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Many people start an antique store for different reasons. You could be starting one because of your love for history, or perhaps you really enjoy telling people about artifacts, and then just love selling them. Whatever reason you have for starting this business, you need to have a grounded understanding of what antiques are.

Antique stores specialize in offering a wide variety of furniture or jewelry, though most of these stores stock varieties of inventory instead. However, these aren’t just any furniture or jewelry. They have to be more than 100 years old to be considered an antique. However, they are referred to as collectibles when they’re less than 100 years old. Their difference is not that clear although, you must be able to differentiate them as they have different values in the market.

In this article, we would be giving you guidelines on how to start and build your antique store. If you’re just starting this business so the first step would be stocking up your store. Where you can find antiques to stock up your store:

This is a list of some of the well-known sources of antiques.

1. Garage sales

The famous saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” can never get old as long as it’s referring to the world of antiques. Garage sales have always been and will never stop being a valuable and ideal source of antiques. The fact that they’ve been used or have belonged to someone before doesn’t make them entirely worthless. Some people just don’t know their worth soon enough. Most of the time, people get lucky and eventually find new items at garage sales. You never can tell you might get lucky the moment you start looking.

2. Flea markets

In several cases, flea markets are now being considered outlets for cheap imported goods, thereby making the hunt for antiques a little tricky though it’s never impossible! The ideal way of getting updated about flea markets is by monitoring online events calendars offered by many publications. Another way is checking local calendars on your journey while traveling to decide which markets you’ll visit along the way.

3. Live auctions

People have probably forgotten that this works sometimes, but you can still try going to auctions. You never know what you might find. To make things snappy and avoid wasting time, you should arrive at auctions as early as possible to check if any of the items to be auctioned would be of interest. By doing this, you would be able to ensure that the pieces are original and in excellent condition before you buy them. This is possible because many auction houses grant interested parties the privilege of viewing the items many days before the auction occurs.

4. Thrift stores

To find something satisfactory at your local thrift store, establishing a relationship with the store’s management would be beneficial. Try to be friendly and courteous always, ensuring that they understand and are aware of the types of antiques you intend buying. You can drop your business card to give you a call whenever they come across the items you’re dealing with.

5. Antique shows

Don’t forget to visit antique shows, even though you know everything will be overpriced for further resale. Your concern about the price has an advantage. You might eventually meet a seller with items that are not within their area of specialization and offer them for sale at a more acceptable price. You wouldn’t want to miss the chance of seeing great antiques at an antique show. Additionally, an antique show is an excellent place to introduce yourself, interact with your fellow dealers, and do some market research. After getting a source, the next step would be selling them successfully.

Three Essential Steps to Antique Marketing Success

Antiquities dealers cannot sell their goods at yard-sale prices, nor can they accept low ball bids. How, then, will they survive in the current market? You can start by concentrating on a sales channel and conduct a market analysis before creating a marketing plan and buying stock. There are three steps to achieving this.

Step one: Start concentrating on a sales channel.

There are three channels selling antiques; every other channel entails a specific set of skills and marketing techniques. The channels are as follows:

• Brick-and-Mortar (B&M).In 2019, brick and mortar retail stores were considered customer-oriented; it’s all about building a fun experience for your customer. Retailers are based on traffic flow, merchandising, blogs, local search, and social networking.
• Online sales are product-oriented. Online shoppers are always looking for a product name or classification. Customers always recall the online store they purchased their product from.
• Digital marketing requires the ability to write excellent product descriptions, take beautiful pictures, and get a lot of reviews, packaging, and shipping promptly.

Being a mobile antique dealer is time-consuming and stressful, but gives the opportunity between shows to be picked. Customers will recall the display when they made the order, but they won’t even know the booth or dealer.

Every sales channel has different expenses and workflow. For many, there’s not sufficient time in a week to do it all. Such channels will be lucrative, but if you want to use them at the same time, therefore you must compromise efficiency and profits.

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Step 2: Research

Research usually starts with you knowing where the buyers of your item hang out and where they reside. How much money are they earning? What’s their standard of education? What are their buying pattern and habits?

Marketing is like archery: you need to know what your target is before you can strike it. The research defines your goal. All this information can only be accessed if you search for it.

Step 3: Create a mailing list

Irrespective of the sales channel you employ, creating a mailing list for the customer is still relevant. Shoppers are always coming-and-going. Customers don’t need you; they’ve got a lot of shopping alternatives. However, shoppers would prefer buying from someone they know, like, and believe. Irrespective of your sales channel, you should concentrate on creating your customer mailing list.

Today most buyers are involved in economic chaos, and too many promotional messages bombarding their inbox. So for your message to be heard and understood clearly, you must determine who you are going to speak to and then offer them something worth listening to.

Ten online market places to list your antique products to boost sales

The platforms and stores mentioned below will enable you to market your antiques and gain profit. For clarity, you can either decide to take your business online or offline, based on which method works better.

The types of items accepted by each site, store, or other venue differ. For this reason, do your due diligence to read and understand their terms and conditions before listing your item for sale. You might even want to try out digital or local sales apps.

1. Etsy

Etsy only permits sellers to trade items that are handmade, specially built, original, or vintage. Since you’re selling antiques, you will only be allowed to list your items in the “vintage” segment.

So many types of items are considered vintage on Etsy, including:

• Clothing
• Jewelry and accessories
• Books, movies, music,
• Home décor objects
• Games and toys

Concerning vintage items, Etsy says that the items must be at least 20 years old. If the things you would like to sell weren’t at least 20 years old, you can’t legally sell them on Etsy.

Etsy charges for selling on their website. There is a 20 cent listing fee. Immediately the item is sold, you will be charged a 5 percent service fee.

You may be required to pay an extra fee depending on the amount of payment you receive and how your customer pays.

2. Bonanza

The Bonanza website claims that it offers “anything except the regular.” When you display your antiques on Bonanza, you won’t be paying any listing fees.

However, when you sell, you’re going to pay a 3.5 percent tax.

If you decide to advertise your antique on using their Ads, you must pay an extra 5.5 percent when you sell it.

Bonanza has additional advertising rates to publicize your antiques to even more buyers. If you decide to sell antiques daily, this feature may be handy.

3. Offer-Up

OfferUp works a little like Craigslist. The site is designed for people who intend to buy and to sell locally.

One of the best parts about OfferUp is that there are no listing or sale fees. Besides, there seems to be a separate section on the web aimed at selling antiques.

This ensures that it’s effortless for buyers to find your antique when you list them online. OfferUp is fast becoming one of the most common places for selling antiques and other artifacts.

4. Ruby Lane’s

Ruby Lane takes pride in enabling people to sell antique items. However, it mainly targets sellers that choose to sell antiques on a consistent schedule.

In essence, the platform’s selling rules state that you should have at least ten products for sale at all times. There are no listing fees when you run a Ruby Lane store.

Nevertheless, you are billed $69 a month for your business and a one-time set-up fee of $100. If you display over 80 items, you pay 1–10 cents of maintenance costs for each product monthly.

5. Art-Fire

ArtFire is an online marketplace for handmade crafts, art supplies, and vintage (antique) products. You’ve got to create an account to trade on ArtFire. Your store fees include the following:

• Official store: $4.95 per month, 23 cent listing fee for each item, 12.75 percent final market value fee for each item.
• Popular store: $20 a month, no listing fees, 4.5 percent final market value fee
• Featured store: $40 per month, no listing fee, 4.5 percent final market value fee

The purchase price shall determine the final market value fees. You can list up to 250 items for sale in the Standard Shop. Famous and Featured stores can display up to 1,000 items and 2,500 items up for sale, respectively.

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6. eBay

eBay is the old classic for the trading of antiques and other objects. One of the benefits of selling antiques through eBay is that almost everyone widely knows it.

Having over 177 million active buyers at the eBay website implies that a large pool of shoppers would have access to your antique.

If you sell as a person, you’ll pay $0 for listing fees and a 10 percent final revenue fee. On the contrary, if you sell as a company, eBay has marketing strategies in place.

7. Craigslist:

Craigslist is great for selling antiques because there are no listing or selling charges. Besides, most of your customers that demand for the products you sell it would be close to where you reside.

This ensures that you don’t have to ship your antiques and meet your customers directly. The demand for selling antiquities on Craigslist may differ based on the area you reside in.

Your region can have different outcomes. Another alternative for you might be to consider listing on platforms that are identical to Craigslist.

8. The Flea Market

Although the flea market is not an online marketplace, it is another method for selling your antiques. There are many ways of making money on a flea market.

You can rent a space in a static flea market located in a building or market area closest to you, or you can join the flea market when it comes to your neighborhood.

You can even take part in the touring market as it travels from city to city. Selling the antiques to the flea market would be better if you had a lot of antiques.

All flea markets charge some kind of rent for their booth or table that you are using to showcase your products.

9. Facebook

Facebook is quickly becoming one of my preferred places to buy and sell. One reason is that selling on Facebook Marketplace is free of charge. There are two ways that you can sell.

Initially, you can sell your product by repeatedly posting it and sharing it with your Facebook friends. That could be a great option because you usually only have to deal with people, you know. However, since customers need a Facebook account here, there’s a certain level of security involved.

10. eBid

EBid is very similar to eBay. Nevertheless, there is one big difference: lower charges than eBay. In essence, eBid assures that you will never pay more than 3% to sell your antiques and other pieces.

EBid is not a new website; it has been around since 1999. And the website claims that they have more than 33 million active monthly visitors. This implies that if you list on the web, you can be confident that you will reach a broad audience.

You just need to press the “Start Selling” button if you want to sell on their website. The site would guide you from there.

You can display all sorts of antiques on eBid, such as:

• Art,
• Clothing
• Coins
• Furniture and home decorating items
• Jewelry and accessories

If you want to reach a wider audience, eBid can be a fantastic place to use. With their “zero listing fees” policy and a maximum of 3% selling fees, you can reach millions of people without paying outrageous fees.

7 Habits of successful antique store owners

1. Successful antique dealers always have their areas of expertise. This doesn’t imply that they steer away from unique things they can profit from, it means that their advertisements and businesses are geared at a specific type of antique or collectible.
2. Successful antique dealers have several ways of purchasing antiques and collectibles.
3. Successful antique store owners have likable personalities. They like people, and they’re always polite and supportive. They enjoy the banter of negotiating with buyers and sellers. They establish a relationship with their customers and other dealers.
4. A successful antique dealer appreciates and takes pleasure in the items they sell. This pleasure fosters the communication between them and their customers.
5. Thriving antique store owners realize the distinction between collecting and investing. Some dealers have cases of inventory collecting items they can’t or won’t resell. They could have spent too much, or they might have priced the products too high. This way, they’re just compiling their mistakes. Successful ones will invest in it and sell it at a higher price within a short period.
6. Successful antique store owners have optimistic attitudes as dealers, and they spend a lot of time talking and thinking about the fantastic bargains they’ve made. Suppose they make mistakes like buying an overpriced item or selling an item for lesser than its value. The most common mistake is letting something good slip away because you were busy or didn’t realize it on time. Either you just have to accept it, learn from it, and move on.
7. Successful antique store owners are always seeking to learn new techniques and adapt to new markets and technologies. They’re always trying to sell at antique shows. They quickly master sales techniques and body language to enhance their negotiation skills because they have known the importance of doing that. They are always searching for the latest developments and identifying new items they can purchase, and they’re always on the lookout for innovative ways of obtaining antiques and collectibles.

Cultivate these habits early, if you want to be counted as a successful antique store owner.

If you’re going to start this business, you might know the pros and cons of owning an antique store.

Pros of starting an antique store

• It simple and is considered a very enticing choice at face value

All you need to do is get a shop or become part of a public auction and buy some old items for a reasonably small price. Then you can sell them to Individuals online or locally for a considerable profit, especially to those eager to own one

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Cons of starting an antique store

• Intense competition

The first thing to note is that this idea of yours isn’t something no one knows of. As they say, “nothing is new under the sun.”

Most of the stuff you’re going to see for sale is, basically, trash, and when a few useful items come along, you can be sure that the struggle for them is going to be intense.

At times the competition can get entirely out of hand, and the price might be raised to something completely outrageous, thereby leaving no room for profits when you resell.

When you try buying from public auctions, they’ll only accelerate their prices to outrageously over-inflated rates knowing that they can negotiate on the desperation and willingness of inexperienced or novice dealers.

• Taxation

Once you’ve sold your goods, presumably for a profit rather than a loss, prepare to get hefty tax bills as a response.

Honest professionals in this business attested that tax and related charges would significantly eat into your profit.

• Shipping

Many people start their antique businesses and buy lovely furniture at an excellent price. The antique should sell at significantly higher prices. Most of them find out that shipping relatively large and more substantial items around the world can be both quite expensive and risky. The expenses of packaging, shipping, and insurance, are enough for you to rethink except if you want to go bankrupt. All this will eventually make the item quite costly, and the buyer might now prefer getting it locally. Unfortunately, you’ll find yourself trapped with an object that is essentially un-sellable.

Conclusively, all the disadvantages shouldn’t stop you from achieving your goal. If you want to do this, just go for it, it just needs a little patience, diligence, and consistency. Also, it is essential to keep in mind that several antique online services are popular with these kinds of items as watches, clocks, jewelry, pottery, carpets, furniture, and antique swords.

Retails

Tags: Business ideas, Retails Business Ideas