For those who like the thrill of the hunt, few pastimes are more pleasurable than wandering through an antiques store. In the crowded aisles might lurk the next great find, be it a rare old toy or an original Eames chair.
The west coast of Florida and especially the St. Petersburg area have long been known as an antiques mecca, drawing not just browsers and collectors but also antiques dealers from as far away as New York.
“It’s been a buyer’s heaven for years,’’ said Suzanne Lewis, co-owner of Vintage Modern St. Pete on Central Avenue. “Our prices are good, so they stock up, load up their trucks and sell for triple. We have people who come to see us every year or even weekly.’’
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But in what should be their peak season, Lewis’ store and Tampa Bay’s many other antique shops and malls area closed, deemed “non-essential’’ as the nation battles the coronavirus. The shutdown affects store owners, managers and the hundreds of individual dealers and vendors who rent space in the stores to display their items.
“We have been cutoff at the knees,’’ Lewis said.
She and her business partner, Dale Longenberger, bought the business, then called Janet’s Antiques, in 2018 and renamed it Vintage Modern after deciding that the word “antiques’’ had too fusty a connotation to attract younger customers. Vendors shifted their inventory away from Victorian loveseats and dainty teacups and more toward midcentury furniture and the funky collectibles popular with millennials.
This year started off strong with some record transactions, Lewis said. She hoped to stay open even after major events were cancelled in mid-March.
“We have a large store, and you could easily shop without seeing anyone,’’ she said. “Customers felt more comfortable in here than at Publix.’’
Then Gov. Ron DeSantis issued his “safer-at-home’’ order April 1 and “sales plummeted,’’ Lewis said. She closed the store, paid the 18 vendors for what they had sold in March and forgave their April rent. Although the building’s owner has not asked Lewis for the rent this month, she worries about what will happen come May 1. She applied for a $5,000 grant from the city but hesitates to take out a loan for fear she might not be able to repay it.
DeSantis has appointed a task force of business and political leaders to make recommendations on reopening the state for business. The recommendations, designed to help Florida "bounce back in a very thoughtful, safe and efficient way,'' he said, will focus on major sectors of the economy such as tourism, hospitality and retail, which includes antique stores and malls.
While waiting for the governor’s decision on what and when to reopen, Lewis and Longenberger have managed to make a few sales, including one to a man who called after spotting a painting he liked in the window.
“I had to laugh at the whole process, ringing things up and passing them out through a half-opened door,’’ Lewis wrote on the store’s Facebook page. “It seemed so shady and suspicious. Then I looked across at a neighbor’s (antiques) shop and saw him doing the same thing.”
Another store owner on Central, Tawny Mahar of Refound Antiques, said she and the seven dealers who rent space from her – one of them 80 – were also enjoying a good year before the pandemic hit. Like many of those in the business, Mahar has a passion for antiques that began, she said, “when I was a kid and my grandparents dragged me around’’ to yard sales.
“Florida is a very good place to be in antiques, usually families don’t want to come down (when a relative dies) and deal with it so there are a lot of estate sales,’’ Mahar said. “Then about the second week in March, everything came to a screeching halt.’’
Mahar’s landlord didn’t collect rent for April so she didn’t charge her dealers. The future is uncertain. “I don’t have any savings so what I can do is dip into my credit card to keep the store open,’’ she said. “That’s is what’s keeping me awake.’’
Weeks ago, Mahar taped a note on the door, inviting customers to make an appointment and assuring them she hand sanitizers and gloves. Not a single person has called.
The pandemic came at a particularly bad time for vendors in Vintage Marche, the successor to the wildly popular Brocante antiques market held the first weekend of every month in St. Petersburg’s Warehouse Arts District. When Brocante’s owners announced that the December market would be their last, the vendors scrambled to stay at the same location albeit under a new name and management.h
The pandemic came at a particularly bad time for vendors in Vintage Marche, the successor to the wildly popular Brocante antiques market held the first weekend of every month in St. Petersburg’s Warehouse Arts District. When Brocante’s owners announced that the December market would be their last, the vendors scrambled to stay at the same location albeit under a new name and management.
“We put a lot of capital into rebranding and reopening,’’ said Margi Nanney, who handles marketing for Vintage Marche.
The January, February and March markets attracted hundreds of people, and many dealers had sales totaling four figures, she said. But the April market was scrubbed and the one for May almost certainly will be. Alternatives, including a virtual market, are under consideration, Nanney said.
The three dozen vendors, who consider themselves a family, regularly check up on each other during the shutdown and commiserate about how they can no longer “pick’’ – restock their inventory from what they find at estate sales, thrift stores and garage sales, all of which are on hold too.
There is one bright spot, Nanney said: “People are at home and cleaning out their houses out and there are a lot of things set on the side of the road.’’
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