Yahoo Finance My first boss: Hugo Barclay, Affordable Art Fair UK director
The people who helped shape business leaders
Hugo Barclay leads an expert team in the execution of major London art fairs. He has delivered six Affordable Art Fairs since joining. And in 2023 the business was a recipient of a CoolBrands Award whilst under his leadership.
The Affordable Art Fairs, run at 17 locations across the globe, celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2024. In that time they have generated £492m worth of art sales, with 579,000 pieces of art sold globally. There are 55 staff globally.
I sometimes wonder why I went back every summer, but my most formative work experience was working for a US publishing company, Southwestern Advantage, during university holidays.
I was going door-to-door selling children’s school books and educational software. It was a commission only job and this meant that you had to show up and be the best version of yourself to sell and earn.
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You naturally develop a thick skin early on with door-to-door sales and learn to deal with people saying ‘no’. I had the police called upon me a handful of times. I was permanently in the streets, people wondering who I was and if I had a license. I once had a rifle in my face, with its owner telling me to get off his porch.
I worked in Indiana, Maryland and Seattle. We focused on a school district and went with sample books and talked about the value of education.
It was quite a simple but very challenging job at the same time. I learned how to value the power of your own attitude and the influence of the people around you. We all had good and bad days in sales.
My boss Ali Marshall had sent an email to my university and that’s where I initially signed up. He guided me about goal setting and marginal gains, which is something I think alot about with my team today.
When it comes to door-to-door, it’s about tweaking all the different components in how you communicate your product and how you come across and show up. At the large art events now there are so many components that go into creating the best possible experience for the galleries exhibiting as well as the visitors.
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I later worked for Richard Williamson, founder of art agency McKay Williamson, who had also done a similar bookselling job. Under Richard, we were selling art commissions to individuals and within that role I was picking up the phone to lawyers and businesses and pitching them creative ideas for their homes.
He refined my understanding of what sales is: how to communicate effectively to an individual to make a decision. He taught me the value of silence, asking the right type of questions and he was more influential as an individual and first boss in the art space, whereas the publishing company as a job was more formative as it was bloody hard.
Last autumn’s Battersea Fair came in the week that Liz Truss resigned as prime minister and just prior to the announcement of her mad budget. It’s my catchphrase talking to galleries that ‘art prevails above politics’.
We try to make the Affordable Art Fairs a destination. First and foremost it’s about seeing and buying art, which you can do from £50 all the way up to £7,500 and everything in between. We have 112 galleries and that’s the core focus, but with food courts and bookshops we try and create a day out for families and art lovers.
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During the pandemic we saw an acceleration of people buying art online. Over the last 18 months or so we’ve also seen the cost of living crisis in the UK and people assume that art has been impacted.
It hasn’t affected our sales at all. We sold 3,500 to 4,000 artworks at our March and Spring fairs. That was very encouraging. Personally I am always anxious as my clients are the galleries at the art fairs and I want them to do well. After all, they have to sell work to warrant doing the fairs again.
The next Affordable Art Fair is Battersea Autumn, 19-22 October. More info and tickets here.
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