Industry
Software for art dealers and private-sale specialists
Dealer work is different from primary-market gallery work in a few specific ways: more secondary-market inventory, more confidentiality, more bilateral negotiation, and a smaller team doing higher-velocity transactions. The software has to know the difference. This page explains how Art.industries fits dealer workflows.
What dealer work needs from software
Dealers and private-sales specialists work with a smaller, more sensitive inventory than primary-market galleries: secondary-market works on consignment from collectors, museums deaccessioning, estate-managed works. Each piece typically has a known price ceiling, a confidential consignor, and a small list of plausible buyers.
The workflow is bilateral negotiation, not retail merchandising. The dealer's edge is institutional memory (who has been offered what, who passed and why, who collects what), and the speed of getting accurate information into a serious buyer's hands without exposing the work publicly.
The five things dealer software has to handle
Dealer-specific needs that primary-market gallery software often gets wrong.
- Confidential consignors. The owner of a secondary-market work is often confidential to anyone outside the deal. The system has to model "consignor" without revealing identity to associates or buyers. See Consignment management.
- Pricing memory. Past offers, pass reasons, advisor signals, all attached to the work. The dealer's second offer to the same collector six months later starts from the first conversation.
- Discreet viewing rooms. Per-buyer, password-protected, watermark-on-by-default, revocable instantly. See Private viewing rooms.
- Multi-party splits. Co-broker deals, finder fees, introducer commissions, all settled cleanly without spreadsheet reconstructions.
- Stripe-backed deposits with refund clarity. Bilateral deals fall through more often than retail; the deposit and refund flow has to be clean. See Stripe payment links.
Where existing dealer setups break
Most dealers currently run on some combination of: a private inventory spreadsheet (often shared between the principal and one assistant), a confidential collector list in another spreadsheet, PDF decks for each pitch, ad-hoc Stripe links, and a vault of WhatsApp threads with advisors. It works because the team is small and everyone remembers everything; it stops working the moment the team grows or the principal takes a real holiday.
It also breaks the first time a confidential consignor asks for a statement. Reconstructing a 6-month history of offers, passes, and the eventual sale, with the consignor's share clearly itemised, is a multi-day project. Doing it twice in the same year drives the dealer to a real system.
A real flow: a confidential offer to a single advisor
A dealer is offered a major secondary-market work by a confidential consignor. The dealer has one likely buyer, an advisor representing a foundation. Here is the flow.
- The work is catalogued in Inventory with the consignor marked as confidential (visible only to the principal). Provenance, condition, and pricing context are attached.
- A private viewing room is built for the advisor: one work, full details, watermarked imagery, link expires in 14 days, accessible only with email-confirm.
- The advisor opens the room, spends 8 minutes on the page, and asks two questions through the room's contact channel. Both questions are answered with attached supplementary documentation (provenance documents, condition history).
- The advisor confirms the foundation is interested. The dealer issues a Stripe payment link for the deposit, scoped to the work. The deposit clears.
- The deal closes via a full invoice with the proper legal entities and the configured multi-party split (consignor share, dealer commission, introducer fee). All parties get clean settlements; the consignor remains anonymous to the buyer.
How Art.industries handles dealer workflows
Confidential consignor mode is built in: a consignor record can be marked as confidential, in which case associates see "Confidential consignor" rather than the name. Only the principal (and explicitly authorised roles) see the identity. The same applies to confidential buyers and confidential prices.
The CRM treats every interaction with an advisor or collector as a logged event tied to the works under discussion. The dealer's memory is institutional, not personal: the next director-level hire reads the relationship history before reaching out.
Multi-party splits are first-class on each consignment: co-broker share, introducer fee, dealer commission, all calculated and settled per sale with the right paperwork generated for each party.
For dealers running on the fast tempo of secondary-market work, the workspace is built around speed: two-tap work lookup, three-tap payment link generation, instant room revocation. The system gets out of the way during a deal and stays attached to the data afterward.
When dealers should still use a separate auction tool
Art.industries is built for bilateral negotiation. It is not auction software; if the dealer's primary workflow is sealed-bid or open-cry auctions, dedicated auction tooling (the auction houses' own platforms, or specialist software) is the right fit. For most dealers, the bilateral private-sale model is the dominant one and Art.industries is a clean fit; for the few dealers running their own occasional auctions, the auction layer sits next to Art.industries rather than inside it.
FAQ
- Does Art.industries support fully confidential consignors and buyers?
- Yes. Both consignor and buyer records can be marked as confidential, with visibility limited to the principal and explicitly authorised roles. Associates and assistants see redacted labels (Confidential consignor / Confidential buyer) without compromising the workflow.
- How are multi-party splits handled (co-brokers, introducers, finder fees)?
- The consignment supports multiple recipients with named shares; each sale generates per-recipient settlements with the correct paperwork. Co-broker arrangements, introducer fees, and finder commissions all flow through the same settlement model.
- Can viewing rooms be made watermark-on-by-default for sensitive works?
- Yes. Watermarking can be set as a default at the work level (typical for secondary-market and consignor-restricted works) and overridden per room. The watermark identifies the recipient, deterring forwarding.
- How does pricing memory work? Do I see what I offered to whom last time?
- Yes. Every offer, pass, and counter is logged on the work and the contact, including the date, the price discussed, and any notes. The next time the dealer pitches the same work, the prior history is one click away.
- Can the system handle a work that is on consignment and also brokered through a third dealer?
- Yes. The work has one canonical record with the consignor; the third dealer is a counterparty on the deal, with their share of the commission tracked separately. The settlement view shows both the consignor share and the co-broker split per sale.
- How does this differ from primary-market gallery software?
- Same underlying platform, different defaults. Dealer mode emphasises confidentiality (consignors and buyers), bilateral negotiation tooling, and pricing memory; primary-market mode emphasises exhibition management, public website, and recurring campaigns. Both are supported.
- Does Art.industries work for cross-over teams that do both primary and secondary work?
- Yes. Most galleries we work with do both, with the proportion shifting over time. The system handles primary and secondary on the same workspace, with permissions and visibility distinguishing the two when needed.
Run one confidential deal in the trial
Bring a real consignment into the trial workspace, build the confidential viewing room for one buyer, run the full deposit-to-settlement loop. The system either fits dealer work or it does not; the trial answers that in days.