The UK’s fastest growing private companies: Hot 100 2015 – (76) Daniel Katz

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Name: Daniel Katz 
Industry/sector: Retail and related services
Date founded: 1968
The boss: Stuart Lochhead
Location: London
Latest turnover: £27.6m
Three-year compound growth rate (%): 32.63
Latest EBITDA: £7.2m

According to the New York Times, several dealers are setting up “destination” galleries –spaces that are just as unique and impressive as the art being displayed. In order to keep up with the constant rush of the art fair calendar, dealers must, the article claimed, “come up with compelling ways to coax wealthy collectors to pay their galleries a visit too”. One way of doing this is to turn the gallery itself into a destination.

Who’s setting the trend? It’s none other than dealer Daniel Katz, who traded in his Bond Street space to lure top-shelf collectors.

Daniel Katz made a trend-setting move after his landlord sold his business premises. Instead of retiring, the London-based art dealer acquired a six-storey, 6,000 sq ft Edwardian town house in Mayfair.

“I did think of retiring,” he admitted, “but my son Robin is fully involved in the business, and I have a responsibility to my staff. I decided to give it another ten years.”

Although Katz has claimed the stresses of refurbishing the building has taken ten years off his life, he explained that there are several opportunities, commercial and otherwise, that the new venture has to offer.

One of the reasons for transforming the business, he said, was to change the state of museums. “Institutions have become difficult to work with as most museum trustees are business people and not art people,” Katz noted. “There are only a handful of institutions I want to continue to work with, so we are looking to expand other markets that focus on the very rich private collector.”

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