A market note this morning, with shares in Bed, Bath and Beyond rising on increased revenue, a function of increased sales following the demise last year of its major competitor, Linens N’ Things. (Did I get the apostrophe in the right place? Please note, brand identifiers- erratic punctuation, though it might look cute on the signboard, does not in itself guarantee revenue.)
With the winnowing out of English antiques dealers over the course of the last couple of years- with Hotspur, Jeremy, Norman Adams, and Dillingham and Company now of blessed memory- one might expect the slack would be taken up by those of us who survive, albeit holding on by a thread. As the poor performance of furniture at the recently completed Olympia and Grosvenor House shows demonstrates, in the present climate, short of giving things away, the retail dealer is still experiencing tough sledding. It might at first face seem a surprise that auction sales have done alright- some have- although no record setting prices this year compared to those realized the middle of last year. The same can be said of contemporary art, and we will see, following the conclusion of Old Master’s Week in London how that segment of the market is fairing. A sidebar, we do from time to time buy at auction for clients, and with some frequency for one particular client. Interestingly, we often see a number of people who will pay through the nose for a piece at auction, usually in the mistaken apprehension that auctions are a wholesale resource. Wrong…
Still, the fact of consolidation within any consumer market segment might in the short-term result in a sales bounce for the surviving retailer, we know from the numbers and locations of our website browsers, we are dealing in a global marketplace. Retail outlets have not for some years now required convenient locations, like gas stations, to encourage customer traffic. With all that, our 18th century English antiques are inherently tactile and, so far as I know, what Bernard Berenson in art critical terms used to describe as ‘tactile values’ still requires physical inspection for validation. With all that, it is rarely that we do not have a first time visitor walk through our front door that has not already perused our website.