There has been a lot of discussion in the past year regarding how to promote sales in the antique industry during one of the lowest economic points ever seen in our nation’s or the global economy. Each industry is different, but the antique industry and other industries branded as “luxury goods” felt the pinch more than most. From the position of “Show Producers” there wasn’t much we could do as we continued to hear the stories from our customers and friends of how the failing economy was bringing antiques businesses to the brink of disaster. Our PR machine got moving and we released some statistics regarding the safety of investing in antiques and tried to give consumers and collectors another view. Once the horrifying reality of the economic picture set in, we started to hear about strategies to improve sales. Some dealers scaled back only selling current inventory and making no effort to increase. Others increased the amount of shows they participated in, while others cut back severely. Some found new success in on line promotion and some didn’t. The 49th Annual Original Miami Beach Antique Show is now nearly a month past. Sales and attendance were up dramatically over our 2009 event. I’m not an economist and I can’t see the future, but I like to hope the worst is behind us. As we all regroup and reflect on the past year I hope that this blog will be a format for dealers to share what decisions they made, and actions they took, that helped them improve sales in such uncertain times. We can’t know what’s around the corner, but we can help each other and use the tools we have to share our best practices and hopefully be a stronger industry in the future.
Show Staff