So How Does An Antique Business Fare In Tough Economic Times?

SO HOW DOES AN ANTIQUE BUSINESS FARE IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES?

IT DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH MONEY A DEALER HAS TO SPEND, AND WHAT DEALS CAN BE MADE WITH A WILLING CLIENTELE

     We shop frequently at charity shops and were in Orillia, at the Goodwill store, Sunday morning, (as we do at least three times each month) a few hours after staff discovered that they were locked out, due to unspecified circumstances; which of course turned out to be financial. I want to open with this, because we are avid supporters of charity shops in our region, and we feel pretty good about putting money into their coffers; and we've been doing this same thing since the boys were being carried in chest-worn snugglies. We have always enjoyed the association with their respective staffs, who have watched our boys grow and mature, from toddlers running through their shop aisles, into the businessmen they are today, still shopping in these locations. We are in company with thousands upon thousands of like-minded shoppers, some who have tiny budgets, shopping alongside those who have resources, but prefer buying second hand. It all goes into the same pot, and it helps respective charities. Of course we're upset by the Goodwill decision to close stores, because we know some of the kind staff put of out work, at a terrible time of year, and that bothers us. It makes you wonder just how bad this downturn will be, if this near century-old enterprise runs into this kind of financial problem. We all hope they can restructure these stores, because we have made stopping there, part of our family tradition, that is also many decades in the making.
     With the latest burdening of nasty news, about the decline of oil prices, and our poor old faltering Loonie, taking a tumble back to the 60's, and the increasing number of stories about business failures, including the closure of many regional Goodwill Stores this past week, gosh, it seems a precarious time to be of the retail ilk in this country. If well known retailers are biting the dust, why isn't there a rush for the exit by antique and collectable dealers; to get to their cars for the trip home before there's a mad rush. It's a mysterious business, I'll give you that; and sometimes, even after four decades, it amazes me that there is always a market for old stuff, and recessions seem to fuel the market to buy up the nostalgia that reminds them of better, more profitable days. I'm serious about this! Certain areas of nostalgia take off during economic downturns, because it reminds the buyer of simpler times, the family home, and their childhood which, with our help, they can relive in part and fantasy.
     I've written about this many times, because frankly, I think it's worth revealing honestly to folks, genuinely interested in knowing more about the alchemy of our antique and collectable profession; being the fact, that since the late 1980's, we have, as a family business, survived one major recession, and two or three small dips in the economy, that took-out some of our colleagues. There are some important retail realities connected to our enterprise, missing from most other retail operations, that give us a little bit more buoyancy, when it comes to benefitting from our shop inventories; even if we had to close the retail portion of the business. When you buy used, (second hand), collectable, or antique, with the exception of the early 1990's sports card excesses (I wrote about yesterday), generally speaking, and if you purchased sensibly with an eye on valuation, (being higher than what you paid), chances are good that these items will hold their value in perpetuity. And in some cases, increase in value. Now that we are heading into a particularly daunting period of world economic challenges, I don't feel nervous at all, being in the company of our shop inventory and collection of antiques, art, and old books, to name just a few categories of what we sell.
    If you buy what you can afford, as an antique dealer, and mitigate speculation on pieces that may be too inflated, based on original asking price, (in order to turn a profit, over a reasonable amount of time), then short of a world calamity that extends over the next quarter century, the holder of such articles should be able to turn a pretty fair return on the investment, in a reasonable period of time. It works like this. (And where have you heard this before?) Buy low, and sell high! It's not just a real estate advisory, like "location, location, location." While I admit to disliking the "sell high" part of the deal, truth is, we do make every attempt to buy low, but folks, we never "low ball" any one, whether dealer or customer, in order to pad our coffers. And we don't make a habit of pricing high, unless it happens to be a Group of Seven original, and in that case, we'd turn it over to an art auctioneer, rather than try to sell it in our shop. What we subscribe to, most vehemently, is the due diligence of hustling up inventory that has, by its character, a lot more value within than an associate dealer, or estate liquidator assumed, when they priced the item or collection. It's our job-one, you might say, to get the best for the least; and we must do a pretty fair job, considering afterall, we've been in business a considerable amount of time, through some lengthy financial droughts.
     In our family, going back at least forty years, I learned the advantages of buying second hand, as a cost savings to what the same articles cost, in a normal retail environment. I did so, because I was broke but still needed things to outfit my apartment and then house. Add to this, that I'm a cheapskate. In fact. my picture is beside this reference in the dictionary. If I needed a dresser for a bedroom, I would go to an auction, flea market, second hand shop, thrift store, or sometimes, an antique shop, to find one. If the normal retail store had one that I liked for two hundred dollars, which is pretty-much average, I would go and comparison price, because, and I'm not embarrassed about this, I probably didn't have enough to buy new. If I went to an auction, I might be able to get a nice pine dresser from the mid to late 1800's with local provenance, (back in the late 1980's), for example, for as little as sixty bucks. It might have required some minor repairs which I could perform, and some new drawer pulls, in an old style which are available from most hardware emporiums. All told, and with a small amount of work, maybe a coat of varnish or two, I would still be about a hundred dollars below the cost of a new dresser. If, as was the case many times in my younger days, I got into a financial pickle, I could flip the pine dresser for fifty to seventy-five bucks more than I paid. If I got a genuine piece of Canadiana, it might have been worth ten times what I paid. If I had purchased the new dresser, and got into the same financial pickle, I wouldn't have been able to sell it used, for even close to what I paid; probably well less than a hundred bucks, and this would be the case whether it was two months after purchase or four years later. One second outside the shop with the new owner, the devaluation occurs on new pieces, if you're interested in such things.
      Seeing as I have been an antique dealer for most of my adult life, a writer as a secondary consideration, I'm used to having cash flow problems, and I like being able to buy something that will not only hold its value, but when sold, will turn a modest profit at the very least. We don't have a piece of furniture in our house, that was purchased new. The one time we did, the sofa and chair fell apart in the first year, and I was so embarrassed about having made such a mistake, that we just covered the expensive crap with afghans and quilts, so we wouldn't have to look at what was decomposing in front of our eyes. If a fifty dollar sofa from the local Re-Store begins to wilt from use, you could recover it, and still fall well below what an equivalent sofa would cost brand new. I am a quality-nut and whether it is used, collectable or antique, we never, ever buy substandard items; whether it was made two hundred years ago, or in the nineteen sixties.
     I remember a car collector friend, looking to buy Suzanne's 1963 Buick Wildcat convertible (which he did after a year of posturing), that she owned when we got married in 1983. He kept opening and shutting the doors of the car, this particular day, and listening, like a clock maker, to the sound they were making when opened and then closed at a variety of speeds. I wasn't too sure what he was listening for, but I did pay attention to his commentary. "Listen to that," he would say over and over. "These cars were made with the greatest quality, and you can hear it, by the way the door swings on its hinges, so smoothly, and clicks into place with a solid, heavy connection." I just looked at him, as if I understood, and after he left, I spent the next half hour opening and shutting the doors on the Wildcat, and then on our new sedan, and the difference was quite noticeable, even for an amateur like me. The doors were heavier, bigger, and obviously, materials were more extravagant in 1963, than we could expect of contemporary vehicle construction, at a time when material costs and labour is higher, and the public's desire for cost efficiency is everything to a company's ability to succeed with their product. The reason I bring this comparison up, is that it is the same with antiques; vintage furniture for example. Open the cupboard doors of a well kept three hundred year old china cabinet, made by an expert woodworker, and then do the same with a contemporary piece made of unspecified or unknown wood content, with cheap glass, cheap hinges, and production line crafting, without that old time attention to detail, folks like me relish as the end-all, of whether a piece is worthy to haul home, or leave behind. Just so you know; furniture makers from the good old days, even on primitive pieces, knew that the pieces would be stored in adverse climate conditions, such as the dry heat from fireplaces, and the winter cold, when houses were shut-up for lengthy periods of time without any heat source. The fluctuations in dry and wet environments, hot and cold, and lengthy periods of this adversity in unheated residences, were compensated for, by expert craftsman who, by experience, knew how to join their cabinets to allow for expansion and shrinkage of joints; such that drawers and cabinet doors, would be less compromised by these wild fluctuations of environmental conditions. Which, by the way, somewhat explains why so much of these finely made pieces have survived into contemporary times, while furniture made on production lines in the past thirty years is toppled into garbage bins, because they are already worn out, and not worth restoring. I've watched second hand shops tossing these pieces in the garbage bins, because, even at ridiculously low prices, no one wants them. This is a general statement, and not to suggest there aren't fine woodworkers out there, making excellent furniture. But it is priced accordingly.
     The fact that we may be facing a fairly significant downturn in the world economy, with a plethora of local calamities coming down the pike, makes little difference to us, in the antique trade; those who buy sensibly, and price with the idea of cycling the inventory like retail operations are supposed to, in order to survive, life and business go on pretty much as normal. For those antique dealers who over-price, and fail to meet the market's idea of sensible pricing, there will be retail space available at local markets and on main streets. It's that simple. I see and hear about antique business failings all the time, and ninety percent, that I know about, are the result of the proprietor's inability to meet the market demands with their selection of inventory and the prices they have attached to items no one seemed to want. Or if they did, the vendor wasn't willing to compromise.
     We read our customers' minds. I apologize for this intrusion, but it's the only way we can survive as antique dealers, vulnerable to a lot of shifts in market trends, and inventory availability. We can't shop from a catalogue and buying multiples is often impossible. We might have the demand for ten pine cupboards, but we can only locate one. It's the part of the business that makes us nuts, but believe me, there are many more offsetting benefits. I don't want to order my inventory from a catalogue, because the great adventure of our business, is the allure of treasure hunting, which I'm willing to bet, is a lot more exciting than looking through a wholesaler's brochures and order books. I know so. I've done both, and for the short period we stocked a small amount of giftware, honestly, I dislike the concept of mixing old and new in our shop. At the time, my partner was my mother Merle, and well, you know how those debates can go. We still have some of that inventory in our house today because it wouldn't see then; and that, by the way, was in 1977.
     Just as a sidebar to this insider's glimpse at antique vending, most of us also possess the ability to sell online, when the normal day to day retail trade turns downward. Many dealers send out inventory to weekly and monthly auctions, and there are many other ways to liquidate stock to raise funds. Consider the fact that thousands of what we call "attic dealers" work from their residences, under the bylaw terms of home occupation, and run successful online and drop-in businesses, by chance or by appointment, saving the enormous costs of main street retailing.
     I began in the antique business intentionally, and not by the happenstance of bumping into antique dealers, who saved me from having a normal life. In many ways, I have lived an abnormal existence, according to the normal fare, because we don't buy much in the way of new products, except groceries. But we have saved a lot of money by buying used and vintage materials, from clothing to the biggest of big pieces of furniture. And we've lived pretty comfortably with these second hand items. The reality that our over indulgences as a population are now catching-up to us, as burdensome debt, may finally change some attitudes about re-using what for decades, has been relegated to the refuse bin because it possessed one apparent fault. It was used and or, just old. It's good my own lads like old stuff. Considering I'm a living antique.  More on surviving in the antique trade, and the good deals associated with buying second hand, in tomorrow's blog. You can save a lot of money buying second hand, and there are some tricks of the trade to get the best prices. Antique dealers are surprisingly flexible when it comes to enhancing cash flow.