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2005 Best Of Winners

Discover Mid-America — February 2007

Why don't more
people shop the shows?

A trade publication from my area recently published a small-boxed article featuring the dumbest things retail customers are alleged to have said at antique shows. A sample gives the flavor of the whole: A woman is browsing an antique show and sees a chair she just loves. She arranges with the dealer to buy it then is manifestly horrified when he proceeds to remove it for her.

"You're not going to give me that one, are you?"

The nonplussed dealer says, "But I thought you wanted it!"

"Well I do," says the lady. "But I never buy the floor model!"

From a retail perspective, one of the advantages of show attendance is that one finds unusual things that seem to show up nowhere else, such as this miniature glass Christmas tree, with extra branch "hooks" under each branch to take the handmade glass ornaments that came with it.

Funny? Sure! Lots of politically incorrect stories are funny in a perverse sort of way; one is tempted to say, "Oh, lighten up!" to anyone who might take umbrage. Still, a sense of humor isn't necessarily the same thing as - nor can it stand in for - a sense of right and fair play.

Perhaps because one of my multiple career hats has been teaching college sociology, what stories like this tell about the teller is much more interesting to me than what they say about the brunt of the joke. To whit, a sociologist wouldn't consider it accidental that all the dumb characters in the nearly a dozen stories included in the article in question happened to be women. Such tales are the trade equivalent of "dumb blond" jokes.

The presentation in a boxed set seemed to imply that such tales are representative of (or at least not uncommon among) the buying public. In sociological parlance, we call that a stereotype. And the underlying contempt for the retail customer (especially women) it conveys may go some way to explaining a phenomenon about which, ironically, the trade frequently complains: that too few retail customers shop the shows.

The trade's schizophrenic attitude toward retail customers

The particular lapse in editorial judgment cited here is noteworthy only because it reflects a widespread, if largely unconscious, attitude throughout the trade, extending well beyond the show circuit. We might call it schizophrenic customer relations: the trade needs retail customers but sometimes acts to repel them.

Speaking of unusual items, I found this fascinating item years ago at a small local antique show in Vermont. It's a perfectly formed globe, 3 1/2 inches in diameter. I use it as a large Christmas tree ornament. It's fashioned entirely of cross-sectioned pieces of fruit pit or nutshell (not sure which). It fascinates me; how does a craftsman make something like this?

Intuitively, at least, the trade knows that the retail customer is the ultimate end and goal of the food chain. Yet many dealers keep their distance. An inbred and elitist mentality permeates at the trade press and threads its way through conversations between dealers on the street, in the shop, and in the aisles of trade shows.

Dealers like talking to one another. Many do not like talking to members of the general public. The extreme is the dealer who sells exclusively in group shops, expressly because he refuses to deal directly with the retail public.

Well, despite the old saw that familiarity breeds contempt, any sociologist will tell you that it's the lack of familiarity that breeds contempt. As long as we don't have to engage actual customers, we can nurse our worst fantasies about them and/or daydream about some unattainable ideal in which customers become the trade's stand-in for the Stepford wives in Ira Levin's famous novel.

What's market segmentation got to do with it?

This 4-inch high Wedgwood vase is also the kind of thing that might show up at a show as older Wedgwood becomes increasingly illusive. The marks on the base date this example to 1911 - and counting down to official antiquedom!

Maybe what's needed isn't just antiques education of the public but an attitude transplant in the trade. I suspect that much of the "purism" at the high end of the trade isn't just a matter of devotion to the artifacts of a certain period but also an attempt to keep all but the most highbrow retail customers at bay.

Going upscale is a legitimate market segmentation strategy if one has the capital and contacts so to position oneself. But is the general public's lack of response to shows of high-end merchandise a mere function of public ignorance and failure of appreciation? Or is the general public just pretty savvy at sniffing out contempt, maybe just a little put off by the whiff of begrudging noblesse oblige at the higher end of the trade? Are retail customers plain dense, or is it that most simply can't afford the stellar prices garnered at auction and show for decent 17th and 18th century American furniture (as but one example)? And are these customers simply finding their own buying and collecting interests, instead — you, know, Victorian furniture, Depression glass, Fiesta ware and other things the high end of the trade wouldn't be caught dead dealing in?

You don't cultivate a taste for filet mignon by making people go cold turkey on hamburgers. Nor can we create healthy market segmentation by feeding the retail folks a steady diet of condescension.

Customer appreciation

In the spirit of incorporating practical suggestion into this critique, replacing old attitudes with newer, healthier ones is never easy, but it's been said that action can induce attitude. That is, if one behaves as if one appreciated retail customers, the heart may well follow.

Goebel is most associated with the famous but frequently dismissed Hummel figurines that are anathema to many trade dealers. Less well known are its fine porcelain animal and bird figures. This exceptionally well-modeled pair of sad-faced Schnauzers bears the original W and Crown mark of early Goebel.

Many shops, single and multi-dealer, sponsor customer appreciation events on a regular basis. These can include special sales and a small catered "spread" that can be as simple as crackers and cheese or a more elaborate catering. Such events are limited only by the creativity of the planners. Events won't substitute for year-round respect for customers, but they're not a bad place to start in consciously cultivating the right attitude toward the public.

And it doesn't have to be an event, either. All it has to be is some meaningful action. So engage your own creativity. Ask yourself what action(s) on your part, however great or small, would express such genuine appreciation for the retail customer that the general buying public might actually be drawn to your shop or show.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.

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