Antique Store Business Guide

By B. Davis

About The Author:

I had just gotten married and a few months later my husband lost his job. We were broke and stayed at home every night until it started to drive us crazy. We just had our phone turned off for non-payment and we were starting to go crazy. My husband suggested that we go to this auction he heard about, he said it was free to go and it would give us something to do. So we went to our first auction not having any idea what this was going to start.

We got their early and started looking at the items they were going to auction. They had a bunch of boxes with all kinds of different items and then they had some items individually marked on tables. The auction was about to get started so we watched. The individual items they auctioned off piece by piece but the boxes of stuff they auctioned off as a box lot. The boxes were going for a couple of dollars for the whole box where the individual items would sell for much more. It was really interesting and we did have a lot of fun.

While we were driving home I started thinking that what if we purchased some of the box lots and had a yard /garage sale to sell them. I stayed awake all night thinking about it. Two days went by and I received my paycheck from working at the Hallmark store as a cashier. I took $25.00 from my check and decided to give the auction another try. We ended up bidding on and winning something like 15 or 20 box lots. We loaded up the truck with our boxes of junk and headed home.

We started going through the boxes and it was a lot of fun looking through another person’s junk. We cleaned everything up and gave it a price. That weekend we had our first yard sale and we made around $150.00. That was all it took we were now hooked.

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Learning As We Go:

Since we had such great success at our first yard sale we decided to go back to the auction and bid again. This time we looked through each box to see if it had anything unusual or old looking in it before we bid for it. The boxes are about 2’ x 3’ x 2’ and are packed with all kinds of different stuff. Most of the items come from estate sales, storage units that were abandoned etc… so you never know what you will find. When we got home from the auctions we would go through the boxes and anything we thought was unusual we set aside then we cleaned up the remaining items to make them look as good as possible and had another yard sale. Again this was a success. We now decided to start having one huge yard sale each month instead of one a week. We made $500.00 dollars on the big yard sale and were feeling pretty good about ourselves.

Then our lives were about to change. The next time we went to the auction a lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked were my antique store was. I said I don’t have a store we just have yard sales. She said I should become an antique dealer. I had no idea what was involved so I just said I will think about it. This lady asked where I was having my yard sales so I told her and she said that was just down the street from her antique mall. The next yard sale I had she came by and purchased a painting for $2.00 I thought I was getting a good price since I only paid $10.00 for a group of 12 paintings. She again said I should come by her store and see what being an antique dealer was all about. I stayed up all night thinking about becoming an antique dealer and in the morning decided to go by and check out her antique mall. I get there and start looking around and I see the painting she purchased from me for $2.00 was hanging on the wall and priced at $80.00. I decided to look into this further so I started asking her questions. She said all I had to do is rent a space from her it was 5ft x 5ft for $90.00 per month and display my items that I wanted to sell. What you would do is mark the item with your price and a special code so she knew it was yours and if someone purchased it she would collect the money and pay you for the sale. This was very simple and I knew I had set aside a bunch of items that I thought were antiques and figured I would give it a try.

I went down and purchased my occupational license and then applied for my sales tax certificate so I could collect sales tax and not pay sales tax on items I was going to sell. I didn’t need insurance because the owner of the antique mall carried the insurance for her store. Later on when you see where I opened my own store I then had to have general liability insurance. I would give NetQuote a try they usually come up with the best rates for business liability insurance. You will see a link at the end of this article for NetQuote.

What to Charge:

I had all of these pieces set aside because I thought they looked like antiques or they were unusual and now I decided to sell them. The problem was I had no idea what they were worth. Since we had little money we decided to go to the library and research each piece. They usually all had some type of markings on them to help you research each piece. The great thing was when you found the piece in one of the books it also had what it was worth today so you had a ballpark idea of what you could sell it for. Doing the research was also a lot of fun and we really started to get into it. Once you have some money you can stop going to the library and head to the bookstore to purchase books on pricing your antiques. These books will be more current then library books that can be a few too many years out of date.

So we went back and put a price tag on each antique we were going to put in our space and then went over and put all of the items on display. Each week we were selling our antique pieces so we just kept going to the different auctions and buying more. We were still having yard sales to sell off the pieces that were not antiques and then we would research the antiques price them and put them in our rented space inside the antique mall.

The items we did not sell in our yard sale started to pile up so we would just take them to the dump. Now the space in the antique mall was doing great. We were selling about $2000.00 per month and asked if we could expand. She had a spot in the back of the store that was about 10’ x 20’ so we took it. We now were only bidding on items we knew were antiques and started bidding on furniture also. We would take the furniture back and strip it down and re-finish it. This took some time to learn how but my husband was an auto body mechanic so he was good with sanding and refinishing. So even though you may purchase something for $10.00 and sell it for $200.00 it did require work. Now our new space in the antique mall was bringing in $3000.00 per month and we were having a great time working for ourselves.

Expanding Our Business

After the first year we had did so well with the space in the antique mall we were thinking of opening our own antique store. We had acquired plenty of antiques and decided to give it a go. We found a house that was turned into a business location that was located in a tourist section of town. They had a tourist bus stop right on the corner so we felt we would get a lot of traffic. We rented the complete top floor of this home. I would say it was about 1000 square feet. It had a small living room, 2 bedrooms, bathroom and hallways. So we decided to decorate each room to what they actually were. If it was a bedroom we put an antique bed, dresser, mirrors, nightstand etc… The bathroom we had an antique sink, toilet and tub with antique combs etc…

The place looked great now we just needed to get the word out that we were open. We took ads out in the local paper, phonebook, antique shopper guides etc… of course the best advertisement was word of mouth. It doesn’t take long for word of mouth to travel in this business. With the internet now in today’s world EBay, Yahoo auction etc… the word gets out quick. We soon were selling antiques faster then we could replace them. The business was getting more complicated. I now had to be in the store 6 days a week while we still went to auctions at night and re-finished items either at the antique store or at night at home. It takes time to hunt down missing knobs and handles to fix up an old antique. They have magazines and online stores that will save you a lot of time but it still takes part of your day. If you sell something online you have to crate and ship the item this all takes time and meanwhile you still need to keep buying more antiques to keep your store going. If you sell a big dresser or a painting off the wall you have to put something back in its spot to fill the blank area or your store will start to look shabby. It is very important to keep getting new items because a lot of people will keep coming back each week to see if you have something new to purchase. If you always’ have the same stuff they will stop coming back. I do not want to scare you off so I should mention that we are now doing $75,000 per year and growing.

Tips When Starting Out:

To help keep your antique store or even if you just rent a space in an antique mall looking like you are constantly selling items and getting new antiques you need to move them around. Move it to a different room or hang it on a different wall if it hasn’t sold in awhile. Change the prices on these items and not necessary always lower. One time I overheard a customer tell his wife this must be a fake because it was priced to low. I raised the price and it sold in a week. You have to find that price that keeps your antiques moving off of the shelves but still keeps the customer feeling they are getting something that everyone doesn’t have or can afford to have.

When you start purchasing antiques pick a style that you love and only purchase those items. You will find this is what most dealers do. By doing this you will become an expert in this one area because you will be researching the same era over and over. This will help you recognize a great deal when you see it. Some dealers only deal in Depression glass but they know everything there is to know about it giving them a huge edge over someone inexperienced. Also if you love the antiques you are purchasing you won’t mind if they don’t sell. Some items were so nice and they make your antiques store look so rich you don’t really want to sell them so I would price them at top dollar so if someone purchased it I wasn’t bothered as much.

When stripping furniture make sure you by commercial stripper not the kind Home Depot sells or you will be working on it for a month instead of a couple of days.

One time I had an antique love chair that was a hideous green color. I could not sell this for the life of me. I had it priced at $200.00 just to move it but couldn’t. I decided to dye the fabric black it was a satin finish fabric and came out beautiful. I raised the price to $500.00 and sold it out of my house. Little things can make a huge difference. If I made big changes or a big repair that I did not want associated with my antique store because of the quality of an item I would sell it out of my house.

Try to never deliver the antiques you sell. You have already moved them a couple of times and once they purchase them it is the customer’s responsibility to make arrangements to pick them up.

Downside of Antiques:

You will find it takes a lot of time keeping up with demand of replacing your antiques. Many people will take off 3 months just to travel and purchase antiques to sell the rest of the year. I recommend even though I did very well with my antique store if I were you I would consider renting that space in an antique mall maybe even a couple of different ones and selling on EBay or yahoo auction etc… while running your business out of your home. This way you do not have to be at the store 6 days a week which will help free up your time and you can close down for vacation whenever you like freeing up your time making it your own.

This will help relieve the stress of owning your own business greatly. Cutting your overhead by eliminating your rent, electric, insurance etc… Here are some links that can help you in your new adventure of becoming an antique dealer.

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