[BetteT]

If you are approaching agencies who rep cretive people (photogs, stylists, makeup artitists, etc.) ... here's what I've been told:

Your portfolio should be well developed, have some serious tears in it from known magazines and you should have a good client base before the better agencies will want to rep you.

In addition, they will probably want you to bring your clients with you ... which means they can chage your clients and collect commission from you and from them, when you work for them again. It's a two way street ... you bring them clients and they bring you clients. So ... be aware of that ... you'll probably want to negotiate exclusions for some of your best clients ... since you found them in the first place. If the agency wants you and think you have the potential to work a lot, they might be willing to exclude some or all of your existing clients.

Some stylists opt not to get representation for this reason ... they are already working a lot and don't want to loose commission money for existing clients.

It's kind of a "catch 22" as I understand it. They want you to have lots of clients before they are interested in repping you ... but you need them to get you clients. Difficult, at best. So ... it has to be carefully evaluated to determine if you can find a middle ground where both you and the agency will profit above what you are making now.

Of course ... they not only should kick up the volume of work offered to you, they also do do all the billing and follow on unpaid invoices, and help you negotiate a beter rate than what you might get on your own ... things the a lot of artistic people are not very good in doing.