I am so glad that we decided to attend this year's ACNA (Antiques and Collectibles National Association) meeting in New Orleans. We met with other dealers and collectors; mall owners and auctioneers; and received expert instruction in several areas that we're able to take directly back to our business and apply immediately. Now THAT'S what I call a well-placed investment.
The association has 3,000 members nationwide and the meeting attracted 50 attendees. Bob and I attended seminars on furniture construction, rhinestone jewelry, going green with antiques, and ceramics. We participated in a charity auction that raised over $1600 for St. Jude's Children's Hospital (and came home with some treasures!). We took the bus trip to Magazine Street, ogled the high priced French antiques, ate some enormous and delicious oysters at Cassamente's, and - came home with a couple of treasures.
We took to heart the message that part of the greening of the antiques business is the repurposing of our own inventory: fine dining sets of china have fallen out of favor with the buying public, as have those small, 2.5 oz. wine glasses from the 1950's. Any wine pour these days is of 6 ounces or greater. So what to do with those small glasses? What to do with those sets of luncheon and salad plates, when all people want now are large dinner plates? (And forget cups and saucers.) It's not a matter of waiting for these items to come back into fashion - it's more important to identify the need for those items now and repackage the merchandise so that it's more attractive to your customers.
Those small luncheon and salad plates, especially odd ones out of sets, make lovely stands for pillar candles. Display them with coordinating colored items in your booth, and your dead inventory items have a second life.
Small wine glasses come back to life with a tealight placed in them and similarly displayed. What are the new wine glasses? Water glasses with stems - they exist in many older glassware patterns. It's not always necessary to go out and source new inventory; we often just have to take a fresh look at what we already have - that's part of the greening of the antiques business.
Candles can be purchased in bulk at little cost and when paired with these re-purposed housewares from our existing inventory make easy point of sale items for your business.
Break up that stuffy dining set by placing coordinating colored items amongst them to add variety and flair. A white china set with a grey floral pattern is instantly modernized by adding some pink glasses and candles sitting on pink glass side dishes to the setting.
I came home from this meeting, and immediately started to rearrange my booth space at the shop, shelf by shelf. (I've got 3 displays done so far and I've been back for a couple of days. I'm fired up!) Today's project was to spread our remaining inventory out and categorize it all by color so that we know exactly what we have. Which is: a lot of BROWN. A lot of GREEN. (I had no idea until this morning, honestly.)
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm so excited to be excited!
