Welcome to the Business of Antiques, where I help you make your passion for antiques profitable.

I'm Tom McLark Haines, CEO of the Antique Steven Company, and I'm on a mission to make antiques modern, sexy, fun and profitable.

I hate to break it to you, if you're not making money in your antiques business, then it's just a hobby.

In this podcast, I interview some of the leading antique dealers from around the globe, getting their advice and sharing my own on how to sell antiques to the modern day antique buyer.

We discuss ways to recession proof your antiques business by developing strategic marketing plans, elevating your brand to attract the right target market, and planning for profits.

You make your money when you buy, not when you sell.

So we'll discuss some sourcing tips straight out of my Antique Stiva Little black book.

I'm teaching you the business of antiques.

So what if one week could entirely change your business?

That's what we're going to be talking about today on the Business of Antiques podcast.

I'm your host, Tom McLark Haine, and at this very moment I'm in the south of France.

I'm on a business trip here teaching a restoration course and you're going to hear a lot of chaos around me.

Everything from doors opening to cats meowing to motorcycles whizzing by.

I am near Marseille and we are leading.

Oh, you're going to hear French people talking in the background.

I am leading a restoration course and I have a podcast episode doing and I always have a backlog of episodes, but I've got an incredible opportunity that I wanted you guys to know about.

So I am recording a special episode.

This episode is being recorded under adverse conditions, so I apologize in advance if the sound quality is not the best.

But I'm going to do my best with this episode.

And the thing is, the reason I am recording while I'm on the road leading this restoration course is I want to talk to you about.

I want to give you an opportunity to do something that can not only change your business, but your life.

Now at the Antique Steve and Company, we do antique buying tours, we do business coaching, we do an antique dealer training program, and we teach these incredible restoration courses six times a year in the south of France.

And on the restoration courses, we teach you how to gild frame, picture frames or mirror frames.

We teach you how to restore a chair, maybe a broken arm on a chair, a broken leg, to fix patination when there's scratches in the paint, or maybe to reshallax something, or just simply to Clean wood.

There's like simple cleaning techniques to clean old furniture that makes them just better looking.

And our restoration courses are amazing.

And I really encourage you to get on one because what we teach you is everything that basically all the basics that you need to know.

If you are receiving a container, what are the things you need to know in case something goes wrong so that you have at least the baseline knowledge.

Now, what I'm going to be talking to you about is something in even more than our restoration courses.

And I have to tell you, our restoration courses are life changing.

But there is an event coming up and we are taking your RSVPs.

There's an event coming up June 22nd to the 27th, and it is, it's in the English countryside.

So it is our antique dealer training program.

And this is a hands on, hands on immersive workshop in the English countryside where you're not only going to learn how to grow your antiques business, but we're going to help you fall back in love with your business.

So there are a lot of antique dealers who we have two different types of clients.

One client is someone who's a brand new dealer and super excited about running their business and a little bit terrified because they know, they don't know everything they need to know to run a business.

And we're going to fast track them.

We're just going to get them started quickly so that you can dive right in to the program, dive right into learning.

Now, the other group of dealers that we tend to work with are people who've been in business for a period of time and they've never quite made the profit they wanted to.

And they're at a point in their business where they're like, okay, it's time to make it or break it.

It's time to really do this.

Or maybe it's time to give up on the dream.

And so most of our clients fall into one of those two categories.

Either they're needing to be fast tracked or they're just simply trying to figure out how to make their business profitable.

And what I know is for both of those clients, it can be terrifying when you're running a business alone and you're doing everything by yourself and you don't have the answers and you don't know who to ask.

And that's where we come in.

We're here to help you answer those questions and to help you get excited.

I think if you've listened to this podcast a while, you probably know that I ooze enthusiasm at times and that's what I think.

We're going to fill you with information and excitement and encouragement and give you a community.

So at the Antique Steven Company, we're known as being a company.

We're the world's largest antique sourcing company.

And this program that we're doing in the uk, as I said, let me go back and look at the dates.

June 22nd to 27th, 2025.

This course is not just about sourcing.

Of course there will be sourcing opportunities, but it is about learning how to run your antiques business.

Well, I got business.

So what I want to do in this episode, I want to just walk you through what we're going to be diving into.

So first up, we're going to be looking at social media for antique dealers.

We're going to be helping you lear how to create compelling content that converts, converts lookers into buyers, converts people into pulling out their wallets.

So you're going to learn how to build your own community of followers and something anyone who knows me or follows me on my personal Instagram Republic of Tama, something people who follow me on my personal Instagram Republic of Tama always comment on is my voice.

And we're going to be talking to you about how to stay true to your voice, how to develop your voice, how to stay true to your voice and your brand personality.

And really, we're going to look at when you need to be posting, how you need to be posting, why you need to be posting.

And you know what?

There is not a one size fits all answer.

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat.

I'm waiting for Tuni to go meow.

But there are a lot of different ways to skin a cat, to use an expression.

My grandmother used to say, but there are a lot of different ways to do things and there's not a one size fits all answer for social media.

So what we need to do is look at what matters to you.

What if we look at, we look at your life and we help you figure out a social media strategy that's based upon the way you want to share your life, how you want to share, how much of yourself you want to share.

And that's the baseline for starting to talk about social media.

We're having a special guest come in and she's been a guest here on the podcast Jo Roberts.

We're having a special guest.

She's on the BBC and five years ago she didn't work in antiques.

Five years ago she wasn't on TV and now she's famous and she's a famous antique stealer.

And she is going to be telling how her life changed because of social media, how she went from a beginning antiques dealer to being on the BBC.

Now, the next thing we're going to be talking about is exhibiting at antique fairs.

And you may be saying, yeah, but that's not part of my vision.

I want to be selling online or I want to be selling in my own store.

But we're going to talk to you about why you might want to consider selling at an antiques fair.

Now, when you look at selling at an antiques fair, the reality is it's a darn good marketing.

It's the easiest way to get in front of your target audience, to meet the people that you want to meet, to meet the people that you need to meet so that you can attract the right clientele.

And so we're going to be talking about exhibiting as at an antiques fair as a means for, as a means for marketing.

And so of course it's not just about sales, it's about marketing too.

So, but of course, if you're at the fair, you're going to want to sell.

It's not just marketing, it's not just sales, it's not just sales, it's not just marketing.

So we're going to get into, if you were to sell at an antiques fair, let's talk about booth design and that same thing can apply to antique small owners.

We're going to talk about pricing your inventory at a fair versus maybe online.

And we're going to talk about your strategy and specifically your marketing strategy, how you convert people from the antiques fair to be buyers at your online store, to be following you on social media.

We really want to look at how you can get people who are at the antique fair to stop in their tracks, to literally just stop in their tracks and come to your booth and become loyal, not just followers, but fans.

And then we are super lucky because Mark Hill, we were holding this in the UK because my colleague Gail McLeod with Antique News and Ferris, I haven't mentioned her yet.

Gail McLeod is co leading the program with me.

She's a vice president here at Antiques diva.

And Gail McLeod happens to be phenomenally well connected and Gail knows almost all the Antiques Roadshow people, the antiques TV show people in the uk.

So we've got quite a few BBC celebrities.

And so we're going to have Mark Hill, who's on the Antiques Roadshow, we're going to have Mark Hill talk to us about buying an auction.

And Mark has started his Own auction house, Mark Hill Auctions.

And he's going to be talking about how to decode the auction house, how to bid with confidence and how to stop leaving money on the table or treasures on the table.

Money or treasures on the table.

And so we're trying to make this educational retreat as comprehensive as possible.

So we're bringing you two into a real photography studio.

So we're bringing you into Lawford's.

Lawfords is one of the largest antique collectives in the uk.

They are one of the largest antique sellers online.

And we're taking you into to their actual photography studio to look at how they do it.

You're going to be in a hands on demonstration with real life people who are not photographers but antique dealers to look at how they set up their studio and why.

And when you're selling inventory, it's not just about the inventory, it's about the entire story that you sell, the entire story that you tell around the inventory.

And that starts with good photography.

And so we're going to look at how you should shoot your pieces in a studio and as well as how you should shoot lifestyle pieces, maybe looking into the difference between staging and merchandising and doing product photography and how you can shoot photography in a studio, shoot inventory in a studio in a way that evokes emotion and not only evokes motion, but moves product.

So we're going to talk to you about how to organize your inventory, how to tag your inventory, how to manage your inventory digitally.

So we start with the photography and from the photography we go into, sorry, I've got someone coming in and out of the workspace where I am if you hear the door opening and closing behind me.

So we're going to be talking about not just photography, but once you've got it photographed, what's next?

Of course, maybe if you have a store, you want to sell it in person, if you want to be selling it online, how are you moving it online and whether, regardless of how you're selling it, whether at an antiques fair, whether in an antiques mall, an antiques collective, whether in your own store, or whether it is simply online or on your own website or a third party, you need to have a system for organizing inventory, for tagging the inventory, for managing your inventory digitally and so that your inventory is actually working for you.

So we're going to talk to you about what sort of information you need to collect and analyze and track.

Meanwhile, how do you prep for selling?

So we talked a little bit about an antique booth.

Excuse me, We Talked a little bit about an antique fair, but we're also going to be talking about staging your, your own store.

And so we're going to be looking at how do you design your antique store like a professional designer?

And there's going to be a big hands on workshop so that you understand the difference between merchandising and staging and why both are going to matter to you, not just in photography, but in the course of selling antiques.

And so, you know, I touched upon this inventory and warehouse management.

The thing is, is that if you're running an antiques business, it's easy to just sell inventory and not even like to just buy what you love.

It's easy.

That okay, for me, I think about, I have my own antiques warehouse in Tuscany and I tend to buy what I love.

I tend to buy what I know I can get at a great price and resell at at least for me in my warehouse, I try to double it and I buy at a good price, I pass on a good price and my clients hopefully can then triple or quadruple or hopefully do even more than that.

Hopefully do 10 times that.

But it's about more than just buying what you love.

It's about choreographing your collection so that your clients know what to expect.

And so we're going to teach you how to curate a mix to how to curate a mix of inventory that's going to attract a variety of buyers.

Now here's the deal.

Inventory, niche, marketing matters when it comes to antiques.

The more niche you can be, the more specific you can be, the more likely you are going to sell to a specific buyer.

But I want to really dive into how do you attract a modern buyer?

How do you attract that buyer that maybe isn't a collector, but is someone who is buying a mix of artisan goods and antiques, of current interior design products?

How do you turn just, just a casual shopper into an antiques buyer?

And so part of that has to do with having a choreographed collection of inventory that involves, that involves the curation of artisanal items, not just antiques.

Now, whenever we're talking about the modern buyer, you inevitably think about how do I get a millennial in the store?

And so we're going to have some special guests come in and do a panel.

I'm not going to name the people because for a variety of reasons, we're not finalized fully with the schedule, but we've got a couple of really big names who've agreed to do it.

So we are going to be talking about how to Target millennials.

And the thing is, with antiques, I always say that my personal mission is to make antiques modern.

To make them sexy, to make them fun, to make them relevant, to make them accessible, to make them profitable.

And ultimately what I want to help you build is I want to help you build a current, a modern day antiques business that reflects your passion for antiques, that reflects the current buying economy and most importantly, that is profitable.

Because if you are not making money in this antiques business, it's just a hobby.

And my mission here in this Antiques Educational Week, 22nd to 27th of June, is to help you make money.

Ultimately, it's all about the money, baby.

So this retreat is basically an antiques business boot camp.

It's one part creative.

Honestly, no, I'm just gonna, we're gonna call this a creative renaissance.

We're gonna create a renaissance in the antique antiques business.

We're shaking it up, we're changing the way people are selling antiques and we're doing so in a way that is going to be true and authentic to the way you want to live your life.

And the best part about this is you're not doing it alone.

You're doing it with a community of like minded professionals who get it, professionals who want, professionals who have similar dreams to you, who wants, want to achieve the same success as you and who want to grow together with you.

Now, spaces are limited, so when they're gone, they're gone.

Which is why I'm doing this podcast today.

Because I know that it is super important that we get the right mix of clients.

Not everybody who applies for this program is going to be accepted, but I would love it if you could send me an email.

Toma T O M A@antiquesdiva.com that's tamanteeksdiva.com and I hope that this little blurb, this little special edition podcast, I hope that this blurb has gotten your heart racing and that you are, your heart is racing just thinking about the kind of transformation that you're going to see in your antiques business.

So send me an email tamanteeksteva.com to apply for our Antiques Week, our antiques dealer educational week.

We've been jokingly calling it the Der Diva Educational retreat in England.

June 22nd to the 27th.

Cannot wait to talk to you and to help you make lots and lots of money.

Thanks so much.

This has been Tama Clark Haynes.

I'm the Antiques Diva CEO of the Antiques Diva & Co.

And Intelman.

Next time just keep on buying, keep on curating and keep on, keep on making antiques modern.

Talk to you later.

Bye.

Ciao.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Business of antiques.

I'm Tom McLark Haines, the Antiques diva, and I'm helping you make your passion for antiques profitable.

Talk to you next time.

Ciao.

Ciao.