Last night, all the decorative and fine art dealers in Jackson Square held an open night, offering hospitality to their best clients. We were ecstatic to have in excess of 300 people through our galleries between the hours of 5 and 8 PM. What was even more pleasant was to see the numbers of new faces, people who, presumably, don’t know the Jackson Square venue, and took the time to come down and browse.
That’s what’s important in marketing not only our individual shops, but the venues themselves- the opportunity to browse, particularly for the new collector. So often, even people who normally are the furthest removed from shy, become shrinking violets when faced with the intimidating world of art and antiques connoisseurship. The auction houses have tapped in to something here, marketing as they do to younger collectors who, when browsing or buying over the internet, can maintain anonymity and avoid thereby the sort of gaffes all of us have faced in our collecting lives. I wish we could all remember that, for instance, None of us were born knowing the difference between flame and fiddle back mahogany, or who Thomas Chippendale was. It’s should be easy to understand why it is much more comfortable, then, for our new buyers to go into the galleries knowing they aren’t going to be pounced on by a dealer eager to sell something, who asks penetrating questions about areas of collecting interest in an inadvertently intimidating attempt to be engaging.
No- going into the gallery when the door is already wide open and there are 20 or 30 people inside makes the otherwise hesitant visitor more willing to take the plunge. Ironically, one of our colleagues on the street complained that there were too many people in his gallery, such that he was concerned about theft. Surprisingly, he was also disappointed there were so many younger people. Crazy, isn’t it? I hope we have masses of people at any time, and the younger the better. As it is, it has appeared over the course of the last year that all our mature collectors have retired permanently to Florida on limited, fixed incomes. It doesn’t take too much intellect to realize that we need to be constantly adding to our base of collectors, and the younger they start, the longer they will be our clients.
Any of my blog readers have any comments about open days?