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Art fair inventory prep: a checklist for Basel, Frieze, TEFAF
Fair week is the most expensive week of the gallery's year. The works are in transit, the booth team is in a different country, the collectors are in three time zones, and one wrong dimension on a wall label is the kind of mistake that gets noticed in front of the wrong person. This guide is the prep checklist that gets the gallery through it without losing sleep.
The fair-prep timeline that works
Fair prep is not a single sprint; it is a sequence of decisions made progressively further out, each with a deadline. The galleries that survive Basel without a meltdown have all internalised the same rough calendar.
- 8 weeks out. Booth checklist drafted. The artists are confirmed; the works are selected from Inventory; rough budget for shipping and install agreed.
- 6 weeks out. Loaned works confirmed and loan agreements signed (most museum loans need 8 weeks; check the lender). Shipping booked with the fine-art shipper; insurance values updated.
- 4 weeks out. Press list confirmed; preview-day invitations drafted as an email campaign segment. Custom paperwork prepared.
- 2 weeks out. Booth checklist locked: titles, dimensions, prices, edition info frozen. Marketing copy can still change after this; operational fields cannot.
- 1 week out. Wall labels printed (from the locked checklist). Customs commercial invoice and ATA Carnet packet generated. Pre-ship condition reports on every work.
- Fair week. Booth team installs; preview opens; sales captured live; reserves placed in the system as they happen.
- 1 week post. Returns reconciled; outbound condition reports for loaned works; sold-work paperwork closed; campaign sent to engaged booth visitors.
What to lock at the 2-week mark, and what to leave fluid
The most common cause of fair-week meltdowns is changing operational data after the lock. A dimension that changed in the inventory three days before shipping but was not propagated to the wall labels is the mistake that surfaces during preview.
Lock these at the 2-week mark: the works on the booth, their canonical titles and dimensions, their prices, their edition info, the consignor and ownership status, and the customs commercial invoice that the broker reads from. Leave fluid: marketing copy, the press release, the sequence works hang in (this changes during install), and the collectors invited to private booth visits.
International shipping: customs, ATA Carnets, the broker
Shipping art across borders for a fair is not the same as shipping a sold work to a collector. Most fair shipping uses an ATA Carnet, which is a customs document that lets goods enter a country temporarily without paying duty (because they will leave with the same goods). The Carnet packet lists every work, its declared value, country of origin, and HS code, and is signed at customs entry and exit.
The Carnet packet is generated from the inventory record and the work's shipping fields (declared value, country of origin, HS code; see Cataloguing). Galleries that catalogue these fields at intake produce Carnet packets in minutes; galleries that do not spend an afternoon on each one.
The fine-art broker (Crozier, Dietl, Helu-Trans, etc.) is the gallery's partner for the customs handover. They want the Carnet packet, the pre-ship condition reports, and the shipping waybill. With one inventory system feeding all three, the broker gets a clean handover; without it, the gallery is rebuilding the same packet for the third year in a row.
At the booth: capturing reserves and sales without losing them
A busy preview day at Basel is six conversations happening simultaneously, three reserves placed in the same hour, and an associate who has to remember to enter all of them. The galleries that close the fair with clean records are the ones whose booth team enters reserves on a phone in real time, not after the booth closes.
- Reserves entered on a phone within five minutes of the conversation. Collector name, work, expiry time, and a one-line note from the associate. Director sees the reserve immediately.
- Deposits taken with Stripe payment links generated from the work record on the spot. Collector pays from their phone before they leave the booth.
- Press contacts, advisor contacts, and serious collector contacts logged in the CRM at the booth, with the works they pointed at attached as context.
- End of each fair day, the director reviews reserves: which expire tomorrow, which need a follow-up, which have unanswered questions. No dragnet at the end of the fair.
How Art.industries handles fair workflows
A fair is a real entity in the system, with dates, venue, and the booth's checklist of works. Works on the booth inherit the fair reference; the multi-location custody view tracks every work's movement from gallery to fair and back.
The booth view, optimised for phone, lets the booth team look up a work in two taps, generate a payment link in three, and place a reserve in four. The director, sitting in the booth's back office or on a flight back, sees the same data.
Customs paperwork (commercial invoice, ATA Carnet) generates from the booth checklist; pre-ship and on-receipt condition reports attach to each work; the press list email campaign sends from the same record.
Post-fair, the returns reconciliation is one operation: mark all works on the booth as returned (or sold, or in transit to a buyer). Custody events are created automatically; consignor statements update; the gallery enters the next month with a clean inventory.
Post-fair: capturing the value of the conversations you had
A fair generates more value in the two weeks after closing than during the fair itself: the conversations that started at the booth become viewing rooms, the reserves become deposits, the press contacts become coverage. Most of that value is lost in galleries where the booth conversations live in the booth team's memory.
When every booth conversation is logged at the time, the post-fair workflow is mechanical: each engaged contact gets a follow-up viewing room of the works they actually looked at; each reserve becomes a deposit conversation; each press contact gets a tailored kit. The gallery converts more of the fair's investment into actual revenue.
The first-time-Basel checklist
Galleries doing Basel (or another major international fair) for the first time consistently underestimate the same things. A short list of what catches first-timers out:
- Crating lead time. Custom crates for fragile works take 2-3 weeks at most fine-art crating shops. Plan from the booth lock backward.
- Insurance for the in-transit value. Most gallery insurance covers works at the gallery; in-transit and at-fair coverage often requires a rider. Confirm with the insurer 6 weeks out.
- Customs documentation language. Some destination countries require the commercial invoice in the local language. Have the customs broker confirm requirements 4 weeks out.
- On-site staffing. Two staff for setup, three for preview, two for opening days, one for takedown is a typical minimum for a 30 sqm booth. First-timers consistently understaff opening.
- Booth Wi-Fi. It will not work. Have a personal hotspot; load the booth checklist on the phone before arriving.
FAQ
- How early should the booth checklist be locked?
- Two weeks before the fair, for operational fields (titles, dimensions, prices, edition info, consignor status). Marketing copy can change later. Wall labels and customs paperwork generate from the locked checklist; later changes propagate only after a documented re-lock.
- How are ATA Carnets and customs paperwork handled?
- The Carnet packet generates from the inventory record's shipping fields (declared value, country of origin, HS code). The customs commercial invoice is generated from the same data. The fine-art broker reads from the same record the wall labels do. See Exports and PDF catalogues for the export workflow.
- Can the booth team capture reserves and sales on a phone?
- Yes. The booth view is optimised for phone, with two-tap work lookup, three-tap payment link generation, and four-tap reserve placement. The director sees every reserve immediately, including from a flight back.
- How are reserves prevented from conflicting across staff?
- A reserve is placed on the work itself, not in a separate sheet; once placed, no other staff member can offer the same work without seeing the reserve. Conflicts are surfaced in real time, not after the booth closes.
- How does the post-fair returns reconciliation work?
- One operation: mark all works on the booth as returned, sold, or in transit to a buyer. Custody events are generated automatically; condition reports compare to pre-ship baseline; consignor statements update. The next month's inventory state is clean by the end of the first day back.
- Can multiple staff edit the booth checklist simultaneously?
- Yes. The checklist syncs in real time across staff; the director on a flight, the registrar at the gallery, and the associate at the booth all see the same data and can edit safely. The audit trail records who changed what and when.
- How does this work for satellite fairs and section programmes (NADA, Felix, Independent)?
- Same model: the satellite fair is a real fair entity with its own dates and booth checklist. Galleries showing at multiple fairs in the same week (NADA Miami + ABMB) run two booth records, sometimes sharing works that move between booths. The multi-location custody handles the inter-booth moves.
Run your next fair on the trial workspace
Set up the next fair as a real entity in the trial: booth checklist, customs paperwork, condition reports, payment links. By preview day, the operational scramble will be a quiet workflow.