I've Had It--I've Had It!!!!!!!

It usually happens every year--as the last gasps of summer are starting to morph into the early start of autumn that I start getting ants in my pants. The strong sales of summer--and I am happy to report-this summer at the shop has been strong in sales--bring out my eagerness to start to liquidate the merchandise that has not sold and I perceive as being stale.

Every antique dealer makes buying mistakes. No matter how long you have been in the business--some things that you thought were so neat and would be snapped up quickly are still in the shop, or are still in your show bins. What do you so with it? The items may have survived a storewide sale, may have survived any number of markdowns--and the dreck is still hanging around.

I take inventory this time of year and make my lists and start to load up Old Green to take a load to an area auction house. Many auction houses have their bread and butter auctions with the dreck that is culled out from antique dealers. We'd love to think that auctions are always sparkling estate sales of fresh antiques from 103 year old women who have lived in their houses since birth. Not so. Alot of auction inventory can be the "treasures" that dealers can't sell and want to unload to other dealers. Think of this dreck as the plankinton of the antique food chain.

Why did I buy that primitive red farm table? I KNOW that red in furniture is a hard sell these days--but I LOVE RED. We paid HOW MUCH for that en plein air painting of the lake scene in autumn with the mountains in the background? People in the midwest do not buy mountain paintings. Those fabulous mid century drapes? SO RETRO but SO ORANGE and that is not the latest color in Martha Stewart Living these days.

Now it is time to wander through the shop, endure heat and mosquitos and dig through the garage and come up with an auction load and turn dreck into cash. The only way to make money in the antiques business is to turn your inventory and turn it quickly. Smart dealers today know not to fall in love with what they buy--add a reasonable--VERY reasonable profit on the items and turn them over. Freshness is what the buyer wants--and of course adjusted 2010 realistic pricing. A dealer friend named Polly calls stale merchandise "Old Friends". She will greet me after visiting one of our booths in late summer and say--"I visited your old friends at Walworth again today." Yikes! Time to purge!

But--darn it--I STILL love that red table.