My wife & I are entertaining the idea of starting/building an antique mall/artisan gallery next spring.
I am looking for suggestions for items to build for artisan gallery side of the business to start with. The items would need to be small enough to fit in a car as most of the sales would be to tourist passing by. Please keep in mind that at this time I am not doing any turning.
If anyone has had any experience running a gallery or selling in a gallery, I would very much like to hear their comments and suggestions. If you do not feel comfortable in posting here, please feel free to email me.
Thanks
Garry
Replies
Garry, look over at http://www.americancraftforum.com/ you will have to register I think, but they have several Gallery owners involved on the forum. Also look at the furnituresociety.org site they may have some gallery listings. Good luck with your endeavor.
Great question Garry
If you've been thinking about this for a while you will probably already be doing the most usefull thing - looking at what other galleries sell!
Not to copy - but to give you some idea about what sells. You can choose to differentiate yourself - and sell stuff not elsewhere available, or you can look at what the others do, and do it better.
Copying, of course, is actually the safest route!
What about partnering with other craftspeople? Partnering with other galleries (a chain or syndicate).
Try some market research - do you have a contact list of previous customers - ask them what they'd be most likely to buy in a gallery?
Here's a question for the knots crew - what would you be most likely to buy in a craft gallery? My answer: art glass! Restricted to wood: turned items with some sort of story (recycled heritage timber, famous maker, special location for timber).
Good luck
Malcolm
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