Antique dealers gather dust as internet trade bites sales

John Callaway says dealers are disappearing like flies. Picture / Amos Chapple

The modern world is fast catching up with the quaint antique shop.

Antiques and collectables shops are rapidly disappearing across New Zealand, and the popular internet auction site Trade Me - with its own antiques and collectables category - is getting some of the blame.

Rising shop rents, fewer quality goods and a lack of new-generation antique dealers are also believed to be behind the decline in the industry.

But long-time antique dealers still believe there will always be a place for the shop where people can come in, touch the merchandise and meet face to face with a dealer.

"People still enjoy getting out and having that meet and greet with people. Half the fun is poking and prodding," says part-owner of Antiques in Thames, John Callaway.

Mr Callaway, who has run his family's shop for 25 years, said it was impossible to ignore the heavy attrition among antique and collectable dealers around him, especially in the past two years.

"You always used to see new dealers come along, but you don't see that any more. There is a lot of trade dying in our game. They are disappearing like flies."

New Zealand's Antique Dealers Association president Murdoch McLennan put the high rate of shop closures down to "natural attrition" rather than purely competition from internet trading.

Antique dealers were getting older and retiring, shop rents were increasingly too high, and some traditional dealing areas had lost appeal.

"There are a lot of other reasons as well as Trade Me. I think for the lesser end of the market, Trade Me certainly has an impact on the part-time dealers," Mr McLennan said.

"Anybody can enter Trade Me and go online and start buying and selling so-called antiques. Basically the things in Trade Me are all branded. Like they are branded porcelain or branded collectables, they are cigarette cards, they are sort of lightweight things as far as value.

"Whereas a $10,000 piece of furniture - you are hardly going to buy it on the internet, are you? You are going to come and see, and you want to know who owned it and who is going to put their moniker behind it."

Greg Waite will shut the doors on his Paeroa business, Antiques on Main, in June after close to 36 years in the industry. He plans to move offshore and trade over the internet.

"A lot of people out there are struggling and they are closing for various reasons," he said. "If you are sitting in your shop waiting for Ma and Pa Kettle to come in and buy your Dalton, heaven help you.

"Trade Me has its place. It doesn't scare me at all. If you can't sell on it, you can always buy on it. But the lowest common denominator does apply. If the technology is there, you would be stupid not to use it."

Mr Waite said many of those affected most by Trade Me were running shops and who "have nerve calling themselves antique dealers. Because they aren't. They are bric-a-brac dealers".

Mr Callaway had no doubt that Trade Me had impacted on his business and that of other dealers, but he could not say how much.

"Just as the car did to the horse-and-cart. Trade Me is not an enemy you can fight. You embrace it how you would like to embrace it."

Mr Callaway had used Trade Me to sell some stock, and though he did lose money, it brought a dealer into his store who ended up spending $3000.

He now runs his own website that acts like a brochure for his shop.

Mr McLennan held no grudge against Trade Me. He felt it had acquitted itself well and probably gave some people a lot of pleasure. But he warned of pitfalls.

"I find Trade Me a bit like a garage sale. You never know who is at the other end. I often warn people with seriously good antiques never to have something like a garage sale because you are basically opening yourself up to all sorts of things."

Trade Me business manager Mike O'Donnell said many antique dealers who started selling the odd item through the site found it so successful that they sold their shops and now did all their selling through Trade Me.

He said the site tended to give much greater exposure than a shop with a limited local market. But there had never been any intention of driving dealers out of business.