With international markets on their knees since early last October, it is a relief to find that life in the trade carries on. At least at some level, admittedly a less robust one- practiced understatement- than we’d enjoyed heretofore.
For the month of January, we wrote about as many invoices as we ever do, albeit for significantly smaller amounts than a typical January. As well, we’ve had a fair number of shoppers, both private clients and interior designers. These contacts are slowly- here I would insert the adverb ‘excruciatingly’ emphasized with a pronunciation performed between gritting teeth- developing, because, not surprising, people, while wishing to purchase, also wish to hold on to their cash. A case in point, we’ve been holding a set of 12 dining chairs in our back room for over a year- all paid for, pending completion of the client’s new home. It is complete, as of three weeks ago, but the client is reluctant to select fabrics and finalize selection of a dining table. I guess it’s TV trays for now (do they even still make them-?)or some such, as I know first hand that the client’s new dining room is cavernously empty.
Moreover, we’ve had the most overwhelming response ever to our last week’s new acquisitions email blast. Has it resulted in sales? Frankly, not too much, but what it has yielded are more inquiries than we’ve ever had, but nearly all of them hedged with ‘We’re not quite ready to decide, but would you mind giving me a price?’ This is unusual in our experience. When people start to talk money, a sale is likely in the offing, certainly with our private clients. For interior designers, our experience has always been that, unless they are shopping for clients (read ‘getting paid for it’) they don’t shop at all. I have to characterize all of this as the ‘it doesn’t cost anything to look’ phenomenon- believe it or not, an unusual circumstance in our business.
The high level of interest in our material, judged by gallery and virtual gallery (read ‘website’) traffic is matched by our friends in the trade who’ve completed shows over the last few weeks. The Los Angeles Art Show, the Winter Antiques Show, and the Palm Beach shows have all had huge numbers of people through them, but no forthright dealers can boast of any significant sales. My partner Keith McCullar talked himself hoarse at the Los Angeles Art Show, with a reported 30,000 people in attendance.
Show browsing as cheap entertainment? Yes, but so is going to the movies. Let’s wait for the follow on and hope that the large numbers of visitors will engender significant pent up demand for art and antiques. And, English antiques in particular.