I've been at a booth in a local antique mall for about five years. I started with a small space 5x8 for $50 and never made a big profit, but I also made at least double my booth expense. The mall I was at had 3 buildings and probably 300 plus booths. My first booth was on the outside aisle of the third building. This building was once used as a boat manufacturing business.
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| Our First Booth 2012 |
Then after a couple of years I got "smart" and decided to move to building 2. The space in building 2 was in the second row and it cost $80 for an 8x10. I thought a bigger space would be a good thing. I think you can tell by my tone that this move was not a success. Again I always made more than my booth fee but that's not really good business.
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| Booth 2 - Bigger |
Upon observation I realized that things were changing at this antique mall but I wasn't sure why. First the lighting in my area was not as bright as the other building. My hubby actually changed the lightbulbs in the fluorescent lights near our space. The building was always clean and the staff friendly but the sales were off.
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| Booth 2 - 6 Month Later |
Last summer I opened a booth in our local town in a new smaller antique and collectables store. It is in a downtown setting with bright lights. Wooden walls in each booth, hardwood floors and vintage tin overhead. There is a nice quality and variety of goods in this mall. There is blacksmith, a clock dealer, vintage and antique dealers, potters, soaps, candies, sauces, dried beef, hand sewn goods, paintings and other art and hand crafted items. The owners are very friendly and incredibly business minded. Sales in this new mall have been great.
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| New Booth 3 in Local Town on 1st Week |
But one of the biggest differences is that this mall uses social media. In fact, I take the photos and make the posts for them for a slight fee. The owners often boost posts for special events on Facebook. If there is a special activity or festival in town they open the store later hours to match the timing of the event. Even though this store is closed on Sundays and Mondays, they have lots of traffic in and out of the store. Downtowns are not really dead. They can be sources of wonderful restaurants, specialty stores and antique stores.
So we finally made the decision to move out of the first mall. It wasn't an easy decision personally, but as my husband told the owner when she very kindly asked why we were leaving.; it isn't the people as everyone was very nice. It was the bottom line. We just were not making money with the same items as the new booth.
Was the fault mine? Perhaps. I would often take things to the new space instead of the old one. I had more enthusiasm for the new booth. I started to care less for the old one. Were my things lost in a huge space and lots of booths? Maybe. Was the mall advertising as they did in the beginning? I have no idea as there were no meetings of vendors and no newsletter. Was the quality of items in the mall declining? Maybe. Was a lack of advertising? Definitely, there was no use of social media. The payment methods were very reliable and honest. These were great people. They even dust every space once a week. You won't get that many places. I will miss the folks at my old space, but as hubby says it is all about the bottom line.
So our next decision was what's next. Read in a future blog how to look for a new antique and collectables space.
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| Booth June 21, 2917 |
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