PURE VINTAGE: GEELONG ANTIQUES MARKET TO BECOME HISTORY

CBD antiques business will soon be history itself

AFTER three generations and 40 years in the vintage business, a Geelong family has decided to close a CBD antique shop.

The Brougham St Markets has sold everything from an autopsy table and Gerry Gee doll to a tissuetesting CSIRO machine and doors from the Federal Woollen Mills.

“People want a bit of history,” outgoing owner Ian Ballis, 52, said.

The Ballis family has been renting the CBD site for the past 13 years.

While the decision to hang up their fedoras is a practical one — his parents, Barry and Sherryl Ballis, are approaching retirement age and the building was recently sold for use as office and retail space — it was also bittersweet.

“We’ve got three generations here. My grandfather was a Kerleys shopper, he’d buy gear there for five pounds, take it home, spruce it up and take it back the next week for 10 pounds,” Mr Ballis said.

“My dad was a car dealer all his life. He was into motor cars and gear and came into the business with me about eight years ago. I pushed the vintage fashion and art.

“My mum ran the Mill Markets at Newcomb ... now she’s here in Brougham St doing all the admin and data entry.”

Mr Ballis said the closure also reflected the changing face of vintage shopping and retail in Geelong.

“These days, it’s not about the quality as much as the look,” he said.

He said buyers ditching proper antiques for new things that looked old had contributed to the problem, which was compounded by retailers refusing to reinvent themselves.

“It’s been interesting to see Geelong from a business perspective and how trends have changed,” he said.

“We had 32 antique shops in Geelong, now we’ve got four. It’s a different world. Retail changes every week and some businesses don’t keep up with that.”

With two months to move out, the family has just launched a “retiring from business sale” to empty “300 tonnes” of stock from 7800sq m of floor space within the multistorey building, on a 2200sq m footprint.

Old advertising signs, tools, collectables, shop fittings, counters, carpet tiles and industrial vintage wares are all fair game.

It’s no mean feat, and Mr Ballis hopes the items stay local.

“We can’t take it with us. I’d like a lot of the historical pieces to stay in Geelong. There’s a lot of gear from the old woollen mills and Ropeworks that people don’t know we’ve got,” he said.

“We’ll relist all the prices to find homes for it all. We’re also hitting Gumtree pretty hard.”

Mr Ballis said the time was right to end his love affair with flipping vintage wares and pursue his street art projects and workshops with Powerhouse.

But he encouraged others to research and buy antiques, saying it was not only sustainable but let local history live on.

“It’s amazing. Someone was looking at a table and asked me to measure it, and so I was just telling them about its provenance of how we pulled it out of the factory and his eyes light up.

“Suddenly it’s no longer just a door,” he said.