Jan and John Maggs Antiques

Spring Post-England Gala

Many of you know that each Spring and Fall Jan and I travel to England on a brief buying trip. Although our business itinerary focuses on London, the Cotswolds, and the Midlands, our travels have taken us to every corner of the United Kingdom and have greatly enriched our lives. Since our first trip, nearly twenty years ago, we've established relationships with scores of English antiques dealers, not to mention a few pub keepers, with whom we've maintained contact during this time. These comfortable and mutually respectful relationships have enabled us to buy well during difficult times.

Twice each year the arrival of our new English antiques is marked by a gala opening in our shop. We have long considered these openings the high points of our business year. Our most recent event was, even in the midst of global economic woes, exceptionally good, illustrating dramatically the significance of these openings to our business.

At 9:55 on Saturday morning, April 25th, a small crowd had gathered in our driveway; we counted nine vehicles, with license plates from four states. At 10:00 we opened our doors, and within a few minutes the crowd had grown to around three dozen, as more cars arrived and a few neighbors dropped in on foot.

Before long, pieces of furniture had begun to sprout tiny red dots to indicate that they had been claimed by shoppers, and piles of smalls started to appear and grow in our office. We began writing our first receipt around 10:30, and spent the remainder of the day writing, e-mailing photographs to interested parties from other parts of the country, and apologizing to customers who had made their selections and were ready to leave and had to wait for us to have time to write receipts for them. At 4:30 Jan and I realized that we had never eaten lunch. By the end of the first day, over 75 pieces had been purchased; by Sunday evening, nearly one hundred, including several large pieces of furniture and many paintings, pieces of jewelry, and smalls.

Our sales total for the weekend was quite astonishing. To measure the impact of the event, we added together the total receipts for all of our shows since last November. Our total for the weekend was more than double the sum of our total gross from the past six months of shows! We're enormously grateful to our customers who have supported our efforts so faithfully.

Reflecting on the excitement of the weekend, we feel that our business is in transition. After being open only by appointment through the winter, we were able to reserve fresh material for our opening. Those who came were thereby rewarded by the opportunity to select from hundreds of fresh pieces. As an unadvertised bonus, we had also reduced prices on several items that had been in our care for awhile. Some of these found new homes as well.

We plan to continue our trips to England twice each year and will maintain our semi-annual shop galas. At the same time, we plan to enhance our website to optimize our web sales and reduce our dependence on shows. We'll continue to exhibit at some, but we're feeling more strongly than ever that any show appearance may end up being more about advertising than immediate cash flow and that the process of selecting shows must consider regional and demographic factors, as well as expense.

We are very optimistic about this future.

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