Keith McCullar and I must have spent at least an hour the middle of last month deciding on the appropriate text for the interior of our holiday cards. This is more difficult than it might seem, as our worldwide client base encompasses a variety of religious traditions. Thanks, however, to the hegemony of the Christian tradition, everyone expects a holiday greeting this time of year, regardless. One of the many knock-on benefits from the Crusades, apparently- we only have to send out seasonal greeting cards in December.
And we are happy- honest!- to provide a greeting, as it forces us to look back on the year and count our blessings. We do, too. Don’t think I am minimizing the importance of the health and prosperity we enjoy, but the fact that we are still in business, where a number of our colleagues have bit the dust, is certainly a fact we bear in mind. One our neighbors, ostensibly successful and a venerable 30 years in the trade, told me at a holiday party a week or so ago that he is always within 30 days of letting all his staff go. Now that’s thin!
When I occasionally remind Keith of our blessings and how often we should count them, or when I ask him if the mail has come, for that matter, he looks at me with his face screwed up and says ‘You know this is a stressful time of year for me!’ Consequently, this is the month I imitate a Trappist, at least around Keith. But when I break the silence, it will be met with his December mantra ‘You know this is a stressful time of year for me!’
Although it gets old hearing it from him, Keith’s refrain does encompass some pretty significant features about how our business operates. It is highly cyclical during the course of the year, and about our lowest ebb is the period from mid December through mid January. We sell a number of large dining tables and long sets of dining chairs during the course of the year, but none of them during the month of December. 
So many of our clients make purchases in January when, you guessed it, the yearend bonus comes in. The $75,000 early period dining table and $50,000 set of chairs that might have come in handy in December is just going to have to wait until the following month. So- it’s Ikea and possibly folding chairs from Mom until then.
For us, though, it is an expensive month, as our inventory acquisitions ramp up considerably to accommodate those bonus buyers in January. And it does turn around quickly, most years, but it is a close run thing, as our sales slump is quickly followed by what is generally our busiest sales period. In November and December, our restorers and shippers, as well, are kept pretty busy, not unlike Santa’s helpers, with work that needs to be complete by year end.
We stay open, though, at least in San Francisco. Our colleagues at Reindeer Antiques in London, who have been at this a lot longer than me, give up just before Christmas and don’t reopen until the New Year is safely upon us. We persevere, because we do have some action from clients- or so it seems. Every year, our website hits and web inquiries go up this time of year, and we pin our hopes on these inquiries as perhaps leading to a sale. We are a bit dim, I guess, because it took us a year or so to cotton on to the fact that our web activity goes up because of all the people at home, with a lethargy brought on from eating and drinking too much, whose sole activity is surfing the internet. Well, you surfers, you may not mean business, but thanks for thinking of us, all the same.