How to form relationships with collectors and clients?

Location

The physical location of your gallery is an important aspect in forming new relationships with art collectors and other buyers.

Art Fairs

While an expensive proposition and often unprofitable, due to the excessive cost of most art fairs and related shipping, marketing and advertising, Art Fairs do enable you to form a market presence and create potentially profitable relationships with potential collectors, institutions and other buyers.

Online

Another expensive proposition is to develop the right Website and to promote it.  Unless you are able to budget at least $10,000 per month, to develop, host, update and advertise a Website for your gallery, it is probably a better idea to work with Websites specializing in art.  An inefficient gallery Website can actually hurt the image of your physical gallery, so please watch out for pitfalls.
 
Network

You will have to ensure that you have a strong network of potential clients and collectors.  Do you personally know people who would be buy art, at your gallery?  For a gallery to succeed it is important that the director has exceptional networking skills and pre-existing contacts.

Database

From the 1st day of your gallery, you will have to begin developing and collecting data of your gallery visitors and other potential clients.  Additional resources for accumulating a solid database may include telephone directories and chamber of commerce lists.  You should also consider purchasing databases of your target market from companies offering such services.