Blog

Owning your own business is incredibly hard work, it seems like your every waking (and sometimes dreaming) hour is spent consumed by what needs doing, placing ordering, paying artists, paying suppliers, making sure your cash flow is healthy and your accounts are up to date, looking after your employees, keeping your retail space fresh and inviting, changing windows, keeping all your social media channels up to date, fulfilling a multitude of roles from accountant, bookkeeper, marketing guru, cleaner, employer, investor and general dogsbody!     There are times when I wake up and all I want to do is throw in the...

“Choosing to support an independent business is an act of respect; it’s acknowledging the tremendous risk and challenges inherent to starting your own thing.” - (Matt Kliegman co-founder - The Smile, The Smile To Go, Black Seed Bagels) It struck me earlier this week that pretty much everything we sell in the gallery is either handmade by an actual person or produced by a small independent business and how proud we should be of that fact.   We are supporting these makers and businesses by stocking and selling their work and products – we are helping someone who has a passion...

For the past 12 years we’ve received many an email, phone call and “walk-ins” from artists seeking representation.  I can’t imagine how hard it must be to just put yourself and your work out there knowing that you may well get a no thank you response. So although there are many articles out there about approaching a gallery these are our Top 10 Tips for getting your work into our gallery and onto our walls…… 1. Do Your Homework If you’re able to visit the gallery then we’d really encourage you to do so.  Have a wander around, look at...

What the tweet has a poke, like or share got to do with good business practice? Don’t groan, it’s worth every minute of your attention, I promise! Marketing has come a long way in the last few decades. The early seventies saw a shift in advertising trends from the stand-and-point style of the fifties, to a widespread attempt to tap into people’s emotions. Think 1973 - the famous Hovis advert on Shaftesbury’s Gold Hill for heartwarming nostalgia. This aspect of marketing has lead to today’s viral networking, where companies with multi-million dollar budgets use the power of the internet to...

If customer service is one of the biggest selling points of an independent retailer, we have to ask, what is good customer service?For us the answer is simply this - going beyond the customer’s expectations. It’s an approach we’ve tried to fulfill at the gallery and is based on the theories of Alf Dunbar, author of “Just Looking Thanks!”. Dunbar’s ideas are based on how we like to be treated as customers, and are behind the success of businesses with exemplary customer service like M&S, John Lewis and Selfridges. They have formed the basis of our customer service philosophy.First, consider...

It is tempting to take a lofty attitude to sales in the art business. After all, it’s a luxury market, we can’t really steer people into a purchase can we? It’s such a subjective market; we can promote the artists, but the paintings sell themselves, right?  Wrong. As gallery owners, we are in the retail business just like our high street neighbours. It’s our duty to our artists and our obligation to customers to have them in mind at every stage of their experience. Starting with first impressions; the window display. Retail experts describe your window as the ‘eyes of...