The Blogger Had To Relent To The Demands Of The Antique Business and The Exciting New Demands Of The Market Place

IT’S ALL BEEN PART OF THE STORY, A WHACKY CHAPTER, A SMALL TOWN WHIRLWIND OF CHANGE, TRANSITION AND ALTERATION  - TO LOVERS OF STATUS QUO

A Re-introduction to The Birch Hollow Antique Press

By Ted Currie

     I wrote in one of my early blogs on this newly launched site, being The Birch Hollow Antique Press, that I was eagerly but cautiously re-visiting my love-hate relationship with the 1990’s; a decade that we Curries nearly lost it all, and our collective goodwill, when the real estate market slid into the abyss, shortly after we purchased our nearly new home here in Gravenhurst. I won’t bore you with the intimate details of being “up the creek with a broken paddle,” but suffice to say, the nervous years up to about 1996, kept us of modest proportion from the business we operated, to the car we chose to drive; being the smallest one allowed on the road just above scooter status. I was starting to feel the economic environment around us and the pressures of Covid, were driving the market, especially real estate, in a way that paralleled in may ways, the preamble of the real estate collapse of 1990, when big asking prices and speculation seemed to us as being a tad excessive for our region at least. I still feel this way as houses here are selling well beyond what they should be valued at, in a sensible proportion market place, and the fact that it is being driven by investors, speculators, city transplants, inland cottage buyers or land sharks, has made it awfully difficult for low income folks to find accommodations that are even somewhat affordable. Unless a residence becomes a boarding house like the old days, and rooms are being rented out versus apartment units. Changes in our residential community are coming forcibly and there are many consequences yet to come that are going to face local councillors, who in my opinion, have kept a low profile through much of the Covid period. There are some big issues to work on, and one of them, to us, is the progressive decline of traditional retail along the main street, leaving us to feel a tad lonely facing the future in a diminished traditional downtown. So yes, there are many parallels to the recession of the 1990’s, and there appear to be more stresses coming, especially with the latest problems of staff shortages, angry customers berating a beleaguered work force, and different market demands that some of us simply aren’t prepared for at this rather strange time in our history; emerging from the difficulties of a lingering pandemic and the adjustments to vaccination passports.

     The strange reality of all this excess baggage, is that what our family learned in the 1990’s about often cruel economic realities, and how to pull a business through a really jagged and tough downturn, has come full circle here now in the autumn season of 2021. We have been able to successfully adopt strategies from another decade, experienced up front and personal with full exposure to all the financial influences of the day, circa 1990 to 1995 especially, and re-invent ourselves in business by simply lowering our asking prices in the shop, and buying our replacement merchandise for less. And never, ever giving up on being adaptable to situations as they develop, which for us, has meant an increasing number of buying opportunities that we hadn’t experienced in such volume in such a short period of time. It’s one of the reasons I had no choice but to suspend this blog for a period of time, in addition to an unanticipated computer and internet installation overhaul, badly needed here at Birch Hollow, so that we could, as a family, blitz to build-back the inventory we sold off during one of the most successful summers we’ve ever had since we began sixteen years ago in the former Muskoka Theatre building on Muskoka Road. After being closed for six and a half months due to Covid, we fully anticipated a slow start up, and modest sales through to the end of September. But almost from the start, on that first day of opening in June, we began setting business records each week, and honestly, we couldn’t replenish our inventory fast enough, and that most definitely cost us sales. We were overwhelmed by a ravenous clientele, and we were unable to free ourselves from the shop seven days a week, to acquire additional inventory. We had to count on some of our close friends and collectors to sell us, or consign some of their guitars, vintage vinyl and antiques to keep our shop appearing somewhat full. But the real story here is, that despite some troubling stories from regional retailers, regarding rude and aggressive customers, we seem to have missed most of the bad actors; possibly because we have never relaxed our locked-door, knock-for-entry policy for well over a year, and it has, believe it or not, caused many anti-maskers, and anti vaccine folks to curse us from outside, and extend us the middle fingers at a safe-for-us distance, and there have usually been eager customers behind these “haters” to help us fill out our sixteen person limit…..which is a limit we feel offers safe spacing throughout our large shop.

     The four business partners of our family can attest to the rigors of restricted operation, and at the same time, relate honestly that the customers we did interact with, quite pleasantly over the summer months, were willing to support our small business in a most profitable way; and we think this is important to relay to others in the retail and hospitality industry, who had a less kindly experience with some of the same clientele. The only difference, we suppose, is that we refused entry to anyone who made negative or otherwise insulting comments before entry, and while it may have earned us some negative reviews online, somewhere, it gave us and our kinder customers, the peace of mind, that there would be no nasty interactions within the store to set off a Cover-stressed drama. We learned a lot from the 1990’s, especially about the potential of having disgruntled customers, who feel particularly hard-hit and abused by the prevailing economic realities, regardless of what they might be, and I do believe we utilized a lot of past experiences with difficult situations, to handle some of the weird and whacky situations we have been exposed to during this entire pandemic period. But there is no way, besides being exhausted by the demands of the market place in this stressful time, that we can complain about any serious business shortfall; or whine about any discernible business decline, which even includes the periods of curbside and online sales when we were shut down earlier this year.

     As a result of all this good news, and the fact we have finally upgraded our computer and internet system here at Birch Hollow, we are enthusiastically looking forward to the autumn season and of course Christmas, which was so badly compromised last year due to high Covid numbers. We are still looking for interesting inventory should you have anything of vintage to sell, especially Christmas related items and antique decorations, vintage toys etc., and of course musical instruments and vintage vinyl to please the young lads. We are still keeping Sundays to work at the store, and re-stock shelves, and Monday mornings we will be closed until 1 p.m., in order to attend some appointments to buy antiques and collectables offered to us within the region of South Muskoka. We want to thank all our friends, supporters, long time friends, and new customers we’ve met this past summer season, for making this Covid re-opening period so amazingly successful despite all the difficulties we’ve all experienced at this most dangerous time of our modern history. And to those kind souls who handed us envelopes with money, to help us through the months we were closed, God bless all of you, and we very much wish to return this generosity, that gave us so much hope and faith that we could survive economically a few more months. We did, and we have you all to thank.

     As time permits this busy fall season, as we gear up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I hope to be more active on this blog site, especially as it nears Halloween, one of my favorite times of the year for spinning some home grown ghost stories. I’ve got some more to add to my previous stories about the legendary “Hodags” of the Muskoka pioneer woodlands, from last year’s post on our Facebook page. This year I will be offering a glimpse of a Muskoka Hodag as drawn by my artist friend Sarah. This will be published several days leading up to Halloween. So please stay tuned for more from the Birch Hollow Antique Press. I just can’t be truly sorry about having to report that my tardiness writing blogs, has been because of an unexpected business boom. Didn’t see it coming but grateful it did!