Divided We Fall? The Shared Plight of Antique Dealers
When asked to consider their relationship to other dealers in the industry, most antique furniture merchants will respond with one word: competition. Now of course this is a perfectly reasonable answer, and perfectly correct, but competitive rivalry doesn't exactly capture the nature of the business.
Yes, there is a bottom line—everyone wants to sell the best product at the best prices. In other industries, the resulting competition has seen the concentration of capital in a few hands, most notably in multinational corporations (i.e. our toothpaste comes from four companies, our cars from a dozen or so). In our industry, we have managed to reproduce the same model of horizontal integration, if only on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, just mentioning the phrase, "antique furniture," calls to mind the myriad of mom-and-pop jobs, small dealers and down-to-earth trade markets like Atlanta's own antique show.
Why is the antique business so decentralized? Because our industry is one that resists colonization by larger market forces. As Rockefeller once said (and I'm paraphrasing here), the age of the individual is over, having been replaced by globalized corporate identities—and yet, here we are. Perhaps this is because it is in the nature of antiques to resist change—after all, evading or enduring the countless number of catastrophic events that can beset a piece of furniture, only to emerge hundreds of years later as a beautifully patinated work of art is quite a feat. And of course there is the difficulty in reaping profits from said furniture.
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