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Discover Mid-America — October 2005

Marketing antiques to young entrepreneurs

Amy and Joel Messier of East Randolph, VT are a 30-something couple with two small children — just the sort of demographic that curmudgeonly antique dealers are always complaining "aren't interested in antiques" and haven't the discretionary income to buy them even if they were.

Yet, a couple of years ago, this young couple opened Messier's General Store and in a building where a general store has operated continuously for more than a hundred years. Business being good as it was, they recently bought another site down the road and opened a "feed and grain" and hardware supply store called "Messier's Farm & Yard." And, the young couple has decorated both sites liberally with antiques, from advertising signs to old display cupboards to yellowware bowls.

The storefront signage at Messier's General Store. The Messiers are the latest owners with the privilege of maintaining the historical continuity that has had a small general store in continuous operation at this site and in this building for over a hundred years. (photo by the author courtesy of Joel and Amy Messier).

Before the Messiers took it over, it was pretty much your typical, run-down, dusty, small town store where a can of generic Boston beans would cost you pretty much twice what it would at the nearest supermarket (which, in our case, is about ten miles away) and where you'd want to wash the can off before you tried to open it.

I started shopping in Messier's for three reasons: It was interesting, restored as it was to look pretty much as it must have looked in its heyday; the prices were modest compared to what I'd come to expect from most small town stores of its ilk; and it was clean. It didn't take me long to notice what the Messiers were doing with antiques as decorative accents for the business. Soon, I was going there as much for the ambience of the store as I was for food and supplies. And that got me thinking...

Sure, young families are as cash-strapped today as young families have ever been, so, as far as their personal lives go, maybe they can't afford to decorate their homes with antiques. But what they are doing — and in record numbers according to the Small Business Administration — is starting their own businesses, many of them with land and buildings that could be decorated with — yes, Virginia! — antiques. And what might make that especially attractive for a young business owner is that, in contrast to private collections, the acquisition of antiques as decorative and marketing tools for a business is a potential tax write-off as a business-related expense.

This grand old scale graces Messier's Farm & Yard store, right down the road from the general store. The scale was made by the Detroit Automatic Scale Company in 1907 - which, a scant two years from now, will make it a bona fide antique. (photo by the author courtesy of Joel and Amy Messier).

It's become clear that success in any future antiques trade is going to depend on rethinking the market, since traditional approaches to moving the merchandise don't seem to be working as well as they once did. One of those traditional approaches is marketing to collectors, who tend to be of an older age cohort and who are considered to have the historical consciousness, the leisure and the discretionary income to indulge an interest in antiques.

The trouble, of course, is that this demographic is shrinking. Today's collectors are the "pig-in-the-python" demographic of the Baby Boom. Now middle-aged or older, the loss of their numbers is difficult to offset, even were the trade doing a better job than it is of marketing to younger people. Within the Baby Boom demographic itself, collectors who aren't dying off are now thinking about downsizing their living spaces and, consequently, culling rather than expanding their collections.

Check out the advertising on this old "Cleanzum" hand-cleaner tin that rests atop an eye-level display shelf at Messier's General Store. The White & Bagley Company was formally liquidated in 1986, but it's clear this item dates from much earlier in the century. On old advertising items, an indicator of age is often the quaint language used to describe the product. Can you even imagine a phrase such as "Produces a most delightful sensation of cleanliness" as any modern advertising slogan? (Photo by the author courtesy of Joel and Amy Messier.)

Maybe dealers ought to be paying more attention to young entrepreneurs in the Messiers' age group. Here's a good example: The cookie jar market has been a tad soft for some time now, in part because of the downsizing pressures I've mentioned and the space these particular items take up. But what if someone were starting a small bakery? Ah, then, cookie jars, mixing bowls, and other old baking paraphernalia would be perfect decorative accents for the public portion of the store.

Aside from opening a new market, promoting antiques as display options for young business owners has a built-in advantage for the trade — it increases public exposure for antiques. This would go a long way to addressing one of the central problems of the trade: How to get the product into the public eye, thereby showing those who might never walk into an antique shop just what they're missing.

In this context, antiques become "hot" and interesting. They become fun. Antique oil lamps in a lighting store...vintage clothing at a dry cleaner's...The possibilities are endless!

"Yeah," you might say, "but the youngsters going into business today are dot-com-ers or they're in electronics or data-processing. How do you fit antiques into that kind of business?"

Well, you get creative. Sure, a hundred years ago, people didn't have computers. But what did they have? They had typewriters. They had primitive adding machines and calculating instruments, going as far back as the abacus.

Besides, you don't always have to base the decorating theme on what the business directly sells Even if the shop is called something as generic as "Main Street Realty," just think of all the antique resonance associated with that one all-American phrase, "Main Street!" Why, you could decorate a realty office with old street signs — or just about anything else that relates to life on "Main Street, USA." What about an old porch rocker? What about old decorative garden sculptures?

Well, it's a new marketing direction to think about. And, speaking of directions, next time you're in Vermont, why not take a side trip to East Randolph and walk on in to Messier's General Store and Messier's Farm & Yard to see how it's done?

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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