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I Don't Know What This Tells Us
by James Glaser August 15, 2011 
Wanda and I have a booth in an antique shop in Madison, Florida. We make some money, but certainly not enough to live off of. In fact, some months we lose money as the booth rent can be higher than the sales for that month. Last week I was shopping for things I could put in our booth while Wanda was giving workshops at a couple of schools in Alabama. I looked in junk shops, antique shops, and any yard sales I could find. What caught my eye, was that so many co-op antique stores had signs advertising booth space for rent. Here in Madison the store we rent our space in (The Old Country Store) has a list of people just waiting for some one to drop out so they can rent a spot. What I was told is that so many of the people who rented spots in Alabama had lost their jobs, and they started spending all their sales money on living expenses. You see, when you sell something, you have to find something to replace it. If you find something that is a real deal, you can make a profit on that sale. Well, it seems many people started spending all their sales money, and they had nothing or very little to restock their booth. That made the quality of their items go down, and at some point the store owner didn't want to rent to them any longer. He has a vested interest in the quality of the items they are selling, for there is a fine line between an antique shop and a junk store, and it doesn't take too many junky booths to push a store's reputation down a peg. The booth owner should care too, because no matter how high the quality of the items in any booth are, if they are displayed right next to junk, those valuable things are devalued. Wanda and I have a good time with our shop space. Heck, we don't have to work it, we only have to do the fun part. We have a good time looking for things to sell, and we get to display those items in a way we think is eye-catching. I guess the hardest part is setting a price. Sure, we might think something is worth a lot, but even if that is what some antique book says it is worth, you have to set the price where somebody will buy it. Also everybody wants a deal, so putting a "Firm" price on something seems to guarantee that it will take a while to sell. I think today's economy has made people more aware of what they are spending. I believe there are fewer impulse buys. Even in the best of times though, we only make a few hundred dollars in a month's time. So you can see that this is more of a hobby than a career move. There are people in our shop who make much more than we do, but then they are putting in way more time and effort. All in all though, it is a fun thing to do, but if we didn't have other work, I can see us "eating" up our profits in no time, like the people who lost their shop spaces in Alabama. |
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