This last Saturday, we completed our 4th annual summer sale. For those of you who feel you’ve missed out, never fear- we have one or two items left. (pause for ironic grin)
With all that, I have to say despite the times, our summer sale worked about as well as it always has, stimulating interest in not only sale items, but other pieces, too. In fact, the biggest beneficiary this year was our own line of furniture, Contemporary Classics. We are awash with orders for these pieces, with our workshop booked up for the next several months.
Gratifying, of course, but significant, too, in that our register of interest seems to indicate people seem to be better pleased with the economic outlook. Mind you, we did not have any huge sales as we did during our summer sale last year, but we did have a number of good ones, with the actual number of invoices written in excess of last year. Also of significance, we did have a lot of interior design interest, actually greater than last year. However, our lack of big ticket sales was rather a follow-on from the level of designer. Specifically, designer purchases were of accent items, artwork and small pieces of furniture to integrate into existing projects. The large items- bookcases, sideboards, dining tables and sets of chairs used to anchor a room and normally indicative of a new project- these were not strong movers.
But the new projects, I’d venture, are on the way. One of our better clients, an excellent home builder, told us that as of this last Friday he had sold 30 new homes for the week. And, yesterday at brunch with Greg Normart, our local San Francisco real estate maven from Herth Realty, Greg reported a new 7-figure listing that, in its first week, had 14 offers, all of them in excess of the asking price. Greg tells us that his challenge is to find sufficient listings for the buyers he has. Anecdotal, both of these sources, but they do represent trustworthy information from people on the ground.