Digesting the Sunshine City show

It took several days of recuperation following the 2 1/2 day show. I guess we're out of practice. Bob was plum worn out - Friday he put in a full day at his regular, paying job, while trying to set up. It was maddening. I'm thinking that if another show requires a Friday set-up, we'll hire a porter (that would be the young, strong types at the venues, usually provided by the promoters for hire) to do the hauling and Bob can help me as he's able. As it was, I didn't handle the two-fer career day well at all and showed no grace under pressure, I must say. Feeling sheepish? Baaaaahhhh.

Of course, we were set up in plenty of time and the booth looked fantastic. Of course!! It must have been my artist's tantrums that did the trick there. Er. Or not.

We were in a very good traffic spot, in the aisle straight ahead from the entrance. I do wonder what the official door numbers were for the show. There were a couple of moments during which the place felt great and mobbed, and others when we were wondering where everyone had gone to. Another marker that I make note of is the appraisal fair - we've been at this show when the appraisals have been so stacked up that they've had to assign waiting numbers to people with items, then call out on the P.A. where they are up. That hasn't happened for the last 3 Sunshine City shows.

Which is my overall way of saying that, once again, we didn't do spectacularly well here. Comparatively, though, we did just as well as last year and the year before; so, given the economic picture, that is very fine indeed. It does feel, however, that we can't seem to get the "mix" right. This time, we tried bringing more jewelry and less glass, ceramics, and porcelain, yet our sales figures were exactly the same.

One thing of note: the value of our higher sales is way down. We didn't have a single transaction over $30.00, whereas in the past we've had much higher single item sales. So people definitely are spending less money in our booth this year than they did last year, but we are doing more transactions. (Aren't math and statistics fun?? I'm so glad I didn't flunk out of high school altogether!)

I did enjoy the air conditioned environment by being able to dress up a little bit. I wore a dashiki that I'd brought back from a vintage clothing store in the Haight in San Francisco on our last trip out there, and a filmy beach cover-up (with plenty underneath, thank you) along a similar vein. I thought the outfits really captured the vintage theme of the show, and I had many positive and admiring comments about my wardrobe. I tried walking around the show like a Pied Piper, but didn't get any rats to follow me back to the booth...

Today I'm revamping the jewelry display at our Patty and Friends booth to try to glam it up. Never a dull moment, specially when you're working with rhinestones. Ah!! Pun alert!

Necessity, creation, etcetera etcetera...

This coming weekend is the Sunshine City indoor antique show at the Coliseum, a beautifully restored dance hall smack dab in the down town of St. Petersburg; readily accessible from the highway and main streets; free parking and air conditioned!! Again, it's early for the season, but it will be a good barometer of the economic condition we face for the coming year in our business.

We've changed our approach already in restructuring the allocation of space devoted to different types of items. It would seem that for the time being, ceramics and glassware are taking a back seat to costume jewelry. We therefore have concentrated more on trying to make our displays innovative and different from our neighbors'. We already purchased more of the standard glass top cases for earrings, plus scratched our heads as to how to make the affordable and fun bracelets more accessible for trying on. (A breakfast tray holding an array of bangles makes them much more inviting to try on than keeping them behind a locked case - after all, most of them are priced less than $20 and we can easily keep an eye AND ear on them. They make quite a clatter while being sorted through and tried on. So they are secure but still accessible.)

An influx of men's cuff links, tie clips, tacks, and rings into our inventory made us realize we should probably showcase this category on its own rather than mixing them in as we had amongst the other jewelry items. I wanted a display solution that would accommodate all these various types of items in a single place, so that a pair of cuff links could be shown with the coordinating tie tack close by. I would not have thought that a ring display would be the thing had I not seen another dealer (and then another, and another) using just this display item to do just this. I think it does wonders for showing the best the of the jewelry while hiding all the fiddly bits like the chains and fasteners. The finished case is shown in the photo at the top of the page.

Another display issue that came up was long, dangly earrings. The standard earring cases are great for most smaller pieces, but BIG, mega hoops, elaborate pieces from the Disco Age (long may it rest, but sell in our booth!), many fine ethnic examples of worked silver and brass simply get lost in a tangle when forced into those cases, even into larger sections. We've tried laying them out flat on the tables, and it just can't do a piece justice when it's supposed to be hanging down to one's shoulders. I needed to be able to hang these beauties up without having one hide the one below it. And I didn't want to buy the usual acrylic earring stand - boring! Overpriced!

I used my search engine skills and found directions for making my own earring display - which sounded Oh So Easy. One quick stop at your local craft shop (yeah, right!!) would be all I'd need to do to produce a cheap and pretty display for our long lovelies. Well, it took several stops at some various stores, but I did it! I found a reproduction of a luggage trunk (overkill - a smaller, briefcase sized object would have sufficed. What I found was life sized.) on clearance at a home decorating shop. I had to repair the hinges as they were ripped out. Screwed those in and hot glued them in place. Hot glued a bunch of places on the article because the entire case appears to be made out of paper board.

Then I hot glued strips of fabric ribbon across the insides of the case. Then I nailed them down because I could picture the glue giving way in the middle of the show. I think the overkill, given the size of the case, was probably a GOOD thing. Anyways, now I have this homemade, funky display unit for my long, dangly earrings (I fit 75 pairs into the thing during its dry run at home). All are earrings that would not have otherwise made it easily on to our sales table for the show. I took a picture of that, too. I spent $12 on creating this mahhvelous display.

Enjoy, and please don't laugh too loud or spray coffee over your keyboard looking at my handiwork...

First show - *GASP* - of the season

Ah, autumn in Tampa Bay (or, more precisely, Dade City), where it still feels like the inside of a pair of pleather pants after a night of salsa dancing.

I'd say doing an outdoor show in September is pushing the season by at least a month. It's sweltering, it's a crap shoot with the weather (which we utterly lost this time), and people who choose to walk around a parking lot in this kind of heat are just plain crazy. Well, perhaps not as crazy as the people who choose to set up their booths and stand there before them...

Big bro Steve, though, did great business at the show. Our photos sold well. I did well studying last year's sales figures and we took the correct items for the show. It made for a relatively easy set up - fewer items of china, porcelain, and glass; and more fiddly things like the jewelry. It made (thank goodness) for easier cover up and break down when the storms came. We gave up and went home early on Sunday after the third storm had just started; I had already changed once out of my completely soaked clothes, only to go through it again. Neither of us was mentally prepared to do it one more time, and frankly, it takes a toll on the stock that is not weatherproof. A couple of torrential rains came through on Sunday, and Bob and I had preplanned how we would move the tables for quick cover up, and had the tarps to the ready. Some other dealers were not so fortunate, including the man across from us, who had books lying on the pavement on blankets. When the ground turned into a stream, he lost a fair amount of inventory. But, as he noted, he had plenty more where they came from. (At this remark I shook my head mentally - I can't abide throwing any of my hard found treasures away!)

At one point we were down to a single table all piled with bits and pieces of items that hadn't yet been packed away, under our tent. Bob was methodically wrapping and packing the bigger stuff, and I was trying to make sense of what was left on the table so it wouldn't get all tangled up upon unpacking once we got home. We pretty much had just a straw basket of earrings and a tray of bangle bracelets that I was trying to get put away. In the midst of this chaos a Mexican family - mom, grandmother, and 3 small kids - started rooting through the basket and trays. We sold 5 items in the last 15 minutes to them, while we anxiously looked at the approaching clouds. It was one of our best sales of the day.

Now we have a 2 week respite before, thank goodness, an indoor show in St. Pete. It's still quite early - the local population will not have swelled to its seasonal numbers yet - but we'll be comfortable in the air conditioned splendor; and it will be an opportunity to show off what we've collected since the last season.

Seasons change, and so do we

One of the two stores closed. We're in Patty and Friends still, and in two booth spaces instead of one. August was our best month yet, and we ran a glass sale to further things along during this the slowest season. It helped us to wean down our impressive (read = overly large) glass inventory that came with the original purchase of the business. There are only so many vases and bowls that you can carry to any given show! And we never seemed to whittle down the numbers.

The glass sale did the trick.

In the meantime, my brother Steve has sent on an incredible quantity and quality of jewelry to us for selling. Some truly exquisite items. Looking at our past record of jewelry sales, it makes sense for us to expand the selling space of this type of merchandise. I've been sourcing display ideas, trying to stay away from the conventional locked glass cases that you see, crammed with everything under the sun. Yes, they are easy to travel with and set up; but as I pointed out to Bob, they are visually overwhelming, and when was the last either one of us stopped and asked a dealer to unlock a case in order to take a closer look at something? The answer is: NEVER. We just keep on walking.

I think for us the key is accessibility, good visual merchandising, competitive pricing, and keeping the items sorted by color, type, or perhaps customer preference. We now have enough cuff link and heavy chain necklaces to have a "Manly Stuff" case, and we'll see how popular that proves to be.

The other experimental approach we are doing is working with another jewelry designer who will incorporate elements of our jewelry into organic, woven bracelets and necklaces that she makes herself. We are always left with bits and pieces of jewelry that have become separated or broken off from where they started; Cecile will be able to repurpose those items into new pieces that retain their charm.

The website has been stumbling along, with no help from me (as evidenced by my lack of posts here). I'm averaging a few sales per month, with international sales to Canada and Australia starting to happen. I have some great Wedgwood pieces that we found this summer and also Bunnykins that I have yet to add to the site.

As I feel better and sometimes not so well, I devote my time and energy to the site, to blogging, and to the business overall.

This picture is of a Wedgwood Queen's Ware vase, flared and fluted, with blue oak leaves in bas relief and glazed overall. This type of stoneware was reintroduced after 1946 by Wedgwood.

So you sit.... and you wait...

Our stock is in the two stores.

I'm adding a couple of items to the website every week.

This is what we call the Slow Time. A time for tweaking, critiquing, making refinements, perhaps taking another look at the pricing policies. Are they way out of whack with the current reality? We are seeing the errors, perhaps, that had been made in the past year of buying. Not saying that I Told You You So, but - not sure just what niche some of these items belong in now, that we've defined ourselves a bit more clearly. It's all part of of that learning process.

I've had a few inquiries from Australia, but had to tell them that the cost to ship to such a destination actually exceeded the cost of the item :-( (Which is why I don't have the country as a option for shipping - who would want to double their cost for ANY desirable item?)

Still, it's nice to be getting emails from so far abroad.

Venturing into Retail - Antique Stores

Bob's decided to take the plunge and put our wares into two local antique stores. The first is a locked cabinet space in Patty and Friends Antiques in St. Pete, a business that's been established for a long, long time in the area. The cabinet has narrow shelves with short spaces, so we've had to think small in setting the retail area up. The store is in the process of doing a lot of upgrades cosmetically, so it's nice to be part of a refreshed retail environment.

The other place we've literally set up shop in is in Hannah's Antiques and Retro, which is in the Grand Central District of St. Petersburg, close to the revived Kenwood neighborhood, with its beautiful Arts and Crafts era cottages. We've got an open cabinet space there close to the check out area, with stock scattered throughout the shop as well.

We've had a small sale at Patty's already, and it's going to be a challenge to keep the areas in these stores looking fresh, interesting, and relevant. This is pretty much Bob's area as I am sticking to my guns of concentrating on the website (which had two sales in a single week once I restarted working on the site - wonderful).

I'm continuing to work with my health care team and trying to become more productive, as at the moment I'm able to do about one task a day. (Not really what I'd like to be able to do.) Medication adjustments, wait and see, patience - not my best virtue.

The photos show our current set up at the Patty and Friends store, showing how we are trying to utilize as much of the space as possible.

Evolution of this Blog

Trying to stave off those feeling of guilt for not having posted for so long! We had a fantastic show in Dade City - the best we'd ever done - in spite of having had the most challenges to date. First off, our wonderful Live Oak tree that provided so much welcome shade and retro "Old Florida" feel to our booth was gone! As were at least two others, upon suspicion that they might have harbored some dread tree disease :-( :-( :-(

And the second day of the show, Sunday, was not the best of weather - intermittent showers, and gusts of wind. It all cleared up around 12:30pm, and then we had to start packing up at 3. But in spite of these downers, we did very, very well.

We also got to get to know another couple of dealers a little better, by going out to dinner with them. We pretty much yapped and laughed and screamed and finally remembered to order our food before the kitchen closed. I think we were all surprised by how much we enjoyed ourselves.

That show, at the end of April, was the end of the season for me. I've been working slowly but steadily on the website again, after a break of (gulp) four long months.

And I've been so quiet on this blog front, and so much has been going on, kind of like this extremely strong undercurrent that's been commanding all my attention and energy, yet it hasn't seemed to be the correct venue to address the subject here, either. But I've come to the conclusion that in trying so hard not to address that very subject - my personal elephant in my very little room, if you will, I do myself more and more of a disservice; and I also don't give my the credit for the struggle that I am, indeed, winning, in spite of my own expectations at times.

So that's a lot of words for trying to say that I think I'm slightly changing the character of this blog: to focus just as much on this antiques and collectibles business called Time Travelers; but now also to address how I manage to maintain (or not) the business while at the same time taking care of my mental and emotional health.

For you see, I haven't held a "proper" job for several years now, due to some troublesome issues. This business is the most responsible venture I've been able to apply myself to, and I'm so grateful for it. But there are days, if not weeks, in these past four months, when it's not been possible for me to attend to the business in any way.

I guess I'm trying to say that I'd like this blog to become more about what it's like to manage our business while I live daily with the issues of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. (Whew! There, I said it.) It casts rather a different light on the whole consistency of the business; the continuity; and yes, the integrity. I'm more determined than ever with Time Travelers to keep moving onwards and upwards, even as sometimes I make entirely backwards strides in my mental health :-\

Whether or this blog keeps its readership will be interesting. But in the name of authenticity and professional and personal growth, I think it's the right time to take this turn...