If The Antique Business Has Taught Us Anything Positive in all These Years, It's in the Reality Scrounging and Hustling is a "Beginning to Ending" Adventure

Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie

    Just about every week since we re-opened after the Covid lockdown, we have received quite a bit of customer relayed intel, about our growing competition  here in South Muskoka. We welcome these tidbits of information, because, of course, it helps us build up our defenses, and carry on with our mission to diversify inventory to meet whatever challenge does finally come down the pike. We don't, as a rule, sit on intel, but act on it swiftly, because we are, as I kind of like, a typical small and vulnerable business to excessive competition. We are not wealthy folks, but we are sensibly frugal and almost ridiculously well organized to meet the very next challenge, to as they say, come down the pike. It doesn't matter whether it's a new antique venue, or a new music instructor in the neighborhood, another recording studio, a music shop, or someone else selling vintage vinyl. As we have admitted publicly before on our Facebook page, we always anticipate the free market's fluctuations and contractions, and for the past 16 years in our present location, we've survived a lot of short-lived competition, and we, possibly naively, don't fear the next round of business expansion. It doesn't mean we don't lay awake at night thinking of ways of reinforcing the guardrails we have in place, to protect what is really, in short, a way of life for our family. We love our business, and we hope it does show. And it's the reason we will never walk away from our business, as failure is not an option, but possibly one day, quite voluntarily, departing the present location to re-establish in some other location. It's up to the four pillars of the family business, because there are that many owners involved.

     We have been receiving quite a few enquiries from our long time customers, and some newcomers this summer, who question how we are going to maintain our market share, and survive with powerful new competition from a national interest. Well, we might actually offer a nervous smile, when asked, because we won't mislead you about the difficult road ahead for folks "a million dollars short of being millionaires," but we have some street smarts you might say, in the antique business particularly, that we honed hustling-up decent inventory in a most cost efficient way, which for me goes all the way back to the mid 1970's. Scrounging for stuff? That began in childhood, and I've taught my family how to thrive as a scroungers, and feel quite good about the efficiency and conservation of recovery, repurposing, restoration, and sweat equity. We have never expected any day of any week would be easy in our near pirate-status enterprise, in a most honest way of course, to out-muster our competitors out on the hustings. It's our saving grace, truth be known, that we know how and where to find saleable or restorable inventory, whether books, pine cupboards, quilts, blankets, old glass, nostalgia in all its magnificent qualities and quantities, and music equipment on the rebound. Andrew is brilliant when it comes to restoration of guitars, and can take a "wall hanger" because of neck and body problems, and return it to playable and marketable condition. Rob can pull significant records out of a literal pharmacy of mold and save the cover and the vinyl with careful and patient handling, to also be quite saleable. We are always on the look out for "junkers" of a lot of things, still of interest to the marketplace, when we believe that will a little tender care, and even a major overhaul, that we can save the landfill sites the burden of unwarranted dumps of still useful materials.

     When we were helping the boys start their vintage music business, shortly after they graduated high school, we could not buy any new accessories, guitars, amps, music stands, or strings, from wholesales of such items, because we were an unproven entity. We were able to get strings at a higher price from another dealer, to at least be able to offer our local customers with replacements, and help Andrew when he needed strings for a restoration project he was working on at the time. We just had to apologize to customers who complained about our higher prices for such accessories, but we were just glad to have them regardless, to qualify somewhat as a legitimate music shop. It wasn't until much later in our business history that we were allowed to buy wholesale, but there was a limit as to what we could order and sell because of the rights of competitors to protect their market-share. We never pushed this, because, well, that wouldn't have worked, and we might have lost what privileges we did have at that point.

     Thus, we had to take what opportunities were offered to us, and generally, it has kept us quite contently stocked for these past eight or so years out of sixteen. Our regularly deployed "Hail Mary" move, is to always remain receptive to those folks, in our community or beyond, who wish to offer us their used or damaged stringed instruments, which we certainly do appreciate and benefit from. We have enquiries from musicians and instrument owners all over this province and well beyond, and as is tradition with our storied business, of buying and selling antiques, we are always receptive to sellers out there, with many musical and antique items that are, to us, unique and rare finds with provenance. And this brings up another point we want to stress here, about the differences working and co-operating with active historians and antique dealers who firmly believe in, and value not simply the pedigree of a particular piece, but the providence and heirloom qualities of what we consider an art piece, with the same respect as an art gallery sells a major painting or sculpture. We love maintaining and passing on the provenance of a relic piece, and we have had hundreds of instruments and antiques, that have come to us with particularly unique and interesting stories attached; from where a guitar was played, on stage, at bluegrass or country festivals, by known musicians in Canada or beyond, and not only how old they are, respectively, but what these pieces mean to the texture and culture of music past and present. We consider ourselves stewards of these often historic pieces, and pass on related stories of past ownership, to new players, and owners, who in our opinion, consider these add-ons to the quality of an instrument, as a part of the overall evaluation, although it won't necessarily "up" the price in our shop. We make it clear to anyone who is selling such an heirloom piece, that has some important or even remarkable provenance, (maybe it was used on stage at the original Woodstock concert) that our purchase depends on whether or not we can represent this cultural heritage, or "historical witness" relevance, when we turn around and sell the subject item for its very next adventure.

     Today, we had to make customers wait numerous times over the course of the business day, because of Covid limits, based of course on the square feet in our building. But it was an amazing day for us, and we are so grateful for the support. By next week the Currie family will all be double-vaccinated, and we are so happy to be "the sheep" the anti-vaccine folks call us. We have been pretty well looked after by the regional health department, the province and the federal government, and a lot of thanks go out to our customers who have patiently followed the Covid restrictions in our shop, with only a small percentage of dissenters; some that have accepted our position on the limitations, as they have a right, but agreed to conduct their transaction for goods, at curbside with nary a fuss or complaint.

      In a few days, Friday I believe, we will be able to allow a few more customers in to the building, from the present sixteen to twenty, for this, the third stage of opening. Thanks to you all. We really do appreciate the return of our customers and others, who have also patiently soldiered through what we believe was the worst of the pandemic.

     And if you have some items you wish to donate (we restore and then donate playable guitars to local public schools in our area) sell, or sell via consignment, please send us a note and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.