My business partner, Amanda Sharp, and I had been running frieze magazine for about ten years when we started talking about setting up an art fair. Despite having some of the best galleries and museums in the world, the UK, and specifically London, had no international contemporary art fair.

Working on the magazine gave us a good knowledge of galleries, artists, curators and critics. Amanda moved to New York in the 1990s which influenced the scope of the magazine and then, through her contacts, helped to get support for the fair from some of the most important US galleries such as Barbara Gladstone and Marian Goodman.

The fair is a huge logistical enterprise. The structure is more than 200,000 sqft and is constructed in about a week. Over 4km of white gallery walls are installed. Around 3,000 people, including gallery staff, shippers, caterers and other contractors, work on the fair. So our year is spent co-ordinating everyone, making sure the whole jigsaw puzzle fits together.

Selecting the galleries, which takes place between November and April, is the hardest part of the process. Sales at art fairs can make up the majority of a gallery’s turnover, and for them it’s crucial to get into the major fairs. But with more than 450 international galleries applying for about 150 spaces, we know we are making more enemies than friends. It’s not fun, especially as there is an element of subjectivity in the selection, and we have a lot of respect for many of the unsuccessful applicants.

We look for galleries who represent the most exciting artists – the kinds of artists attracting shows at major museums and biennales, and who are being written about in the art magazines. We want the final list to have a good geographical and age spread, so that diverse galleries are represented. An international selection committee scrutinises every application in an intense two-day meeting and compiles the final list of galleries. Amanda and I oversee the meeting but don’t select. The decisions, though, are informed by the trips we make to emerging territories such as Brazil, Russia and China.

As the year progresses, Frieze Projects and our programme of Frieze Talks start to take shape. Our first staff appointment was a curator to run the Frieze Projects programme. For the first four years this was Polly Staple and for the last two has been Neville Wakefield. From the beginning we wanted artists to feel as involved and as at home as gallerists and collectors. This year there are 11 artists’ commissions including work by Ceal Floyer, Tue Greenfort, and Jeppe Hein. Boris Groys, Carsten Holler and Yoko Ono are all part of the talks programme.

We developed the Sculpture Park at Frieze Art Fair to give a place to large pieces of public art and to act as a free taster of contemporary art for visitors to Regent's Park. All the works are by artists represented by galleries in the fair. It has almost doubled in size this year representing work from India to Japan and the US to China. Since we launched the fair in 2003 one significant change has been the growth of the collector base in London and the broadening out of the market. New territories have emerged or are emerging in India, Russia and China. This can only be a good thing for the contemporary art market in general.

The fair attracts the art world, but we are keen for the London public to visit as well. It was always our aim that the fair was both accessible and educational in the widest sense of the word, and art fairs can be a great introduction to contemporary art.

For us, the fair is the busiest week of the year and we love it. Sharing that experience with regular and new visitors is something we look forward to all year.

Frieze Art Fair, October 16-19, Regent’s Park, London (www.friezeartfair.com)
Frieze Art Fair is sponsored by Deutsche Bank
Join us at Tate Modern on Tuesday, Oct 21, for the Future of Art debate, hosted by the Tate and The Times. To book tickets call 020-7887 8888

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