Whither the antiques market?

There have been huge changes in the last several years in the way people buy antiques. Many cannot remotely be called collectors, while others come and go or switch their interests with such rapidity that differentiation between collectors, consumers, and impulse buyers becomes close to moot.

Where this is all going is a major interest of mine, which is why I wish I had been able to attend this London conference, written up in the Telegraph:

Britain's traditional art and antiques trade faces a conundrum. In a society where more people are earning more money than ever before, how do you persuade newly rich people with no inherent interest in collecting to spend some of their disposable income on beautiful but often unfashionably old works of art? . . .

The Art of Dealing conference, sponsored by several trade organisations, invited along a dozen speakers (including myself) to talk and answer questions on topics ranging from current consumer opinion to marketing and press and public relations.

The conference, subtitled "Retailing in the 21st Century", inevitably raised as many questions as it answered. But it also but gave those who attended plenty of food for thought and some pointers for the future. . .

[Sarah Farrugia, managing director of Farrugia Leo] described herself as "new money" and believes she is representative of a generation of consumers who at present spend their spare cash on travel, food, wine, shoes, watches and homes but who could conceivably become clients of the dealers attending the conference. "I am not looking for antiques," she told them. "I am looking for interesting things to put in my home."

Her message was that dealers have to reach out to people who may never become collectors but who might be persuaded to buy elegant antique furniture, rather than go to the trouble of commissioning a modern piece, or to purchase 19th-century glasses because they have recently acquired a wine cellar.

The entire conference drove home the point that dealers will have to change the way they work if they want to prosper in the 21st century. It is no longer enough to sit in their galleries or on stands at art fairs and wait for customers to come to them - they have to market themselves using the internet and the press to reach out to a wider audience.

The need to publicize is real, but it is hardly the entire story. Many art and antique dealers have no desire to be mass-market retailers, spending their time courting buyers for whom a fine antique is just another consumer good. Wasn't it only a few years ago that the excesses of previous generations deemed hopelessly philistine seemed all but dead and gone? Such as buying fine period furniture and having it stripped to give it a more "country" look, cutting down great old carpets to fit a room, drilling vases to make lamps, cutting down and grafting together furniture as taste or utility might dictate, not to mention all the indignities visited upon paintings. Yet here we are again, urged to seek out customers to buy all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

In fact, I wonder if the recommendations coming out of the conference may be overly slanted by a failure to appreciate where the trade's center of gravity lies. The nature of collectors and collecting may be changing, but what hasn't changed is that the real money is spent by a very small proportion of the players. Dealers know this, which is why they are in such a hurry to pack up early at long shows: hard experience has taught them that the serious business is done early, the later crowds being virtually all either small fry or tire-kickers. Outsiders often berate dealers for not trying harder, yet fail to appreciate that many dealers have tried, but found their efforts wasted. My own observation has been that while dealers who are more outgoing may do better than their more reticent peers in selling items that have strong consumer appeal, the difference isn't so great when it comes to the more esoteric pieces bought primarily by collectors -- and that the dealers who do best by far are those who put their efforts into working with a handful of top-end clients (sometimes only one or two at a time), largely ignoring the general mass of collectors.

Posted by David on May 24, 2005 9:30 PM