THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANTIQUE DEALERS
Supply chain challenges, shifting values combine to drive demand for vintage items
When Samantha Manocchio moved to Washington from California last year, she brought her clothing and not much more. The 23-year-old rented a studio apartment and set out on a search for furnishings, including a table to anchor her small space.
“I am very focused on sustainable living,” says Manocchio, who buys mostly second-hand or sustainably sourced clothing. “My generation is conscious about how we, as individual consumers, can do our parts.”
She shopped local, buying a 100-year-old English Pembroke table from Georgetown's Pillar & Post, a few miles from her home. The mahogany table on brass castors, which she plans to keep forever, was delivered a few days later in the back of an SUV.
Manocchio is part of a wave of consumers who, in the past two years, have been buying mid-century modern burlwood buffets, 1970s velvet sofas and French farm tables.
The pandemic has created a bit of a perfect storm for the used and antique furniture business. Frustrated consumers still waiting for the headboard and bedside tables they ordered six months ago are increasingly willing to buy previously owned sofas, just as they are willing to scoop up used Hondas and Chanel bags.
Popular online sources for antique, vintage and more recent pre-owned furniture report strong sales. Anything bought second-hand and made in the past 30 years is considered preowned, items made between 30-100 years ago are vintage, and anything more than 100 years old is an antique, according to Anna Brockway, co-founder and president of Chairish.
Chairish's business in 2021 was up 42 per cent compared with 2020. In 2021, Kaiyo, an online marketplace for pre-owned furniture, had five times the revenue it had in 2019. Searches for vintage or antique couches on Etsy increased by 126 per cent in 2021 compared with 2019.
“As people increasingly shop with their values, buying vintage furniture enables sustainability-minded shoppers to reduce their carbon footprint, all while supporting small, independent businesses,” says Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy's trend expert.
Younger customers in particular are discovering that old items add character to a room.
“Antiques have been around for a long time and have a proven durability and a classic style,” says Daphna Peled, owner of Pillar & Post. She says her millennial and Gen Z customers, such as Manocchio, realize these pieces aren't just a fad.
“Buying a piece with history that is also a greener alternative is an added bonus,” Peled says.
Chairish, a curated online marketplace for upscale vintage home furnishings that started in 2013, has found that the saving-the-planet aspect of pre-owned pieces is an important driving force in the market.
“It's gone from being a style thing to also being an environmental advantage,” Brockway says.
Of Chairish's total inventory (around 850,000 items), 95 per cent come from dealers, collectors and galleries.
“Things are shipped point to point and not from one huge warehouse, which is frankly more environmentally conscious,” Brockway says.
Alpay Koralturk, chief executive of Kaiyo, founded the online marketplace in 2014. He wanted to make it easier for consumers to get rid of and acquire pre-owned pieces, and he was intent on making sustainability a core value.
Kaiyo works much like an online consignment business. It will pick up approved pieces from sellers and photograph and post them on its website. Sellers can get an instant offer from the company or wait to see what their pieces sell for and get a percentage of the amount. Buyers can pick items up at a warehouse or pay a fee to have them delivered.
As with vintage clothing, brands matter. Currently, the five best-selling Kaiyo brands are CB2, West Elm, Herman Miller, Article and Design Within Reach, Koralturk says.
“We are also seeing a grandmillennial trend,” he says. Heritage brands such as Ethan Allen and Drexel Heritage are having a moment. And floral sofas are back, like it or not.
At the Gallery at 200 Lex, a 33,000-square-foot vintage and antiques emporium at the New York Design Center, gallery director Emily Collins says business has been brisk, especially from designers desperate to furnish clients' empty homes. Collins says the 52 dealers who maintain booths there stock “pieces that are ready to rock and roll,” including leather inlaid desks and MCM Vladimir Kagan curved sofas. The dealers also post items on incollect.com, an online antiques and vintage marketplace, and buyers can then arrange through the gallery to have pieces shipped anywhere.
Designers such as Jay Jeffers in San Francisco are scrambling for available furniture.
“Two adults are working on one side of the house, and the kids are in school on the other,” he says. They need more space and more furniture — and they need it fast.
“But everybody is backed up,” he says. “One manufacturer just told us that last month's 16-week lead time for a sectional sofa is now 36 weeks.”
Sofas are big sellers at many vintage shops, including Baltimore's Wishbone Reserve, a go-to location in the hip Hampden neighbourhood where shoppers, including decorators and set designers, appreciate the mix of art deco, Victorian and MCM.
“Used upholstery — who would have thought?” says co-owner Julie Lilienfeld. “We get stuff in and it sells instantly.”
Antiquing once required having a car with a trunk, but social media has made it possible for others to join the hunt. Instagram had already expanded the market for those looking for antique and vintage pieces when the pandemic hit and many antique centres and flea markets had to close.
Wishbone Reserve recently sold a sofa and two chairs by hot postmodern Italian architect Tobia Scarpa for $10,000 on Instagram. The buyer paid to have them shipped to Los Angeles.
“We had none of this national business before the pandemic,” Lilienfeld says.
When stores shuttered in spring 2020, Mari Ann Maher, co-owner and shopkeeper of the Antique and Artisan Gallery in Stamford, Conn., quickly pivoted. She posted items twice a day on Instagram and added a virtual showroom feature to her website.
Maher says she worried about how her 22,000-square-foot gallery could survive without shoppers. But to her surprise, sales from social media soon outpaced sales from the website. New Yorkers who fled to Connecticut for more space turned to Maher to furnish their pandemic-era outposts, thus avoiding long delivery times at furniture retailers.
There are new players on Instagram, too. Holly Rockbrune and Jenna Parkes, childhood friends who grew up together in Ontario, started selling curated “drops,” or collections, of French heirlooms and antiques in 2019 on the platform. The feed for Joliette, which has more than 56,000 followers, is a grid of aspirational vignettes plucked right out of a chic Parisian apartment, featuring bentwood bistro chairs, tableaus of pottery and brass candlesticks on rustic tables. They want customers to envision the items in “snapshots” and be able to re-create something similar, even if they're not anywhere near a French or Canadian “brocante” or flea market.
Mirrors are always in demand on the site (they range from $250 to $2,500), especially gilded, “iconically French” 19th-century Louis Philippe statement ones.
“There's almost a global style now,” Parkes says. “It's like the world has opened up in terms of design inspiration.”