Featured I don't understand how some antique dealers stay in business.

A few weeks ago I was browsing at an local antique mall on a Saturday afternoon. The mall boasts 60,000+ square feet of antiques and has several hundred vendors that rent booths or locked showcases. The place was practically devoid of buying customers, they were a handful of people browsing but none of them were carrying perspective purchases and the hold area on the main checkout area was largely empty (not much sold/set aside merchandise) and no customers in line. The cashiers/other staff looked incredibly bored. If a Saturday afternoon is not a peak time for sales then I don't know when is. Are many of these antique malls in financial trouble, their posted rates on their booths are fairly expensive so I'd think the dealers would need fairly good inventory turn over to be profitable?

Your thoughts?

Thanks,
Joe2007

 

You posted about that stuff in Kentucky. This is the downside.

 

I am with you. Sometimes the only one making money is the store owner. For many it is a hobby. Others come and go. There are peaks and valley's in business. For some reason, I had the worst single month in 3 1/2 years in my group shop last month. Most of the other dealers didn't fare well either but, whether or not it was the worst month overall, I don't know. I have been doing this long enough to know that sometimes you have to weather bad stretches to get to the good.

Presidential election years are generally bad for retail due to uncertainty. Here in the Midwest, sales drop in the antiques/furnishings business with the first good weather since people are thinking about outdoors, gardens, and such. Summer is not particularly good until August when people are thinking about getting out of the Summer mode. I am in a large university town so a whole lot gears to August here. I can do 1/3 of my year's business in August if I am well enough prepared for it. Ditto, with Christmas season.

Often, these large malls are on highways to catch travelers or near other major attractions to get the associated business. I have my doubts about whether or not this is as good a strategy as it once was. The business has changed and many of these large malls have closed. You no longer can just trot out stuff and expect it to sell. You really have to merchandise these days to have any thought at being successful.

 

Things go in waves. Like Brad said, those of us who have been doing this awhile know there will be lulls.

Summer for me is usually slower. People who fly to CA won't buy anything to go back on the plane, because of weight restrictions. The airlines have really ruined vacations for shopping tourists.

 

Looking around, as I occasionally do, I see loads of stuff that is simply out of fashion with buyers. If I do see something I'd consider buying (and I am an old fashioned buyer) it is usually way overpriced, and usually something that will crop up at auction sooner or later.

I am fairly sure some sellers are subsidised by their husbands or wives to keep them occupied.

 

I live near The Medina Antiques Mall, which has over 50,000 square feet, and 500-something dealers. I always marvel at the lack of browsers, and wonder how they stay afloat... apparently it's owned by a local family which rents spaces out, and those individual merchants don't mind low revenue. Maybe they just enjoy being "dealers". I know that explains my eBay painting business. I have a day-job; eBay is for fun. Oh, and I haven't sold a painting in a month, speaking of slow business!

http://themedinaantiquemall.com/about_us

 

We don't have too many antique stores left here, but the closest one to me, I just don't know how they stay in business. I never see people going in to shop so I figure they must be selling some of it online somehow to make sales, but that is just a guess.

It is a very small shop by one owner.

 

Yesterday I was at a local auction and was talking to a lady who has had a booth at several antique malls for decades in addition to doing flea markets and yard sales. She said that they (her and her husband) haven't been making much since 2007 (just enough to cover acquisition costs and rent) and that in the past two years they have been losing a substantial sum on mall rent. They are currently packing up their inventory and getting out of the business. She wanted to know if I was a dealer since I was buying a few higher quality things and I said no I'm a collector but I might decide to sell down the road. She said that it might be a good long while before the market for nice antiques returns and that the few items that were a sure sale at a decent profit margin even a few years ago in a soft market are now no longer selling and that interest is at a all time low, no tire kickers or lowball offers.

 

It seems a lot of the antique dealers in my area do antiques as a sideline from their regular 8-5 job. That explains a lot but I don't see how some cover their rent. They are either deep in the red each month or are getting quality their items for next to nothing.

 

Almost all of the antique malls in my area have gone out of business. There are a few individual sellers still out there. Most, though, are selling the mid-century and repurposed types of things.

 

Going to revive this old thread. Was talking to a collector whose family owns an antique mall. He said that 80% of the booths in the mall are operated by "hobbyists" who either break even or lose a bit on their monthly rents. The "hobbyists" are mainly retired or independently wealthy folks who enjoy the thrill of the hunt for unique items and the social circle that being an antique dealer brings.

The remaining 20% of the booths in the mall are owned by serious full time antique/collectables dealers who need to make a profit by selling their wares. These dealers often sell on several platforms including eBay.

The hobbyists tend to stock their booths with items they personally collect and like while the full time dealers buy/sell anything they can make their margin on and has a good chance of being sold quickly.

 

Since you first posted this, we have had a slew of dealers come and go from our mall. Most just didn't put in enough time to make their space viable as a business. There really wasn't anything wrong with their merchandise, though some were not competitive price-wise. You can't come in once or twice a month and make a go of it. Several of the dealers have increased their space and many of us do quite well. There is a core group of us who have been here the 7 years since the business started. I have settled in to 200 square ft. and supplement my income from the booth by working. It provides a good balance of secure working income and sales profit income. BTW: the low sales I reported above for May 2016 were an anomaly. My sales have been consistently good ever since.

 

Part of the problem here is that they stock their booths with JUNK. Now I know one person's junk is another one's treasure, but I am talking stuff thrown out at yard sales. I went to a heavily advertised antique mall a few weeks ago for the very first (and last) time. They are close to my favorite flea market, and lo and behold, all kinds of junk that didn't sell at the flea market is there. And the prices were sky-high. AND- in the middle of this long, hot, humid, wicked summer NO AIR CONDITIONING. Just a few fans in the huge vaulted warehouse of junk.

It would be nice if there were actually antiques in a mall, too. The prices need to be reasonable. I can go to yard sales and flea markets myself and pick up the kind of stuff I see at much better prices... The only reason I go is to find mistakes.

Here it is pretty seasonal. If you are near the ocean, rivers, lakes, etc., people are going to be there in the summer. Fall and winter are better.

 

A very popular antique mall in northwest Indiana was forced to close because the owner of the historic building in which it was located didn't want the mall there and wants to rehab the building for other uses. (And the historic building really does need restoration.)

Anyway, lots of the dealers jumped to a few smaller antique stores/malls in the neighborhood. (Now there are only about 3 malls left in that neighborhood that I know of.)

BUT what inspired me to write this is based on @Marko 's comments above. One of the longtime sellers at the closed mall has enlisted maybe about 1/3 of the former dealers to open a new mall in an area about a mile or so away, near a major interstate. It's in an industrial park, so not the best location. I got to go to it last month, a couple of weeks after it opened. There is room for more dealers there. One thing that struck me, though, was that the merchandise in the new mall is mostly newer stuff (and by that I mean 1970s to the present). The old mall that closed had some of that, but also some older things. But there were a lot more dealers in the older mall. The only thing I bought was an older Vera Bradley purse, made before they outsourced to China. So it has a "Made in USA" tag in it. Other than that I saw nothing I wanted. But it was a lot of fun to look, especially because I was there with somebody else.

And the place doesn't seem to be air conditioned, either. They had a large door opened that looked like it's intended for loading and unloading with big trucks. That kept the temperature inside bearable.

 

Many of the antique malls in my area are almost fully occupied. There is about ten of them for a metro area that is just over 2 million inhabitants. The majority seem to be in either old supermarkets or old industrial buildings with the supermarkets being in better locations and having higher foot traffic. From dealers I talk to the largest and most popular antique mall, which has nearly 600 vendors, can clear $250,000+ in sales in a busy weekend.

I think the dealers would do much better if they purged stale merchandise more often. There are quite a few booths that have items that I recognize as have being there for over 5 years. Some of these items are nice but just massively overpriced several times what I'd consider fair market value. Also booths that are so jammed packed with stuff that you're afraid to enter do themselves an injustice. Tasteful displays and not just a jumble of random of items would help sales I think.

Still I think most of the profits are in being the owner of the antique mall and not a vendor.

 

I have noticed that in some malls, for sure. Unfortunately, the small metro area (maybe 125,000 people if you count all of the rural towns) where I live in northeastern Iowa doesn't have any good malls any more. There is a pretty good antique show, but that happens only once a year. If I traveled about an hour to Cedar Rapids, that is a bit better for antique stores and malls. But they are a little larger, too.

 

@Figtree3 have you been to Dyersville? There's a very nice mall right next to the Farm Toy museum. I am in a mall in a small town in northwestern Illinois. The population of the town is just over 700. The mall is in an old 3 story schoolhouse, there's over 200 vendors and I've had only 2 or 3 months that I didn't make rent in 5 years. There's no air conditioning so summer sucks and February and March are pretty rough if it's really cold. Like below zero.

Linda

 

Yes, I finally made it to the big Dyersville antique mall within the past year. I was with a friend and we also went to the small downtown area and found a smaller antique store that had two big, fluffy cats in residence. They were very friendly. And we went inside the basilica in downtown Dyersville.

I do want to go back to that antique mall. It is almost 90 minutes from here, but a straight route to get there down Highway 20.

On a different excursion with different people, we found an antique mall in Cedar Rapids. It was near the end of the day so we only had about 40 minutes there. I want to go back.

Your place sounds interesting. What town is it in? It is not all that likely that I'll go there but you never know!

 

It's in Elizabeth, Illinois. Right on Highway 20, the west end of town. Elizabeth Grand Antique Company. If you go on Facebook there's some decent photos. There's really some of everything, true antiques, collectibles, farm stuff, a few crafters, some "upcycled" stuff, a pretty nice variety.

I suppose this qualifies as a "shameless plug"!

Linda