’s talk spades. If you don’t have some egotistical pride, you’re not human. Some pride is healthy. But sadly, that pride can easily blind you to the realities of a task, or, as is so often the case in this industry, can lead you to being taken advantage of in the most egregious manner. The simple fact is that you should never invest thousands in exhibition space unless you fully understand the product you are selling and that you have tested its saleability and your sales skills. If you’ve only ever sold through an online platform, do not walk blindly into a live exhibition scenario with a high break-even point. You’re heading for disaster.
In this brief article, I’m going to talk about the three main problems you face in selling your products. If you want to start selling your work in a live scenario, these are the problems you must overcome or at least understand.
1) No Sales Background
The majority of artists have no sales background. Those that do have a sales background tend to have sold a very different kind of product from art. The transition to selling art products is not straightforward, as we will see below. So, we can generally say that the majority of all exhibitors already have the odds stacked against them through a lack of training. Plain honesty with yourself and your background is important. How many books have you read on pitching or selling? Courses studied? How much study have you done in applying the principles of selling to how you sell your art? How much thinking about the saleability of your art have you done? Probably not much. You’ve dedicated more of your time to planning and executing the products but have spent zero time thinking about why someone should buy them. Yet, here you are at an art fair with a four-grand hole in your life savings thinking all you need to do is hang a few pictures and presto the money will come rolling. And if it doesn’t? Well, that’s the fault of the lights, the walls, the horrible artist next to you, the visitors, the owners, the marketing...everyone but yourself. Selling a product is not the same as talking about it. What is interesting about your work to you is likely boring to everyone else. Talking about yourself is not selling your art. The first obstacle you’ve got to overcome, then, is yourself and your lack of sales experience. You should build into your art production equal time for analysing your products from a sales point of view. Yes, making your product is only part of producing it for retail. A good way to do this is to lay out your work and then start to draw comparisons and linkages between all the products. Think about the time you bought or rented a property. What did you want – a garden? Three bedrooms? Garage? Proximity to work or schools? You bought in terms of features and they were likely clearly laid out for you by the estate agent. You were sold those features. You need to do the same for your art. What important features do they have? Why should someone want these features? This process is not the same as planning a lecture about your working process. It is totally different. You are specifically looking for features that people may want.
2) Selling on Speculation
I make a regular habit of stressing to artists that they are selling art on speculation. In every other industry, you don’t do this. You do marketing research before developing a product. In no other industry do you make the product without knowing if someone wants it. The art industry encourages artists to do it the wrong way around. There are historical reasons for this, partly bound up with prejudices regarding the creative process. Naturally, the industry would like to keep it this way for monopolistic reasons. But you don’t need a degree in business studies to know that if you’re investing thousands in exhibition space with no idea if your product is going to sell or not, you’re going to run into some problems. Even if you get ‘lucky’ and sell well, it doesn’t mean that your experience will be repeated. No matter how much a fair puffs about you having a big lifetime “experience” or offers to throw an after party to make you feel warm and fuzzy, taking part should always be done rationally and with a long-term plan. You don’t exhibit once, you exhibit annually (or more) and over a set period. Too many artists jump in, get disappointed, and never return. But it is a massive mistake to do that. The first fair should be about the all-important gathering of marketing data (asking visitors what they love and hate about your products and, importantly, prices). Based on that information, you then tweak existing products or develop entirely new pieces that you exhibit again. And so the process goes on, except that you start inviting back those visitors you chatted to, perhaps even offering a discount. That is why you should avoid artist art fairs that are clearly overcharging for space. They don’t understand the problems you face and are not interested in creating a fair structure that will help you to overcome them. All of this means that it is completely misguided to buy more expensive exhibition space than you need and to unrealistically think that you are going to sell ‘on a whim’. You are selling on speculation and you must always remember that. It is a hurdle that can only be overcome through bare honesty about yourself, talking to visitors at a fair and your subsequent product development based on what those visitors say. You also need humility to make changes to your work, approach and prices if needed. The key is not to be so precious about your art. After all, you are wanting someone else to take ownership of it, so let them be precious about it.
3) Art is a Difficult Product to Sell
Artists who cross from one industry to another often think that their experience of selling one type of product will make it easier to sell art. They are usually wrong. Art is not like selling houses, cars or food. On first inspection, there appears to be no need for art. People get along perfectly well in life without the need to buy or even look at it. Sometimes if an artist doesn’t sell in a fair they blame the visitors for not being “ready-buyers”. There is, of course, no such thing. Art is a discretionary spend and someone will only buy if there is a need to buy. But in and of itself, there appears to be no need for someone to buy it. This is why art is hard to sell and another reason why you should never pay thousands for exhibition space on a first exhibit if you are untested. Now, of course, there are needs for art. Part of your research should be to plumb for those on your first exhibit. For example, if you see someone buying a colleague’s work, chase after the buyer and ask them politely what was the purpose in buying. You will often find that the need is similar each time and along the lines of moving into a new house, a birthday gift for a family member, or a space that has become vacant in a room. The reasons are never about aesthetics. This is one of the biggest mistakes working artists make. They forget that visitors are not artists. They don’t spend hours in studios agonising over colours and shapes or thinking about concepts and aesthetics. Their need is often personal and very practical, even mundane. Without initial research from a first show, you can still use common sense in anticipating some needs though. For example, your products should always be on a spectrum of pricing from the lowest to the highest. There should also be a variety of sizes, originals and prints etc. Your first show is to hone these big general ideas down until you get it so focussed that you sell every time.
We’ve looked at three major problems that must be understood and overcome to sell art. The first is your lack of sales background. You can easily overcome that by watching videos or reading books and sales techniques, particularly paying attention to extracting sales features from products and learning how to talk about them. The second is that you are selling on speculation. There is no easy way around this other than to have a long-term plan where you initially carry out marketing research at a fair. You then use that information to develop or tweak products and reduce the amount of speculation. The third major problem is that art is difficult to sell because of a perceived lack of need. This can only be overcome by talking with visitors, asking the right questions, and listening carefully. They will always be looking for a practical need. Never simply talk about aesthetics or the things that interest you. Lastly, to add to this third, an important need for art in the home is the impact it has on the domestic environment. This is a key feature of nearly all art. If it makes your customer happy when they look at it that is an important feature. It doesn’t matter what critics say about that purpose. Critics come and go, and history shows us that present generations re-write art history anyway to suit themselves. You’re not here to invent history and please critics. You’re here to sell art and put food on your table, just as countless generations in your industry have done for millennia. Great art was never ‘great’ to ‘great’ artists. It was always firstly for their ‘kitchen’, as they so often expressed it. So rest easy and let others write your history...
Dr C G Barlow. Copyright © 2024 C. G. Barlow.