Industry
Software for art fair organisers, satellite fairs, and festivals
Fair organisers run a different business from gallery exhibitors. The fair is the venue: the organiser sells booths, manages exhibitors, coordinates logistics, and stewards sponsors and press. The exhibitors run their own booths. The software the organiser needs has more in common with festival production than with gallery operations.
What fair organisers need software for
A fair organiser running a 60-100 booth fair (or a satellite fair, or a multi-venue festival) has five operational layers: an exhibitor list with vetting state and contracts, a floor plan with booth assignments, an installer and contractor coordination layer, a press and VIP CRM for stewardship, and a sponsor management layer. Each is operational; none is "primary catalogue management" in the gallery sense.
The software market for fair organisers is split between expensive enterprise event-management platforms (Cvent, EventsAir) and homemade spreadsheet setups. Both miss the art-specific operational details: artist roster vetting, publication deadlines for the fair catalogue, the hand-off between organiser-managed press and exhibitor-managed sales.
The five workflows fair organisers run
A working fair has these five operational areas, each running in parallel during the run-up.
- Exhibitor application and vetting. The application form, the vetting committee's review, the acceptance, the contract, the booth assignment. Often done in a mix of Google Forms and email; should be one workflow.
- Floor plan and booth assignment. The fair's floor plan, with booths assigned to accepted exhibitors. Changes happen up to a week before opening.
- Catalogue and publication deadlines. The fair catalogue has a hard deadline for exhibitor submissions (typically 6-8 weeks out). Late submissions are the most-cited cause of fair-catalogue meltdowns.
- Press and VIP stewardship. Press credentials, VIP previews, sponsor previews. The fair's CRM tracks these contacts across years.
- Operational logistics. Installers, security, AV, climate control, contractors. Coordinated across vendors with named locations and dates.
How Art.industries fits fair organiser workflows
The fair itself is a real entity, with dates, venues, and a roster of exhibitors as contacts. Each exhibitor is a contact record with their application, vetting state, contract, booth assignment, and submission status for the fair catalogue.
For the catalogue submission deadline, exhibitors submit work selections through a private portal scoped to their booth. The submission feeds the catalogue PDF generation directly; the fair organiser does not retype 600 work entries from 60 exhibitors.
Press credentials, VIP previews, and sponsor stewardship use the same private viewing room and CRM tools galleries use. The fair organiser has its own contact list (separate from any single exhibitor's) and stewards relationships across years.
For fairs that also handle direct sales (some satellite fairs, smaller festivals with merchandise or editions), the Stripe-backed payment flow and storefront work as for any gallery.
A real flow: vetting and onboarding 80 exhibitors
A fair receives 220 applications for 80 booths. Here is the vetting and onboarding flow.
- Applications submitted through a public form; each becomes a contact record with application materials attached.
- Vetting committee reviews applications in the workspace; each application has a structured review with notes from each committee member.
- 80 acceptances issued. Acceptance triggers contract generation, booth assignment, and the catalogue submission deadline reminder.
- Exhibitors submit booth checklists through their portal in the weeks leading up to the fair. The fair catalogue PDF generates from the submissions.
- Press and VIP previews scheduled. The fair organiser sends private viewing rooms of the headline works (with each exhibitor's permission) to major press and VIP collectors.
- During the fair, the organiser tracks issues (a booth's lighting failure, a missing crate, a contract amendment) as workspace events with named owners. After the fair, the post-mortem report generates from the same data.
When fair organisers should also use a dedicated event platform
For ticketing, badge printing, on-site check-in, and large-scale sponsor activation logistics, dedicated event platforms (Eventbrite for ticketing, dedicated badge providers, sponsor activation platforms) often integrate alongside Art.industries. The split: Art.industries handles the art-specific operational layer (exhibitors, catalogue, art-side stewardship); the dedicated event platform handles the event-management infrastructure (ticketing, badges, attendance tracking).
Pricing for fair organisers
Most fair organisers using Art.industries are on Advanced ($40/month base) for fairs with up to ~100 exhibitors, or Max ($200/month base) for larger fairs and multi-venue festivals. The collaborator capacity matters most: a fair organising team of 8-15 people working seasonally needs collaborator slots without per-seat pricing eating the budget.
FAQ
- Can fair organisers manage the application and vetting workflow in Art.industries?
- Yes. Applications come in through a public form (created in the workspace), become contact records with the application materials attached, and route through the vetting committee's structured review. Acceptance triggers contract generation and booth assignment.
- Can exhibitors submit their booth checklists through a portal?
- Yes. Each exhibitor gets a private portal scoped to their booth: they upload their works, with the dimensions and credit lines the catalogue needs. The fair catalogue PDF generates from the submissions; the organiser does not retype 600 entries.
- How does this differ from gallery software?
- Same data model; different defaults. The fair organiser's primary entity is the fair (with exhibitors, booths, sponsors, press); the gallery's primary entity is the gallery itself (with represented artists, owned and consigned works, collectors). Both use the same workspace tooling for CRM, viewing rooms, and operational coordination.
- Can we manage multiple editions of the fair across years?
- Yes. Each edition is a separate fair record with its own exhibitor list, floor plan, and catalogue. Press and VIP contacts persist across editions; their attendance history at past editions feeds the next edition's segmentation.
- How is the floor plan handled?
- Booth assignments are structured records (booth number, exhibitor, square metres, location on the plan). The visual floor plan is typically maintained externally (in CAD or floor-plan-specific software) and referenced from the workspace; we do not build the visual editor in-house.
- Can we run merchandise and edition sales through the fair's website?
- Yes. The public storefront handles direct sales (merchandise, fair-specific editions) with checkout via Stripe. Useful for festivals with a strong public-facing commerce dimension.
- Is Art.industries only for commercial fairs?
- No. Non-commercial fairs and biennials use the same workflows for exhibitor management, catalogue production, and press stewardship. The commerce layer is optional; the operational layer is the value.
Set up the next edition in the trial
Bring next year's fair into the trial workspace: dates, venue, application form, vetting committee. The structure that takes a week to set up will save weeks of email coordination across the run-up.