The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Antiques staff raise glass to 25 great years
As Jubilee celebrations begin across Tayside and Fife, a Perthshire antiques centre is marking its own landmark anniversary.
The Scottish Antique and Arts Centre owners, staff and dealers are raising a glass to 25 years in business.
Back in 1997, Bob and Elaine Templeman opened the Abernyte antiques centre in the former Stout Brothers garage.
Taking inspiration from visits to America, the couple decided to bring the concept over to Scotland.
As many antique shops did not have regular opening hours, the centre would bring several dealers together and offer predictable opening times.
When it opened 25 years ago, there were 14 dealers. There are now more than 100 dealers at The Scottish Antique and Arts Centre.
As well as antiques, it houses modern furniture, gifts, clothes and a restaurant.
When opening the business, Elaine thought the former garage would be far too big.
She said: “It’s been really strange how it’s just grown, we thought we need to put an extension on, so we did.
“Then we thought it would be nice to make the restaurant bigger, so we did.
“We’ve done things gradually as the business has grown and just gone along with it.”
With sustainability becoming more important,
the centre’s recycled furniture has become increasingly popular.
Elaine predicts that, if being green stays trendy, the business will have no problem surviving for another 25 years.
Even if people are not looking for antiques, the co-founder hopes people will stop by the centre.
“I think people don’t
realise what a very interesting establishment they’ve got in the area,” she said.
“Maybe the name puts people off coming to it because they think an antiques centre is stuffy.
“But we have all these other aspects to the business, so it really ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of folk.”
Since starting the
business with three staff, The Scottish Antiques and Arts Centre has grown to employ the equivalent of 30 full-time staff.
Several of the employees have been with the business since the early days.
Elaine said: “You absolutely need to have people that you can rely upon and without them you’re really restricted.”