20 Steps to Start an Art Business
Opening an art business means building a bridge between the people who make work and the people who want to live with it. Whether you plan to open a physical gallery, run an online shop, or sell at art fairs, this guide walks you through every decision — from choosing your first artists to making your first sale.
Most people who read this are already selling art. Maybe you flipped a painting to a friend, or you move work at a fair every few months, or a collector pays you to find pieces. That is a real business as an art dealer, even with no paperwork yet. The steps below are ordered so the legal setup catches up to the work you already do — you do not stop selling to start a company. If you have never sold anything, start at step 1. If money is already changing hands, jump ahead to where you actually are.
Being an art dealer means you buy, hold, and sell art — paintings, prints, sculpture, glass, whatever a buyer will pay for — and you make your margin on the difference. This guide walks you from your first sale to a written plan. Read it in order or jump to where you already stand.
Decide you're doing this Before anything else, decide that being an art dealer is a thing you do, not a thing you might do. This is a decision, not a purchase — you do not need to register, spend, or announce anything to make it. Dealing art means you take on risk: you buy a piece hoping someone else wants it more than you paid. Ask yourself if you can sit with that. This week, write one sentence: "I buy and sell art and I mean to make money at it." Put it somewhere you will see it. Then look at what you already own or can get your hands on, and pick one piece you would try to sell. That is the whole step. Commit, then move.
Define the one thing you sell An art dealer who sells "art" sells nothing. Buyers and your own focus need a narrower shape. Are you moving contemporary paintings, mid-century prints, studio glass, local emerging painters, estate pieces? Pick one lane to start. This is not forever — it is the thing you get known for first. Narrow beats broad because you learn one market's prices, its fakes, its buyers, and its seasons far faster. This week, finish the sentence "I sell ___ to ___." If you cannot name a category, list the last five pieces you handled or admired and find the thread running through them. That thread is your lane. Write it down and keep every later decision pointed at it.
Name who buys it An art business sells direct to the end buyer in most transactions, which means your customer relationships are your distribution network. The buyers who sustain an art business fall into a few recognizable groups. Individual collectors — people furnishing homes, building personal collections, or buying gifts — are the core of most galleries' revenue and the audience most art businesses are built around. Interior designers and design professionals who source art on behalf of residential and commercial clients represent a second important channel; they often purchase in higher volumes and return repeatedly when the relationship is well managed. Corporate buyers — businesses furnishing offices, hotels, and public spaces — round out the picture for galleries that build a commercial art program. The full range of people and organizations who buy from an art business is broader than these examples, but these three give you the clearest starting point for building your outreach strategy.
Make one sale Nothing here matters until money moves. One real sale teaches you more than a month of planning — it shows you what a buyer actually pays, what they ask, and where the friction is. You do not need a company, a website, or a licence to sell a piece of art to a willing buyer. This week, take the one piece you picked in step 1 and put it in front of a real buyer: post it, message a collector you know, show it at a market table, or list it. Name a price. Handle the questions. Complete the exchange and note what happened. Keep a plain record of what you paid, what you sold it for, and who bought it. That record starts your business.
Choose how you'll be organised If you are already selling, you are operating as a business in the eyes of most tax authorities — usually as a sole proprietor by default, whether or not you filed anything. Nothing is wrong with that; it is where nearly everyone starts. Now you choose whether to stay that way or form a separate entity, like an LLC, that legally sits between you and the work. The trade is simple: an entity adds paperwork and cost but can shield your personal money if a deal or a piece goes bad. This week, read a plain-language comparison of sole proprietor versus LLC for your state and decide which fits the size of your dealing. Do not file yet — just decide.
Register the entity If step 5 pointed you to an LLC or corporation, this is where you make it real. Entities are registered with your state, usually the Secretary of State's office, and most states let you file online. You choose a name, name yourself as the owner, list a registered agent, and pay the state's filing charge. If you decided to stay a sole proprietor, you may still need to register a "doing business as" name with your county or state if you trade under anything other than your own legal name. This week, go to your Secretary of State's website, search their business name database to confirm your name is free, and read their formation page start to finish before you file.
EIN, state and local registration Once your entity exists — or even as a sole proprietor — you get an Employer Identification Number from the IRS, a free federal ID that lets you open a business bank account and hire without using your Social Security number. Apply directly on the IRS website; it takes minutes. Then register with your state's tax authority. As an art dealer you almost certainly need a sales tax permit, because selling art to buyers is a taxable retail sale in most states — this is a category, and the issuing body is your state department of revenue. Your city or county may also require a general business registration. This week, get your EIN, then look up your state revenue office's sales tax registration page.
The permission this work requires Starting an art business falls into the lower end of the regulatory spectrum, but you still need the foundations any retail business requires. At minimum, expect to register your business entity with your state's secretary of state office, obtain a general business license from your city or county, and apply for a sales tax permit through your state's department of revenue so you can collect and remit tax on retail sales. If you operate from a physical location, local zoning approval confirms that retail use is permitted at that address. An art business that handles consigned work should also have written consignment agreements in place before accepting inventory, as many states have specific consignment protection statutes that govern how artist proceeds must be held and paid.
Business bank account Mixing your own money with the business's money is the fastest way to lose track of whether you are actually making anything — and it weakens the legal separation if you formed an entity. Open a dedicated business bank account and run every art purchase and sale through it. With your EIN and formation papers in hand, most banks open one quickly, and many credit unions and online banks charge little or nothing to hold a small account. This week, gather your EIN and entity documents, compare two or three account options for low fees and easy deposits, and open one. From then on, every piece you buy and every piece you sell touches that account and nothing else. Your bookkeeping later depends on this single habit.
Price the work The first money in an art business goes to the space before it goes to anything else. If you are opening a physical gallery, your earliest costs are the security deposit and first month's rent, followed immediately by any build-out needed to make bare walls gallery-ready — lighting in particular is a significant line item. After the space, capital flows to insurance covering the artwork in your care, point-of-sale and inventory software, and initial marketing materials including photography and a website. For an online-only operation the order shifts: platform fees, professional photography, and shipping supplies move to the front. Consignment-based models delay some of these costs because you do not purchase inventory outright, but framing, hanging hardware, and display fixtures are costs you carry regardless of model. The range varies widely depending on location, format, and whether you lease or build out.
Insurance Art is fragile, valuable, and easy to damage, lose, or have stolen — and once it is in your hands, you are responsible for it. General liability insurance covers injury and damage claims; a specific fine art or inland marine policy covers the pieces themselves while you store, transport, or display them. If you consign work from artists or collectors, they will expect you to insure it, and a written promise means little without a policy behind it. This week, call one independent insurance broker who handles art or collectibles and describe exactly what you do: what you hold, its rough value, where you keep it, and how you move it. Get a quote and read what it excludes. Do not insure nothing while holding other people's art.
Find your suppliers An art business draws from a wider supply network than most people expect. Two positions are worth understanding from the start. Independent artists, writers, and performers Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers are the primary source of inventory for most art businesses — these are the individual creators whose paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs you will represent, either on consignment or through direct purchase. Glass and glazing product manufacturers Glass Product Manufacturing Made of Purchased Glass supply the framing glass and UV-protective glazing that finished and presentation-ready work requires. The full set of supplier relationships for an art business is larger than these two positions and includes materials wholesalers and other miscellaneous manufacturers depending on the services you offer. Understanding where each category sits helps you negotiate terms and build reliable sourcing before your doors open.
Write down how you do it You already have a way of working — how you find pieces, check they are genuine, agree a price, take possession, and hand off to a buyer. Right now it lives in your head, which means it breaks when you are busy and cannot be handed to anyone else. Write it down as a plain checklist. Include how you verify a piece is what the seller claims, how you record where it came from, how you set a price, and how you package and deliver. Provenance — the documented history of who owned a piece — matters more in art than almost any other trade, so build it into your steps. This week, write the checklist for one complete deal, start to finish, and follow it on your next sale.
Records and bookkeeping Every piece you buy is inventory until it sells, and you need to know what each one cost, when it came in, and what it eventually sold for. Without that, you cannot tell a good year from a bad one or file honest taxes. Set up simple bookkeeping now, while your volume is small enough to catch up on. A spreadsheet works to start, or use bookkeeping software; some sellers track inventory and sales through a platform like Fresh Start. This week, list every piece currently in your hands with its cost and purchase date, and record every sale against it. Keep receipts for what you buy and copies of what you sell. Do this weekly, not yearly, and tax time stops being a crisis.
Tax setup As an art dealer you face two tax jobs: income tax on your profit, and sales tax you collect from buyers and pass to the state. These are separate, and confusing them causes real trouble. Your profit is what you sold pieces for minus what you paid and spent — your bookkeeping from step 14 feeds this directly. Sales tax is money that was never yours; you hold it briefly and remit it on a schedule your state sets. Because no one withholds tax from your sales, you likely owe estimated income tax through the year rather than once. This week, set aside a fixed share of every sale in a separate place for tax, and read your state's rules for howoften you remit sales tax.
First help — contractor or employee At some point one person cannot pack, ship, photograph, research provenance, and still find and close deals. Your first help is usually a contractor — someone who does a defined job, invoices you, and handles their own taxes — not an employee. The line matters: an employee works under your direction on your schedule and triggers payroll taxes and withholding; a contractor controls how they do the work. Misclassifying an employee as a contractor is a common and costly mistake, so learn the test your state uses. This week, write down the one task that eats the most time and that someone else could do, and decide whether it is a project a contractor could take. Do not hire until the work clearly justifies it.
Find buyers The first three sales in an art business almost always come from people already in your life before you open. Artists you represent will promote the opening to their own networks — collectors, friends, and followers who already trust the maker and are primed to buy. Your own personal and professional contacts are the second source; people who know you are more likely to give an emerging gallery their first chance than a stranger would be. The third source is the opening event itself: a well-promoted launch brings in curious neighbors, local press, and people who heard through word of mouth and show up ready to browse. These early sales matter less for the revenue than for the proof of concept — they establish that real people will walk in, engage with the work, and hand over money, which is the foundation every art business is built on.
Get listed and get verified Buyers of art are wary, and rightly so — the market has fakes and burned buyers. Being findable and verified lowers the wariness before you ever speak. Claim a profile everywhere your buyers look: a business listing with your address and hours, relevant art marketplaces, and any dealer directories your specialty maintains. Where a platform offers verification — a confirmed identity or business badge, as Fresh Start does — complete it, because a verified seller closes deals a nameless one cannot. Fill every profile out fully: real photos, clear specialty, and how to reach you. This week, claim or complete one listing and start the verification process on one platform. Consistency across listings matters too — use the same business name and details everywhere so buyers trust that it is really you.
Check yourself against industry figures You cannot tell if your dealing is healthy in a vacuum. Industry figures give you a yardstick: typical margins on resale art, how long pieces sit before selling, what share of asking price dealers in your lane actually get. When your numbers drift far from the norm, that is a signal to look — maybe you are pricing too low, holding too long, or buying in the wrong lane. Compare against real, sourced figures, not what someone claims on social media. This week, find one published benchmark for art dealing — a trade association report or a government industry summary — and hold your own numbers next to it. Note where you are close and where you are far off. The gaps are your to-do list, not a verdict.
Write the plan Now you write the plan — last, not first, because everything before this gives you the real numbers to put in it. A plan for an art dealer is short: what you sell, who buys it, what you pay and charge, how you find pieces and buyers, and what you need to earn to make this worth doing. It forces the pieces into one story and shows you where the story does not hold together yet. You can draft it in a document or use a guided template like the one in Fresh Start. This week, write two pages covering those points, using your own bookkeeping and benchmarks for the numbers. Revisit it every few months. A plan you update is a tool; a plan you file away is decoration.
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