How Many Vintage and Collectable Shops Are Too Many?

PROLIFERATION OF ANTIQUE AND COLLECTABLE VENUES - IN AND AROUND OUR REGION - AND JUST HOW UPWARD TRENDS ARE THE HARBINGERS OF DOOM

TOO MANY VINTAGE AND COLLECTABLE SHOPS DOESN'T MEAN THERE WILL BE MORE BUSINESS TO GO AROUND

     We are a diehard bunch of entrepreneurs. We Curries are competitive to a fault, and might arm-wrestle over the last egg roll, or dumpling, and we never, never give up on something we believe in, of which we enjoy being involved. In the past couple of years, we've been unimpressed with local politics, especially some dunderheaded moves, to the disadvantage of the taxpayers, and what we see as a lack of enthusiasm from town hall, to at the very least, provide something more than nothing, as far as the leadership we expect. We deserve. Instead, I get a parking ticket to let me know there's still something going on at town hall. Just not for the betterment of our community. We never feel sorry for ourselves, and honestly, you would be hard pressed to find any cluster of folks around, who believe and advocate for free enterprise more than us. Our most profound concern, about the proliferation of antique and collectable shops, is not intended to be read as a manifesto against capitalist society, and its inherent, democratic privilege, of opening a business to sell or serve what you wish, providing it is legal. There is a greater matter here of logic, and what due diligence of investigation and research, would determine, as being a saturated market place. Too many antique and vintage shops for any one of them, to truly achieve a significant measure of financial success, as would make the accountant, any accountant feel comfortable with future potentials. The market place at present, and for the near future, will not support all the antique and collectable businesses, locating in area of South Muskoka. Some will fail, unless they are loss leaders themselves, and are satisfied with seasonal earnings, and off-season closing. The boom will be a bust sooner or later, and this summer will pit one against the other, to out-perform in sales. Admittedly, the established dealers, have been a little too laid back, we suppose, not expecting the latest antique flurry, putting more shops in a small market area. Oh well. What's an antiquarian to do, when the going gets tough. Get to the sale five minutes ahead of the competition. Up your standards, increase quality, and for gosh sakes, lower prices.
     To start off, and so as not to make this read as if we are the cardinal hypocrites of all time, Suzanne and I are pursuing interests in the antique field, as a retirement enterprise. We began planning for this eventuality, when we launched Birch Hollow Antiques in 1985. We figured, and rightly so, that it would take a lot of years before we could feel we had passed the apprenticeship stage, and could pursue the profession successfully until the end of our lives. This is what we have done. Our well of experience is much deeper than our pockets, and we have never once, in our years toiling away happily at this enterprise, felt that our success hinged on how much money we invested. Rather, we always understood, that it was going to be our capabilities as treasure hunters, on the edge of a thin dime, that would earn us our stripes as antique dealers. We have been true and faithful to this mission statement. and we want folks reading this, to know, we still don't believe we will make better dealers because we spend more than any one else to achieve this end. We would sooner haul in our sign board for the last time, and wrap up our business, sensing that, what it was coming down to, was a spending orgy to out muster the competition. It would ruin what has become so entrenched as tradition. Experience being the determination of how well we do as dealers; not the money we have to spend to buy the business we feel, we deserve. Instead, we have to earn success, by being true to our customers, first and foremost. But not being true to ourselves, would be something we couldn't live with. We are not so discouraged that we would choose this route, at the present time. We do lament however, the fact, that competition is pushing the envelope, of who and what can survive in a tiny, tiny market, that by the way, as of this day, this week, was as quiet as a church mouse, and just as frugal. Maybe these new business owners know something we don't!
     It's now officially tourist season in Muskoka. Thank God. I mean this. It's been one of the long-haul winters and with it came a strained economic reality for many other local retailers. We've now passed the gate, of the Victoria Day holiday, and now it's off and running to Canada Day, the first of July holiday, officially opening the most prosperous time of the year, that by tourist and cottager spending, will keep us in business, for another few months after the season ends. If it was particularly promising, we might even squeeze in another year, if the accountant gives the nod. We've been growing steadily for the past three years, but then again, we've never had as much competition as we do at present, and this seems to be changing by the week, as we hear about new antique-related venues. The thin dime is getting thinner. One thing about it, the cluster of antique and collectable shops will have to up their game, in terms of getting the competitive edge. Folks, by rights, and you should all appreciate this, prices for these vintage articles should be coming down. I can almost hear the quiet whimpering from our dealer colleagues, who hate the potential of having to compete in a price war. Well, that's not all. Now we've increased the number of dealers, scrambling like mad men and women, to purchase the few quality collectable pieces that make it on the market. This demand will gradually influence garage and estate sale hosts, to up their prices, and that does not bode well, for fair pricing in area shops. Of course, staying in business demands creativity, and my feeling is that this will be one of the most creative times in local antique-selling history.
     Every self appointed, and self tutored, economic talking-head, I've chatted with recently, aggressively spouts off, if opportunity arises, about Muskoka, and especially its southern clime, quickly becoming an antique and collectable business destination, for thusly, all heritage loving tourists, with some jangling coins in their deep pockets. I try not to laugh, or give any impression, that I'm about to choke myself in restraint-mode. I don't buy into this economic pie-in-the-sky mantra, and honestly, it takes more than a few antique and collectable businesses, to qualify as a serious destination for home decorators, collectors, and investors in old stuff. I don't consider the present proliferation of antique, collectable, and second hand shops, as any more destination-building, than the large number of hair dressing, and barbering salons popping up, as if we are the hairiest settlement on the continent.
     I've seen this kind of unwarranted proliferation in the past, and that for me, goes back forty years and a tad. I have watched the marketplace beckon investment, and then, without pity, destroy the most ambitious hopes and dreams with a sudden adjustment. A quick turn-around, a dip, a change in market interest. Call it what you like. It's still necessary, no matter what business you're in, to constantly perform due diligence in research, of what market trend is going to goon you next. The antique and collectable business on its own, is brutally difficult, and like dancing through a mine-field, about as precarious a profession as you can get; and one that has a long, long, tradition, dating back before Charles Dickens wrote the story, "The Old Curiosity Shop." The profession has become hugely storied courtesy the contributions from many odd and eccentric characters, and on the wild side, a hell of a lot of rogues, and con artists, fictionalized in some way or other, by thousands of authors from all countries of the world, at one time or another.     Did you ever hear the anecdote about the man who had a guest staying at his house, who, when they went out for a walk one night, couldn't help but observe, that a neighbor was beating something in a shed out back. His silhouette in the lamplight of the shed, showed the form of a man with a length of rope-like material, swinging down upon some surface that wasn't known. The guest remarked to his host, "I hope that fellow there is beating someone with that object being swung around." The host turned and laughed. "No, that's just the local antique dealer, distressing a pine table-top with a length of chain." It's part of the social / cultural and literary characterization, and traditions, we all, in the antique trade, have to live with, even if we are as honest and pure as the driven snow. Point is, if you become an antique and collectable dealer, in particular, you have to accept public perception for what it is, and at least part of it, will be based on the fictions and frauds, that have been associated with it for long and long. There's the status thing about "being an antique dealer," and the down side, of being scorned at sales as "being an antique dealer." We are often seen as both good and bad, honest and dishonest, straight shooters and liars which is to be expected somewhat, for a business that thrives when death is abundant. Our inventories are pretty dependent on estate clearances, and this hinges on someone having to die in order for our shelves and floor space to be filled-out; and for us to make money. It's bound to be a profession that attracts eccentrics and shifty operators. At least that is what has been highlighted, and dramatized by fiction writers for centuries. How much of it is "fiction too close to the truth," or "truth that has been fictionalized."
     In forty years of mucking-about in this profession, in one form of operation or another, I have run into lots of rogues, and characters I would never afford the earned title of "antiquarian". They are folks who drop into the profession, based on the convenience of making quick money, from what they perceive, is a business that thrives, and fountains earnings, based entirely on one's treasure hunting capabilities. Or their clever skullduggery! Of course, they are the scoundrels of the industry, who acquire their inventories in a less than savoury fashion, and when asked for the provenance of a piece, they become the authors of new fiction. Our trade requires a lengthy apprenticeship and for good reason. You have to love and understand history, before you can become its advocate as a facilitator; otherwise, a retailer of antiques. It doesn't mean that oldtimers in the profession are always honest, because they've had a long apprenticeship, and trial-by-fire education; because it has been proven many times, that those unsuited to the profession, don't last all that long, such that they would genuinely earn the distinction and status of full antiquarian.
     For reasons unknown to us, antiques are trending wildly today. It might be exciting if not for the inherent danger that comes with, as my mother used to say, "too much of a good thing." Our family is obviously well rooted in the antique trade, and regional history, as a sideline business, and we feel qualified, and obliged for that matter, to cast an opinion; honestly, we don't know what the hell is going on out there, and where all the money is going to be coming from, to keep these new businesses afloat. While we should know what is inspiring this whacky increase in venues, and the number of antique and collectable dealers setting up shop, we are, instead,  quite dumbfounded by it all. The recent proliferation of antique venues, and enlargement of antique markets, is befuddling and a little troubling. In my four decades in the profession, I have seen similar boom periods, where antique and collectable shops were popping up at a larger than usual rate; and as I recall, only a very few still exist from our starting point of the late 1970's, when Old Mill Antiques was opened by our family, and then in 1985, when Suzanne and I launched Birch Hollow Antiques as a future retirement business. In that time, we've partnered with a lot of antique dealers, networking our businesses to make sure customers didn't miss any opportunities in the host community. We are the only antiquers from those days, left with a storefront, and the only change we had, outside of a period without a proper shop, was that we moved ten miles south from Bracebridge to Gravenhurst. Originally not for business, but for reasons of profession, as Suzanne taught at Gravenhurst High School. We still operated our business but through antique sales and markets that we travelled to, and then, our marketing of antiques and old books via online auction sites. The point is, there have been periods of antique shop growth many times, in the past forty years, that I've witnessed close-up, throughout the Muskoka region, but nothing to be compared with what is happening now. The nuts and bolts issue, for the accountants to wrestle over, is that sales figures might not match vendor optimism. Something is fanning the flames of excitement and expectation, but we don't have any discernible justification to explain what's going on! Instead, we just gawk and wonder aloud, how many more vintage-inventory shops are too many for all to survive and prosper.
     A customer, shooting from the hip, informed me, that it would be fantastic, if the whole Uptown business community, of the main street, of Gravenhurst, was a giant, sprawling, oozing antique plaza, for the benefit of collectable hunters like him. I have become quite reluctant in my elder years, to argue such points of contention, a sore point for me at this time in local history; but suffice to say it is a distinct possibility, that if the trend continues, more dealers will show up thinking this is the promised land for antique lovers and sellers. It is, quite to the contrary, a fools paradise, to think this way, but I wasn't going to brow beat my friend, with what I see as a self-defeating manifestation, putting too many antique and collectable dealers, in an area, where there are only so many potential buyers through a relatively short business period. Ah, that is the joy and sorrow, of trying to survive in a tourist economy. Our own business survival, is directly proportional, to our family background in the tourism industry, dating back to childhood, when Suzanne and I both worked in tourist related operations; having an intimate knowledge of what it means to be a tourist friendly business, of which antiques and collectables ranks extremely high on the scale. Antique shops are still known as "tourist traps," and that hasn't changed in my forty years. It's one of the reasons many locals stay away from our antique shops, because it's believed we only cater to tourists, and cottagers with deep pockets. Those who can afford to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars for their creature comforts, toys and antiques. It's not entirely untrue. Many antique businesses years ago, would only open in the months officially designated as "the tourist season."  This, even today, really pisses off the local population. The problem of course, is that our businesses can't afford to shut down these days, for the off-season, because of high rents and utility expenses, plus taxes, needing a twelve month window of opportunity to generate money. Most contemporary antique shops and malls, do stick it out over the fall and winter, but with revised days open and reduced daily hours of operation. We have never tampered with this, and the only day we close, is on Sundays, unless there is a pressing business matter we need to tend to, here or somewhere else. For us, Sunday is the day son Robert opens the studio for recording purposes. We can't have noise ocurring when recording is in progress, and Sundays are perfect for this operation. The rest of us hunt and gather antiques.
     As I've written about many times in the past couple of years, frankly because I find it a fascinating study, the increasing number of antique dealers, for one thing, and new venues, is contrary to the marketplace demand. Usually, the increased number of shops is the result of larger demand for what we happen to sell. I am not convinced in any way, that sales in all these new and enlarged venues, would impress an accountant, or anyone outside the industry, to all of a sudden drop their other investments, and businesses, to open antique shops. One of the problems, I appreciate more now than ever, is that far too many inexperienced folks, with only a bare interest and understanding of antique investing, have decided as a business side-bar, a half-lark, or retirement occupation, to set out a shingle in front of a storefront, or antique mall, as a sort of dream come true foray, into something completely different! Shops and booths loaded with objects that amuse them, gathered from their many travels out and about, and locations where they can sell old stuff to their heart's content, undoubtedly make them feel quite accomplished. Coming home at night, having broken even once again. To some of our keenest competitors, the money earned is a lesser concern, than having fun in this great tradition of treasure-hunting old things, to then sell for a profit. It's the profit thing that hardly ever manifests, as it should according to Hoyle, but if you're lucky enough to have another income source, gosh, what a great recreation to be "an antique dealer."
     There is one good thing that comes from having numerous antique and collectable venues, within a short distance of one another. It actually amuses me, when all else causes me to worry. I have long complained about the high prices many antique dealers these days, are asking for their wares. I have been studying this trend of skyrocketing antique and collectable asking prices, for many years, and trying to understand how an industry has been able to survive for so long, with such a reckless regard for the market's willingness to pay. When I first began selling antiques in the 1970's, prices in the finer shops and even in the barns selling Canadian pine and primitives, were asking a king's ransom for their inventory, but still with enough wiggle room, to actually sell something now and again. In other words, they bartered. Negotiated to make ends meet. The proprietors who believed they were bang-on with their price evaluations, had to suck it up, when the market place dictated otherwise, and they hauled their shingles in for the last time. Today, the fact a lot of nouveau antique dealers are well off financially, and can afford to wait for a customer willing to exceed market valuation, might mean to the casual reviewer, that these businesses must be doing great, because they are still open and welcoming customers. The normal business model isn't valid for these owners, who really don't care about the bottom line, as it won't affect the quality of their lives, if they don't sell a blessed thing for weeks. Well, this isn't the tradition of our profession, as it once was, but today things are different, and accounting seems to be a lesser damnation than it is for us, when business dries up, or income is split with a lot of other businesses we can only consider our keen competition.
     Every now and again, a new business owner, in the antique and collectable field, will pop through our door, (but not usually), and tell us in no uncertain terms, they want to network with us, as we are not actual competitors. We just look at them, with I'm sure a look of genuine surprise, and go back to the work we were in the middle of, at the time they started speaking nonsense. I would much prefer, they were straight forward enough, to admit they were not only our competition, but were looking forward to kicking our asses right off the main street. I like this level of honesty, and we know exactly how we are going to react business-wise, to the incursion on our market share. I remember once, seeing a competitor coming from a yard sale, showing off the collectable items they had purchased; knowing full well that if they hadn't got to the sale first, we would have bought the exact same items. Yet they had informed us, a few days earlier, that we shouldn't consider them as competition; just good buds in the neighborhood. If you sell antiques and collectables, you are our competition. And when one of these dealers suggest, "the more the merrier," meaning that more shops brings more business, they are dead wrong, but what's the point trying to change their opinion? They are merely justifying opening a business that will shred our profit margin. Now add several more vintage-type businesses, in a small market area, and the shredding becomes a lot more aggressive, and hard to accommodate to the contentment of the accountant; who might suggest that instead of antiques, we begin selling marijuana related collectables and, well, bongs and stuff; along with hippy beads and tye-dyed smocks perfect for commune communing.
     The economic reality, is that it will take many more antique businesses, and many more years of surviving as an antique dealer cluster, plus a million dollars of promotion, to become a true destination for this sort of thing. In the meantime, it's just a cluster of competing shops, and some will fail because the market share is limited; even in the busy summer season. It's one of those robbing Peter to pay Paul, Mary, Jerry and Fanny kind of arrangements, where the dollar is shaved thinner and thinner, and the off season becomes more brutal, and not just because of inclement weather. So it becomes one of those dog-eat-dog situations, and competition so keen, that we want to kick our competitors in the ass, and put them in a headlock for a brisk, top-of-the-head noogie, instead of wishing them good morning. The more antique and collectable venues that locate in this region of South Muskoka, the higher the risk some of us won't survive the very next winter. Simple economics, and appreciation of the market place of rural Ontario. That's all it takes to know what over-retailed means, in the buying and selling of vintage wares.
     Now, if the same antique dealers, were to truly wish to remain in a somewhat profitable market condition, they would fight competition like the major food and clothing retailers, and cut their prices. Create bigger discounts and host more interesting sales events with those lovable "loss leaders" held out as incentives. I think this proliferation could be in the best interest of antique hunters, because there is too much supply for the present demand. But as antique dealers despise being told their prices are too high, I'm not really expecting a revolution to ensue, as a result of the market showing itself as obstinate; as it has been for a long, long time, when it comes to buying the best for the least.
     Sure, maybe we should have another ten or so antique and collectable shops in South Muskoka. Maybe being hard core competitive, like Mad Max, is what we need to sort things out, about which business will survive, and those that will close up, having etched hardly any business history worth documenting. Customers need to be treated well, and this may herald the most hospitality the antique profession has ever bestowed upon its limited patrons.
   Maybe Suzanne and I will open another antique shop down at The Wharf, or maybe over by Gull Lake, or, for gosh sakes, down the main street somewhere; methinks instead, we'll just run the same old shop we've loved so dearly, for these past few years, and leave the rest of our lot, to jockey about for the best positions to suit their aspirations. Maybe it is a good time to bargain-hunt for antiques in South Muskoka. Seems like its a buyer's market to us! But them what do we know about antiques and Muskoka?