A little bird told me....

....about a little promotion that American Express is doing this Saturday, November 27th. Read all about it and follow the link to register your card here: American Express "Small Business Saturday".

What a great idea to promote small businesses all over, and support a worthy charity.

Perception is a funny thing

Yesterday we did a one-day show in Bellair Bluffs at Antique Alley. We've done it before, but not with any regularity; it's been difficult to get on the list of regular vendors for this popular show. It was a glorious Florida day. Cool and clear in the morning for set up, and no wind or humidity for the day. There was a steady stream of customers for most of the day, although, true to form, most of the commerce had been completed by early afternoon. (This is the only pattern that I have been able to detect amongst the different outdoor shows that we do during the season.)

Just about all of the dealers were grumbling about how traffic seemed to be "off" or down, and how sales were down along with that traffic. Bob and I jumped in with the rest of them, as our gleaming tables of goodies went seemingly untouched by a breeze, let alone any human hands other than our own. We packed up at the end of the day and trudged on home.

Where I finally whipped out the calculator and discovered that we'd just finished the best show we'd done at that location. Lower in sales volume but higher in sales total. So what on earth had we been complaining about? Making MORE money with FEWER sales? Wait a minute - isn't that the whole idea here?

Yup.

I think what had happened was that we - or more to the point, *I* - was listening too much to the wailing and moaning going on around us, instead of actually looking at my sales records. Yes, we are in a very poor economic state, and the outlook is grim. But Time Travelers is holding our own. If anything, we are getting a bit better at what we're doing in seeing our average sale climb when you'd expect to be seeing it go lower. We've cut back - believe it or not - on our purchases. We've revamped how we do some of the merchandising, and I'm thinking that it's paying off. Having the inventory well stored and accessible makes it easier to select items to take to a given show - a big stress reliever.

So there you go. We spent all day thinking we were doing stinko and it wasn't until we got home that we had to read the facts to set us straight. Now I know there is a lesson in there for me. Just who am I listening to?

Notes from the road - Santa Fe, New Mexico

(I was going to call this post "Psychiatric Notes from the Road" but didn't want to scare any of my vast readership away. Let me say that traveling whilst undergoing a major medication change - this point being the washout period where I am between treatments for my ongoing chronic depression - is challenging, interesting, and not the nightmare that one might presume it to be. This post is not going to dwell on those experience solely, but also cannot help but be colored by them. Onwards....)

Finding the same niche that Time Travelers occupies as dealers in Florida here in New Mexico has taken us a day or two. Flea markets are not the same - the indoor market we looked at was much like a collection of what we'd think of as yard sales, hauled under cover and with high retail price tags. We moved quickly on from there, disappointed. The outdoor flea market, advertised as having hours of 8AM on, didn't actually start that early. We arrived at 8:30, thinking we'd have missed the best deals of the day (as you would have back home), only to find 3 cars in the parking lot and no vendors set up yet. Puzzling to us out-of-towners, but we decided to return later in the day. I thought that maybe 8AM was when vendors were to wake up, and that New Mexico Time is a different thing than Florida time when it comes to Flea Markets. I was right!

Antique stores carry top quality, top dollar merchandise. Where, oh where, were we to find the marvelous items to carry back with us on our adventures? The answer came from a different place than I thought it would - consignment shops and thrift stores. Very good quality items at fair prices abound.

Meanwhile, my nerves were jangling with the stark vistas and beautiful colors of northern New Mexico. I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to competently drive in the strange environment with the non-identifiable accents of the GPS' vocal directions, but I quickly became upset, saying, "What?? What did she say??" at every indication to turn, stay on the same road; you name it. Without Bob behind the wheel, I would not have gone beyond the hotel parking lot on this trip. My patience with myself and the rest of my world has evaporated along with the level of antidepressants in my system.

Our return later in the day to the outdoor flea market rewarded us with many vendors, but not selling what we were expecting. We kind of thought it would be a mix of packaged tube socks from China, yard sale finds, and fresh produce. Instead, it was largely artisan-generated jewelry, bulk beads imported primarily from the Far East, clothing, rugs, and the ever-present beautifully crafted silver jewelry of the area and from Mexico. We were delighted to find a vendor selling fair trade items of all descriptions from many African countries.

I'm finding that I am more sensitive than usual to my laundry list of triggers. It helps to build in some "down time" in the middle of the day to rest, block out the sensory input (some time soaking in the bath tub has been wonderful), and drink more water whenever I can. A visit to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum left me oddly dull, until I saw photographs from which some of her work was derived; I was just about overcome with emotion. (wtf?) A visit to a photography gallery with some truly stunning works (Steiglitz, Ansel Adams, Yosef Karsh; you name the iconic photographer and this gallery had their work represented) had the same effect. Good thing if I close my eyes I can stop seeing the pictures and the tears stop! What an unexpected effect of being without medication. I prefer to be not so very sensitive as this, and look forward to the end of my countdown when I start up on another antidepressant. Oh, and this isn't something that I asked for or wanted; the timing frankly has been awful, but I have been, as Bob says, a "trooper." Gawd, how I hate that word.

I don't currently have the mental facility to post my photos but will catch up when we get back and I'm all drugged up!

Off the Floor and On to Breathing Space

The future has arrived, and her name is Sara Trautman. This dynamo has seen the chaos that is our storage "system" and an extended stay in our home propelled her to take charge of it. Thank you, Sara!

Replacing the towers of bins stacked all over Bob's work area are steel shelving. All of a sudden we have floor space; tables and bookcases that we use for shows are in the spacious closet that had formerly been filled with other materials unrelated to the business that needed to be tossed or recycled. The day of action came when Sara helped unpack from the Dunedin show and advised us that there was a better way to build our mousetrap. *I* wasn't about to argue with her 15 years' experience in retail, particularly in managing stockrooms. Bob took a microsecond longer to come around, though it sounded worse than it was...

And that's the photo for today.

Dunedin this weekend

Well, I don't really want to talk about the Dade City show. Let's just say that someone decided to hold a show and no one came. We were missing vendors (about half of them) and some of the meager traffic consisted of people who happened to be blowing through town and stumbled upon us. I will say it here: this could a hiccup, or it could be the demise of this show, which would be a shame.

Onwards, then, to the Sunshine City show at the Coliseum in St. Petersburg last weekend. Sorry for not writing about it in advance, but I haven't exactly up to snuff - another factor that is making this beginning of the season kind of hard for me. Stock is all priced, sorted, wrapped, packed away and identified, but I am deep in my funk and trying very hard to get up to a semblance of normality.

The Coliseum show was a different one for us because we decided - at the last minute, and it was a good hunch, for us - to share our small booth rental with another dealer. It halved the cost and so we had a jump start on the profits for the weekend - woo hoo! It also meant that, given the space constrictions, Bob and I took turns manning our portion of the booth. Let's hear it for shift work at antique shows! There were several good sales that were bonafide "be backs", where Bob had negotiated the prices with the customers, and they came back to make the purchase while I was working the shift.

Generally speaking, though, there were more people looking than buying. We did bring our premium inventory and as a result our average sale was higher. The lesson for us is: whatever we bring is what people will buy.


This weekend we'll be participating in the Dunedin Antique Show on Saturday, October 16th, after a hiatus of a couple of years. The stars are aligned as Bob has some time to be able to do a couple of shows in a row, and we're trying to take advantage of that while we can. We can always gobble some ibuprofen afterwards to apologize to our backs.


The photos at the top of this post are of 2 of the theatrical robes we picked up at a recent auction. They are sumptuous and old - the silk lining of one of them is very fragile. I believe they date to between 1895 and 1933. We were quite excited to pick them up and they are a great draw for the booth.

Another Season Starting Up

First show of the 2010-2011 season is around the corner with the Dade City Antique Faire scheduled for the end of this month. Looking back on our notes from previous years show that we've never been at this show without being partially rained out! - AND - it's consistently been a very good venue for us. Also, I have notes from other September Dade City shows that read "hot as h*ll!!!" and one year I was so uncomfortable that I had to retreat halfway through the day to the air conditioned iciness of our hotel room to gather my over heated self together.

Oh, boy - I can hardly wait!

I am trying out a revamped jewelry department to see how it impacts interest and sales. Usually I group items together by type, as other vendors do; earrings, necklaces, bracelets and bangles, and brooches. I decided to take a page from my jewelry mentor's book and try a different approach to merchandising, and so came up with several groupings according to color (one is white, purple, and deep blue). Another grouping is of higher quality, designer costume items that I've been able to add to the inventory. I have enough display props from our time in the antique store to be able to put coordinated items together in "stories." This is how my mentor displays her inventory in retail settings - she finds it can inspire her customers and she can mix inexpensive pieces in with higher end ones.

You do not see jewelry-only vendors at the outdoor shows display their items in this way. What you see are trays as I described above - by commodity. I am really hoping that this trial has some impact and draws the kind of attention that will make the effort I've put into the reorganization worth it.

Other than that, we'll be taking items to the show that we had otherwise tied up in the store inventory; it will be an overall new look, which is really what you want for venues that you sell at on a regular basis. Up until now we haven't had the opportunity to rotate our stock easily from show to show.

Cranking it back up at Amazon

(There must be an association of book Luddites somewhere.)

In spite of the sales of eBooks surpassing those of paper-bound copies, my Amazon Seller account belies this hard fact. In pursuit of the organization of our coming season's reading inventory, I plowed through the heavy boxes to cull the most salable for the mega-website's store. This may sound like an utterly stupid thing to do; yet our book sales are kind of brisk, considering this is the slow time of year for retail in all sectors.

I'm not averse to acquiring a Kindle for myself at some point in the future. But I'm reminded of the advent of the Compact Disc, when all of us vinyl slobs were waiting with baited breath for our stacks and stacks of records to be re-released in this new electronic format. For the most part, those reissues didn't happen, except for the gazillion-selling albums. Everything else got filtered and sifted down into "Best Of" releases and Compilations that missed the point of all those two-sided albums' integrity. So many records in our collections sounded great because we played that whole album all the way through.

(Where am I going here?)

I have that hinky feeling that not all those lovely, keep-til-they-fall-apart quality favorite books currently in our collections will find their way into the eBook format. I fully understand that going forward, the way is on a tablet that I download newly released publications into. I'm also certain that I, and other book lovers, will continue to be keen to get their hands on the pulp and paper, honest to goodness cloth bound or mass market paperback, of their beloved stories from yesterday.

I know this because my book sales prove it. I am doing pretty well selling used books in great condition on Amazon. I don't try to sell poorly cared books, dog-eared or with marked up pages; I like to think that with my books, as I do with the other items in our inventory, only the best preserved are offered. So far this approach is working well.