Most businesses have an annual cycle and the antiques year is no different. As it’s the start of a new year it’s time to look forward and get prepared for what lays ahead.
The new year – possibly the same but probably different
In most walks of life, if we knew what was coming we’d be rich, or at least a lot better prepared. Of course we don’t know the future for certain, but experience is a valuable thing, as is a willingness to try something different. At the start of a new year, planning ahead is important for an antiques trader as each month offers different opportunities and challenges.
Just how much each month is different from the previous has been one of the steepest parts of the learning curve for us since we started buying and selling antiques. We’re far from confident we’ve got it right yet but at least now we understand some of the bigger factors that affect us.
In this posting I’ll try to explain the biggest influences on our year and how I think these wax and wane through the months.
The climate and weather
It’s true, the British do obsess about the weather, but for a good reason – we get a lot of it and it changes frequently. If you live in southern Spain, I imagine you can run an outdoor market twelve months of the year with little chance of it being ruined (too often) by cold, rain or strong winds. In Britain we’re not so lucky. For about four months of the year there’s almost no chance of running outdoor antiques events on a regular basis. Even the likes of the Malvern Flea Fair goes into partial hibernation. The few Fleas that do run are smaller, and most of the activity is indoors.
Events need firm surfaces for customer parking. As the weather starts to warm up in Spring, venues have to ensure cars don’t become bogged down in mud caused by rain in the preceding months. I used to commute past Cheltenham racecourse every day. On occasions, I saw tractors recovering vehicles after winter meetings. This isn’t a sight to encourage repeat visitors and it makes a terrible mess of the parking fields for events in the subsequent weeks.
Recently at Malvern Showground the owners have invested significantly in additional drainage so that the parking fields are usable from March or April. As county show grounds are used most weeks, unlike a racecourse, they can’t afford for the parking areas to get damaged.
The ideal day for selling antiques outside is one that is still and dry. Warm and sunny is nice too but still and dry are the crucial elements. It’s rare in Britain for it to be too hot, although for multi-day events sunburn can be an issue. This is especially for sellers who tend to stand, facing the same way for hours on end. I’ve even managed to get sunburn selling at a car boot sale for a few hours in August.
Decent weather is however crucial for getting the public out. As I’ve discussed previously, I think the IACF events at Stoneleigh are never going to get much in the way of outdoor selling because they are too close to the start and end of the year. Expecting large numbers of traders to set up outdoor pitches for multiple days in October is unrealistic.
The weather is a continual frustration to everyone in the business. It makes pre-booking an outdoor pitch a risky thing to do and makes planning well in advance impossible. If you have a van to load, a long drive and a very early start, the weather forecast inevitably becomes your deciding factor the night before the event. This is even more crucial if your livelihood depends on your trade.
If you’re attending an outdoor event and the rain starts, spare a few thoughts for the traders as they start to pack up early. For them it’s been an awful lot of time, money and effort, and probably for not very much in return.
Car boot season
Some car boot sales run for twelve months of the year, but most do not. The reason for the closed season is, of course, the weather – see above. Come the spring and summer car boot sales kick off big time and most of us can visit a decent car boot sale most weekends without travelling very far.
Car boot sales are a multi-edged sword for the antiques trade. They provide a great potential source of items to buy cheaply and sell on at a profit. Many people doing house clearances either privately or commercially will try to sell quite a lot at car boot sales. They also provide a simple way for traders to get rid of stock they either came by by accident or purchased on a whim and it turned out it wasn’t a good idea.
Car boot sales also provide a not very welcome competition for browsers’ time and money. Out of car boot season many buyers have no choice but to look for an indoor antiques fair. This can apply to trader buyers just as much as it does to members of the public. Once car boot season starts though, car boot sales provide a cheaper and probably more local event to entertain people. Whilst it upsets a few antiques traders, the reality is that for many people, visiting an antiques fair largely about cheap entertainment.
There is also a mindset that starts to creep in during the summer from people who frequent car boot sales that everything should be very cheap. This wasn’t something we’d considered in our early days but it is a very real thing. During the summer, if you’re selling items that are simply interesting or nice to have, some customers become fixated on the idea that everything can be sold very cheaply. As you can imagine, this isn’t much appreciated by antiques traders.
School holidays
School holidays exert a strong influence on all of the retail and entertainment sectors. Of course, for us it’s not just the UK holidays either. You soon learn that other countries have different holiday periods. Although in the UK we have long summer holidays, some countries such as the US have even longer and we see American families visitors from the start of July.
Once holidays start, families start to appear in the shops we sell from all through the week and inevitably we get an up-tick in sales. This is particularly true for visitors from overseas. Selling to tourists makes up a very significant part of our trade in the Cotswolds and the arrival of families from overseas is always welcomed.
As an aside, I’m not always a fan of everything overseas visitors choose to buy. However I do know that most of it is a great deal more authentic than most of the touristic stuff I’ve bought in my travels. There’s probably a decent blog posting on the subject!
Slightly perversely, there is also an dampening effect of school holidays on some of our buyers. Many of our weekday customers are old enough to be parents of adult children and so are free of childcare responsibilities.
As a recent retiree, I must confess that I try to enjoy my days out during the week when the crowds are fewer and I tend to hide away during the school holidays. This accentuates the change in the demographic as our older customers stay away when the families are out and about. This is most obvious in September when the schools go back and people not tied to the school year take advantage of the good weather to go on their holidays. Consequently September and October are usually our best months in the shops.
Public Holidays
In Britain, if you want to see big crowds, pick an outdoor event on a public holiday when the weather is good. It’s no coincidence that by far the biggest Malvern Flea Fairs are Easter Monday, May Bank Holiday and the August Bank Holiday. These are just terrific events for footfall when the sun shines. Of course, for a trader good footfall doesn’t always mean good sales, but poor footfall is a usually a guarantee of poor sales so a busy event is a really good start.
There is also a special buzz about a big, well attended event. Happy people tend to buy more especially when they can see others doing the same. If you’re in range of a big, outdoor antiques fair on a public holiday I doubt you can find better value for money entertainment anywhere.
Christmas
For much of the retail trade, Christmas is the biggest time of year. I’d like to think that a lot of our sales from September onwards are related to Christmas, but actually I think it’s not until October and into early November that we start to see Christmas sales really happening.
In truth we’re not really very good at generating Christmas specific sales and I think that’s probably true throughout the vintage and antiques trade. A few items start to sell well though. These are mostly related to entertaining, such as set of glasses and decanters. For those old enough to remember when Babycham was all the rage, you’ll be pleased to hear that sets of Babycham branded glasses are selling very well at the moment (albeit not for very much money).
Entertaining aside, old Christmas decorations and even old sets of Christmas crackers sell well, especially the 1970s sets with Wade Whimsies in them! We also fine a bit of a market for Christmas items with a year on them. These seem to sell to people who where born, or know someone who was born, in that year.
Special Days
A few years ago I recall hearing of the Society for the Promotion of Special Days. It doesn’t appear to be a thing now. It’s probably not a surprise that, apparently, it was funded by one of the big card manufacturers, There are a few more special days now but only Mother’s Day seems to have an effect for us. As sellers of collectable ceramics such as Moorcroft and Royal Crown Derby paperweights we are usually lucky enough to get a few sales we can attribute to Mother’s Day.
I’ve always rather viewed the existence of promoted days as being a bit of a commercial rip off and I try not to have anything to do with them. Now I’m actually part of a commercial enterprise, I’m frustrated at not being able to make more of them. Terrible hypocrisy, I know.
The Hungry Gaps
The original “Hungry Gap” referred to the part of the medieval year when the stored winter food had been eaten but before any new seasons food was available. It was largely speaking from the end of April through to June. During that time people living off the land literally ran out of food.
Whilst trading is a hobby for me, for many in the business it’s a great deal more serious and there’s a very real need to avoid long, barren periods. We try to avoid our own hungry gaps but from mid-December until Easter it is often very difficult.
Antiques fairs help greatly but shops are usually very quiet. If you’re going to close your antiques shop for a couple of weeks for a holiday, the middle of January is the time to do so. This reduces the days of few customers, even fewer sales and having to heat an otherwise freezing cold shop. To quote a fellow shopkeeper, this is the time when you question your life choices. You just have to keep warm, read a book and hope for better times ahead.
For traders renting space in shops, avoiding making a loss in January and February is often as good as you can hope for. Indeed if you’re going to stop trading from a shop, November or December is the time to do so and if you’re looking to take space then wait until March or April.
Surprisingly, June is also a difficult month for us. There are no school holidays and car boot season is under way. Overseas visitors can help but June seems to be hard work after the excitement of Easter and May half term. Just as the year seems to really getting under way again, June puts on the brakes.
I wish it could be Christmas October every day!
The flip side of the Hungry Gap for us is October. There’s an almost perfect storm which usually generates the best sales of the year. The weather is still good, and there’s the last half term of the school year. The car boot sale season is coming to a close and I’d like to think everyone has seen enough junk for one year and is looking for something better to browse. Coupled with that, Christmas is on the horizon and the buying public are starting to look for presents.
As an antiques trader, if you’re not making money in October it’s probably time for find a new career. For most of us though, this is also the time to put some money aside for pay the rent for the coming months and to plan a couple of weeks somewhere warm in January.
