Recalling the Past: "Black Friday" Was Never Really an Art Thing...

For many people — especially those in the business of selling almost anything at all — this weekend historically makers the beginning of the holiday sales season.

I'm grateful to no longer be in the art gallery business... and I am grateful that enough years have passed that I no longer feel put off by the whole "Black Friday" and holiday selling circus.

Truth be known, this weekend never really meant much of anything in the art business. We talk about the Friday after Thanksgiving (at least in the US) as being the biggest shopping day of the year, but the truth is that its a designation that really should just be applied to products like electronics and toys... art is definitely not part of that picture.

Which isn't to say that we wouldn't get all amped up at the start of the holiday season, and would often schedule openings and open houses for this weekend... and we'd invariably end up disappointed.

But it didn't keep us from trying.

Art DOES Make a Good Gift!

Now, I'm not suggesting that art isn't a good gift for the holidays — quite the contrary!

However, all our large sales and busy days tended to come during the final week before Christmas. Often, our busiest day of the year would be the last Saturday before Christmas and it was not that unusual for us to do more business in a single weekend than in the course of the entire month following in January.

The interesting thing about that was it was not a success built on advertising or on having special events... but almost purely on crowd size.

If you have enough interested people walk through your front door, you will make lots of sales if you have some decent work in your gallery.

Compared to other forms of retail I have been part of, the nice thing about being in an art gallery is that your return rate tends to be extremely low.

Most of the art we sold for gift giving tended to be given been couples/partners... and were picked up because "someone had hinted" that they really liked a specific piece, at some point during the year.

So of course that's going to be appreciated!

As I said, I am grateful to no longer be part of the art gallery business, and the whole retail circus... just writing about art is plenty involvement, for my liking!

However, I do enjoy looking back and remembering how it once was...

Thanks for stopping by, and do please leave a comment if you feel so inspired!

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All images are our own, unless otherwise attributed