October 5th, 2009
The whole concept of collecting, utilizing, selling and restoring antiques is probably one the oldest green concepts around. The idea of restoring an old piece of furniture or architectural piece is about as green an approach that can be taken. How wonderful to have things last for hundreds of years and still be functional and pleasing to the eye.
To have a piece of furniture that was crafted one hundred years or more earlier is quite a treasure. The tree that was cut down to construct it was likely a very old tree a hundred years ago. Antique were normally made by the craftsman in the the old days with the intent of it lasting forever, or at least as long as possble without abuse. The modern furniture today is mostly made with an intended shelf life so that you will have to throw it away and replace it within 5 years of serious use. Not so with the antique furniture.
Just think of all the trees cut down and the chemicals used to fashion most modern furniture like Ikea brands etc. Much waste and not green at all.More like greed. They want it to break so you will keep coming back for more.
So the next time you think about replacing a piece of furniture in your house, think green, think antiques, think of the investment value along with the satisfaction of knowing you are preserving something for many years to come.
If green is the future, look to the past in antique collecting to have a green home. It may not solve all the problems, but it is a great plce to start that can be done with great pleasure and satisfaction.
Posted in What special Antique have you been searching for? | 30 Comments »
September 30th, 2009
Take a moment to comment and let us know what antique you have been searching for for years. We are a happy to search for the special piece that you may have a hard time finding.If you can find a link online to something similar in style and provide that link, I’ll be happy to take a look at it and put the search out with my providers to find it for you.
As long as we know the style and desired budget you would like, we can find just about anything. We have many local Philadelphia pickers that clean out the old estates and offer them to us.
Tell us what you would like to see on our website or anything else you feel we should know that makes http://chestercountyantiques.net more user friendly and accommodating to our visitors.
Posted in What special Antique have you been searching for? | 5 Comments »
September 24th, 2009
Certainly eBay has played a great role in the catalyst of finding or selling hard to find items on the internet. eBay became and still is a very powerful market place online. It was simply the place to go for something that you could not find in a store on the shelf. In a short amount of time eBay became a flurry of active business for plain simple folks to sell or find items from all over the globe and basically decide just how much they want to buy or sell it for. It became a source for things like that chair that you loved when you went to your grandmothers house as a child, or that baseball card that you traded away in a game of card flipping in the sixties that you always regretted letting it go. Now you could find it. Not only could you find it, you could buy it at a fair established value in the bidding process. Being able to dictate what you want to spend and possibly getting it for less than you were even willing to spend. Wow, what an incredible market place.
Although that can still be the case on eBay, it has changed tremendously, now you must toil and filter through all of the corporate giant sellers, the scam artists, etc, etc to really find that highly desired item offered by someone who is truthful and sincere in their business principles. Not to say they aren’t there, because they are. You just have to do a bit more filtering in your search and check them out real well to be sure they are a trustful seller. eBay has done many things to give you those tools as a buyer. The changes that eBay has made in the last several years is another subject I will cover in the future. In short, eBay was and still is a great market place for sellers to gain global access with their products to the masses. It is NOT the only way.
Many sellers became dependent on eBay as their sole marketing & sales channel online. That is a very dangerous situation for an online business to find themselves in. I will be writing more on my opinion, experience, and advice for anyone who is a small business that has realized the need for their business to be available online and don’t know how to go about doing just that. For those of you who sell on eBay and see the need to expand into other venues online , stop back to read my future posts on this subject. eBay is a great tool for selling online. That is exactly what it is, a tool that can be utilized with great success. You surely want to have it in your toolbox, you definitely don’t want it to be the only tool you have.
Posted in Antique Marketing online | 8 Comments »
September 23rd, 2009
This is a subject that is very important to an age old business. Lets face it, most of the people that are involved in the antique furniture business, are not really the most tech savvy folks. They are intrigued by and educated in, things of old. Technology has changed their world.
The marketing has changed rapidly. It used to be OK to advertise in your expensive local yellow pages, or in the Local antique publications to draw your customers to see and buy your treasures. Think about it, when is the last time you opened up a thick heavy phone book , flipped to the back of the books to skim through page after page of yellow paper, trying to read tiny print, to find something you wanted to buy?
For me it has been years. Each year,when the phone companies leave that newly published book on the ground next to my mailbox in their rain proof bag, I pick it up, walk up the driveway and drop it in the trash can.
The days of sitting in the storefront or old antique barn waiting for people to wander in off the streets to see antique furniture is becoming an antique business concept in itself.
The internet has changed all of that. I have lots more to say about this and will be doing so in future posts. Before expanding in detail, I’d like to hear what other have to say about this subject.
Posted in Antique Marketing online, Antiques & the Internet | 29 Comments »
