We began our annual summer sale a week ago, something we instituted in the summer of 2006, in order to stimulate sales activity, of course, and to rouse our clients and also our neighbors from their summer torpor. While it seems to have worked with our clients, our antiques dealer-neighbors would rather, it seems, curse the darkness than, by way of linking with our sale, light one candle. Perverse, isn’t it?
I don’t know that there is anything particularly special about Keith and me, but we are believers in self-actualization. ‘Practitioners’ would be a better word, because we are given, when confronted with a difficulty, to give something a try rather than terminally intellectualize why solutions won’t work. Mind you, we are both of us rather reflective people, so don’t proceed headlong without a bit of thought, but, in the main, we do what we think is best, without seeking the good opinion of others. This is said with our summer sale in mind, which our neighbors have delighted in telling us for several years now will not work. Proof of the pudding, as the saying goes. I would personally communicate this to our neighbors- if I really cared what they thought.
Still, our desire to stimulate sales and drive traffic to Chappell & McCullar broadly reflects ours sales culture. Our annual summer sale is just one manifestation of our confirmed belief that it is imperative to stay in front of our existing clients- both interior designers and private collectors. As witness, as well, our commitment to do antiques shows, it is essential to not only make certain that when the client decides to buy, it is Chappell & McCullar that is considered first. Also, not all our clients buy all the time. We must at all times, therefore, add new clients.
What you may surmise from this is that we are fairly aggressive when it comes to marketing. There are those who believe that we needn’t be as, given our selection of one of a kind type items, clients will seek us out. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, eh? Malarkey. Build a better mousetrap but fail to market and promote it and you will end up selling your better mousetrap prototype for peanuts to the guy who will clean up, because he knows how to promote and sell it.
When I hear our dealer colleagues crying about lack of foot traffic and lack of sales, I never hear them discussing internet inquiries and site hits. Astonishingly, a surprising number of even good dealers don’t maintain any sort of on-line sales platform. When it costs $20 to park one’s car in my neighborhood, and probably $75 to fill the car with gas in the first place, mightn’t one realize that the hoped-for gallery visitor is focusing their interests by conducting a web browse before actually venturing out?
Certainly, some other people whose forte is online marketing have cottoned on to the two factors just outlined- the comfortability with shopping for decorative arts online and, second, the antiques dealers who are not great online marketers. This confluence has stimulated the development of group dealer sites, offering a variety of items on one platform. What’s happened, however, is that the one site of several years ago has spawned imitators, and the sites themselves have become, shall we say, overburdened. They now offer so much material from so many different dealers, including jewelry and in some cases luxury homes for sale, that the sites have diluted their former focus as well as becoming difficult to navigate. As important as ease of navigation, though, is the ability to properly showcase the best material, something we try hard to do on our website, providing thereby a bit of stimulus, as well as a preview, for the site browser who needs an extra visual nudge to become an actual as well as a virtual visitor.
As difficult as it has become to navigate some multi-dealer sites, Christie’s has even so mimicked the notion in their efforts to market directly to buyers. Teched-up, if not actually sexed-up, the site can be customized by the browser to allow a variety of specialized functions, including bidding. Still, Christie’s site has been transformed from one that was fairly simple that loaded quickly, to something complicated that loads so slowly that, horror of horror, one frequently will lose patience and close it.
I’m least of all a gearhead and don’t have the ability to critique online marketing with any degree of facility. However, frankly, that’s the point- simple, effective online marketing that is accessible by the non-gearhead has to be part of the dealer’s bag of tricks. The antiques and art buying public is still out there, in spite of our neighbors’ summertime complaints, and I would opine that the buying, through all avenues real and virtual, is greater than ever. What I believe the complaining dealer should realize is that he has probably fallen some considerable distance behind the technical curve.