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.

And we are back.

So today I am in Paris.

You might notice my backdrop is our antiques diva Parisian headquarters.

You even have a cameo appearance from my colleague Jean Pierre wave in the background.

JP is COO of the Antiques Even Company.

And you may actually see Daniel Danielle, our vice president of trade operations, come meandering in the room.

So this is.

We are on the ground running and in the thick of business.

And I am super excited to be here with Sarah Percy Davis, who is one of the most important people in this entire industry.

Hello, Tom.

What an introduction.

Thank you very much for having me.

Yes, brilliant.

Okay, so let's start off with having you tell our listeners everything.

Tell them who you are, what you do and why you do it.

Let's start with that.

Okay, so my name's Sarah Percy Davis and I set up a company called Hollandridge Group.

And Hollandridge Group is an art consultancy.

And we advise and curate art for private clients and corporate clients and work quite a bit also with interior designers.

And I've been doing this for about 10 years.

And prior to that I was chief executive of Lepada for another decade.

And before that I worked in the auction houses.

I worked in Phillips and in Sotheby's.

So you have been in a variety of different places, places in the trade.

Since I know you, I think we must have first met when you were with Lapata is what I think.

That's right.

Through Gail.

That's right, yes.

Okay.

We cannot not mention Gail McLeod of Antiques News and Fairs, also vice president here at Antique Ziva, giving a shout out to Gail.

No, we must have met during the Lapata conference and it may have been at the House of Lords, which is still one of my most sincere sensational experiences of my life.

We may work.

I think that probably was when we first met.

I sort of set up that conference during Lapada.

I suppose that and organizing the fair in Berkeley Square were two of the sort of main things that I focused on during my time there.

Well, okay, let's back up.

Even before Lapata, before Sotheby's, before Phillips.

So first of all, where are you right now?

I said I'm in Paris.

Where are you located at the moment?

I'm in Henley on Thames in my home office.

Lovely.

So this is the home office of Danielle and Jean Pierre.

Normally I'm recording from my home office in Venice or somewhere on the road.

I think the most recent episode, I just opened a.

To the trade warehouse in Tuscany and the most recent episode was recorded there.

So we tend to record wherever I am now.

Did you grow up in this area?

Like, where are you from?

From originally, I grew up in Worcestershire.

My father was always very into antiques.

So he had a home that was sort of stuffed with.

With antiques and pictures.

And he also used to do some auctioneering for sort of house sales.

He was a chartered surveyor and.

And then actually I kind of got into art and antiques in a very strange way.

I was actually skiving a French lesson at the time at school and I was in the career library and I came across a.

A little leaflet about study art in Florence.

And I thought, oh, that sounds good.

So I.

I then applied to do that in my.

In my year out before going to university.

And then I went on to study history of art.

And then I did the Christie's course after that in the.

In the fine and decorative arts and sort of found my way from there to Phillips Auctioneers.

I used to run the picture department there on the Bayswater, the Bayswater branch, which doesn't exist anymore and was a real hunting for the trade at the time.

We used to have 400 lots auctions every month.

And I sort of had this meteoric rise from porter to expert without very much transference of knowledge at that point.

So I was really.

I was really learning on the job and lucky to have some very good experts around me who'd come and check my sales and some great dealers as well who, you know, would point out if I'd missed something.

I was just in my early 20s at this point.

And then I started doing the auctioneering for those sales and was there for about four years.

And then I moved to Sotheby's and kind of jointly ran the department there with someone called Veronique Gunner, who's now the head of pictures at Bonhams.

And we ran sort of, I suppose all the, the sales of Pictures under about £10,000 for 19th and 20th century Sotheby's at that time.

So I don't know.

Then there was the dot com boom after that.

And what's really interesting is I suppose we're talking about 1999 now and Sotheby's had a direction from New York to put all of the pictures online and they were really before their time.

It was amazing.

99, yes, but exactly.

And they had some joint deal with Amazon at the time, which seems extraordinary, but they did.

And suddenly it was we.

There was this move from live auctions to online auctions which weren't the sort of slick operation that they are today for all the auction houses.

And it was a bit difficult really I could see because most of these sales had trade buyers and the trade buyers were generally middle aged men without computers at that time.

So, you know, it took a bit of time to work.

And so I decided at that point that I was going to go and have an adventure.

I thought, I'm not enjoying this so much.

I really enjoyed my career so far.

But I'm going to go and go to Italy for a while and, and I'm going to live in Rome and learn Italian.

And I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent for a few years and went into film production before returning to Lakada.

Okay.

I had no idea.

Bit the Italian, a lot of poliamo in Italiano.

Italiano.

So what?

I had no idea about the Italian or the film production that you just blew me away with both of those.

That was not where I expected that conversation to go.

Yes, well, I, I ended up working for Discovery, well, for an independent production company who were making documentaries for Discovery Channel.

And I was sort of traveling to Martinique, Montserrat, India, all over the place, making these amazing films.

I even defrosted a Stone Age man, which was something, something else.

Incredible also, I mean, I think about the skills that you need as a producer or as a director.

Takes a very detail oriented mind who can also see big picture.

Like someone who's working in that type of industry.

You have to have both a right brain and a left brain in order to function.

And if I think about your success, your, your rise through this industry, you are known as someone with exquisite taste, exquisite contacts and also exquisite business sense.

And so it's funny because that's, I think people partially why you are so successful is you understand both, both the aesthetic side of things and the business side of things.

And that's the director, producer brain.

I think it definitely taught me those skills, you know, the budgeting skills and just organizing projects.

And I think that's probably why I love doing what I'm doing at the moment, because I love working on big projects where there's, you know, lots of organization required, but that are creative.

And so I feel that what I'm doing at the moment, it does bring those skills and I love it.

Yeah, I always think it's interesting when I find out what people in the trade have done as other jobs, because there's always this red thread.

Years ago, I love Florence, by the way, and I became somewhat obsessed with the Duomo in Florence and the details of how the Duomo was built in Florence.

And the man Brunaschelli who designed, finally designed the dome.

If you look back at all the things he did, he was not an architect, he was not an engineer.

He had no training in.

When he first said he was the person who came up with the idea of how they were going to solve the problem of building a dome on top of this church in Florence, everyone ignored him because he didn't have the qualifications, but his background skills were.

He had been a watchmaker.

And the skills that he had learned as a watchmaker, which created the tension in the dome to make the self supporting structure.

The skills he knew as a watchmaker are the skills that actually allowed him to build this dome in Florence.

And when I think about how past jobs, past careers, other things people in this industry have done, I always think of Bruno Shelley's dome and how all these other things you do influence and prepare you for doing the job that you're doing today.

So it makes perfect sense to me that you've been in film, knowing your trajectory in this industry.

Oh, there we go.

I never knew that about Brunelleschi either.

I never knew about the watchmaking side of his.

His career.

I think it's so fascinating.

So one of the things I wanted to come back to, you were talking about being a porter and starting out as a porter.

Were there many women doing what you did then?

Oh, I've got a great story about this because there were a few, but they were always consigned to the jewelry department or the ceramics department.

So I was one of those.

And I was working under John Sandon, who is, you know, an Antiques Roadshow name and a Worcester porcelain expert in the ceramics department, which was very interesting.

But ceramics wasn't really my passion.

I knew that I wanted to work in pictures.

I'd just taken that opening to get a foot in the door.

And so I remember having to persuade the head of the picture department that, who was a woman as well, that I, you know, I really did want to.

To get, to move to.

To Port of the Pictures.

And she'd say, oh, but, Sarah, you know, you can't, you know, you can't lift the old Masters.

And I said, I can, honestly, but as long as you're not going to slow the boys down, I'll have to have a chat with the boys and see if they're happy to, you know, accept it.

And it was a bit of a battle, but I managed to get there in the end.

So I told you that I've just recently started this to the trade warehouse in Chianti and I.

The.

I'm renting the space and the man who owns the space is an older Swedish man and he came in one day when I was working and he goes, you are so strong.

I can sit with such utter and complete wonder.

So it makes me laugh thinking of him saying, but you couldn't possibly lift the Old masters.

Exactly, exactly.

So then I think this opportunity came up from being in that position that someone moved on for the picture department in Bayswater, and I was just in a good position to.

To.

To do that, which was.

Which was wonderful.

But you highlighted two things that I think for our listeners are important, or viewers, as now we have the video element.

You ask for what you wanted, and I think it's probably one of the most important factors in kind of getting what you want in life, not just in your career, but actually saying, hey, this is what I want to do.

And so the two points, one, you were willing to take a chance to get your foot in the door because you knew if you were in the right place that you could be able to do the next step that you wanted.

But just being brave enough and bold enough to ask for the job that you actually wanted, not everyone's brave enough to do that.

I think that that is important.

But also in that story, there's a story of rejection as well, because, you know, going into the ceramics department wasn' how I saw myself getting to where I got to in the end, of course.

And I had applied, you know, for the graduate trainee scheme at Christie's and got through to the sort of.

I think it was the second to last round, but I, you know, they only choose about four people and I didn't get it.

And I was so devastated because I got so close.

So then you just have to pick yourself up and find another root.

Yep.

You know, Antique Steve has started also because of a failure.

I was writing a book on where to buy antiques in Europe and the book had gotten picked up by a publisher.

And this was back in 2007.

Ish.

End of 2007 and 2008 hits.

It is the first recession since I've been in this trade because I was just starting in the industry in 2007, 2008, and this, the 2008 recession hits and my book was killed.

And the book project, I didn't even get a phone call.

I got an email that said, we really apologize.

This isn't personal.

This has nothing to do with you, but we, we are not going to be able to publish your book.

We are going to pay you a small kill fee, like an honorarium for your time, like the last year of your life.

And so I get this email and I'm devastated.

And the, the monetary kill fee that they had given me was so small that I looked at it and I thought, if I don't do something big with this, I'm never going to remember what, like I'm never going to remember what I did with this.

And I remember telling my ex husband at the time, I, we.

We had moved from Paris to Amsterdam at the time is where I was living.

And I remember saying I always wanted to eat at Tour d' Argent.

Let's go back to Paris and go to Tour d' Argent for lunch.

And we went to lunch because the check wasn't big enough to cover dinner at Tour d' Argent.

But because the book on how to buy antiques in Europe didn't get published, I had already started writing a blog on where to buy antiques in Europe.

As a joke, I called the blog Antiques Diva.

It was never meant to be the name of a company.

And what ended up happening was not the book series that I wanted to write.

What ended up happening was Antique Stephen.

We started doing antique buying tours, but it was completely switching gears to, okay, I fell down, I didn't get what I want.

And simultaneously, something better than I could have ever planned presented itself.

That's a great story.

Yeah.

And so often how it happens, it.

Is, I think you have to.

You prepare and you plan for one thing and you're open to other ideas along the way.

Now with your new business, I'd love for you to just tell how did you even start what you're doing now?

Like, what was the transition from auction house to Lapada to now.

It's called Hollandridge, right?

That's right, yes.

What's the meaning of the name?

Well, Hollandridge is.

I started up the business with a really good friend of mine called Alex Hammersley, and Hollandridge is the road that connects our two houses.

I love that.

So I know.

So that's great.

So we work quite a lot together on projects, but we don't.

We don't work under the same.

Alex has got her own business, so we work in tandem on things rather than under the same company.

But we did start it initially together, and that's where the name comes from.

I love that it was the road that was connecting you.

Exactly.

So tell me a bit more about the business and the type of projects that you're doing.

Well, it all started really with an accidental conversation that I had at a drinks party.

And I met somebody who had a restaurant in Marylebone, and he said he had run out of money and he hadn't got enough money to put art on the wall.

Did I know any galleries who might be able to help?

So I gave Rebecca Hossack Gallery a call, actually, and she said, oh, she'd be delighted to help.

And she provided some art for the walls, and that was.

Was the end of that.

And there was no kind of money exchanged on, you know, to any parties.

It was just a bit of a favor for somebody who I'd met, and little did I know that he was involved in the development of a hotel called the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, just off Whitehall.

And he was working very closely with the.

The owners who are from Dubai.

And he said to the owners, really, to make.

To have proper traction on this project in London, and you need to have great art, you know, not just posters and sort of boring hotel art.

You need to have something, you know, curate a collection and have something really interesting that tells the story of the building.

And I hadn't really done anything like that before, but I took quite a long time to put together a proposal and managed to win the contract.

So that's really where it all started.

And it was a massive project, and it was a first one for me.

I learned so much along the way.

And as you say, I sort of tried to use the skills that I'd learned at lapada and the skills I'd learned in production to sort of manage the whole project.

It was, you know, there were lots of people to bring on board with your creative ideas, from the hotel operators to the owners who had different cultural references to me to the, you know, director, who was based in London and had different cultural references to the owners.

And so it was really a big mixing pot, and we had to just come up with something that was coherent without, I suppose, you know, losing track of what I was trying to do and lose track of myself along the way, which I think would have been very easy to have done.

I can imagine it was a great.

Project, and they were a lovely team to work with.

So the items that went in the hotel, were they also for, like, curated collections for sale, or was it only for decor?

No, it was just for decoration.

So we commissioned quite a lot of work from contemporary artists.

We had, I mean, I think, quite a range of budgets.

Maybe sort of the top piece was probably 80,000 going down to, you know, things that were a few hundred pounds.

And I worked also with some dealers, and we put together.

I actually worked with Fontaine and we put together some fantastic collections for this, for different rooms.

Because it was the great Scotland Yard Hotel and it was the former Metropolitan Police headquarters, we wanted to sort of tell that story.

And one of the bars was named after an infamous gang of women called the 40 elephants, who used to, when their husbands were in prison, they would shoplift around the Mayfair boutiques.

And so we sort of had a big table filled with all sorts of vintage pieces that, you know, told the story of the 40 elephants, all sorts of things they might have taken from department stores, you know, at the time.

So that was really fun.

And I also, you know, philanthropy was very important to the client.

And so we worked with the Kerstler Trust, who do an outreach art program in prisons.

And at the time, Sir Anthony Gormbly had set the theme for a competition for the prisoners, which was inside, which could obviously mean inside your mind or inside your cell.

And I went along to Wormwood Scrubs and looked through all of these artworks and selected probably about 30 artworks.

And then we did a sort of installation in the main foyer of these pieces, which was a really interesting project.

What an incredible opportunity.

I mean, your mind had to have.

Your mind had.

Have been exploding with excitement.

I mean, there's so much creativity there.

Yes, there was.

And lots of different ideas and narratives that we had to sort of weave in to the hotel through the art, which was.

Which was great.

An art telling a story.

I'm trying to think.

Do you remember the artist's name, who he was?

The artist who made.

He made the sculpture of an asteroid hitting the Pope.

Do you remember the guy's name?

I'm thinking of.

I don't know, I don't either.

I can't think of it right now.

But this summer, this past summer during the Venice Biennale, this artist who ironically had made an asteroid hitting the Pope sculpture that was very scandalous about 10 years ago, I can't think of his name.

Anyway, he was in charge of decorating the Vatican pavilion this year in Venice, and the Vatican pavilion this year they set up in the women's prison in Judeca.

And so it was the first time in my life, one that I've been in a prison, but to a women's prison specifically.

And they had a lot of exhibitions of the art from the women of the prison there in Venice and of everything I have attended in the years of going to various Biennale exhibitions, this was the thing that moved me most.

So it's an interesting intersection thinking that this is also what you put in the Scotland yarn.

It's very raw and very moving.

And I think there was one piece that I will never forget which was a soap sculpture.

So just a common bar of soap and in the soap had been meticulously sculpted, almost like it was a sort of a relief work.

And there was a boy seated on a bed with his head in his hands.

And the title of the work was Sorry.

And this was done by a sort of 17 year old boy in a romance center.

So, you know, but some very moving pieces.

That's incredible.

Really.

I mean, so I imagine with what you do, you have, I imagine you've had your hands on a variety of interesting pieces over the years.

Are there any favorite, is there any favorite pieces that you've had the opportunity to maybe help sell or help procure?

I know it's a general question.

I hate it.

Yes.

No, it's a difficult one.

No, I'm just thinking child, when you're a mother.

It is, it is.

Because I've, you know, with the Great Scotland Yard, I did a fantasy.

You know, the main work in the lobby was with Nicola Green, which was just such an interesting piece and it looked back at all sorts of different historical figures.

It's not.

It was something that I really enjoyed working on when I was working on a.

I was working on a really fabulous house in Belgrave Square with Guy Goodfellow and we bought an incredible tapestry, really beautiful sort of museum quality tapestry there, which was very special.

A lot of my projects work with an artist called Marcus Hodge, who's an abstract artist.

He did actually, he was a portrait artist, but he, he turned to abstraction after visiting India and going through the gates of India and He had a complete sort of turn and I love his work.

In fact, I don't know whether you can see it on the camera, but one of his pieces is just behind me here.

Yeah.

Which I absolutely adore his work and included his work in quite a few projects.

So, gosh, I don't think I really have a favorite.

I've worked, I've just bought for a client recently a really amazing Billy Childish work.

There's been an exhibition in Cork street and also for the same client, an artist by a really important Chinese artist called Ding Yi, which is a stunning piece.

So, yes, I don't really have a.

Favorite, I'm afraid I will tell you that was the perfect answer because no one has just one.

It's the series.

It's those series of things that kind of make up the tapestry in your mind of all the favorites you've had along the way.

Definitely.

And I think what I love about this is that I am working across all periods.

So in September I worked on a really great project.

I don't think I can name the name of the place, but it was one of the top Mayfair clubs and I acquired a lot of portraits for that in September, which was really fascinating.

And there's a lovely portrait there which I acquire one of the members that we'll all know of, Charles the First, which was, which was amazing.

And then, you know, just recently, as I said, I.

Looking at those contemporary pieces.

So it's.

There's such a variety and I, you.

Know, when it comes to your.

For procuring for a project, where are you sourcing?

Like, are you.

Is it auctions?

Is it private collections, is it antique dealers, Lapada members?

Like how.

With what you do.

I imagine it's a multi prong approach.

It's a multi prong approach and when I'm dealing with sort of emerging artists and I've got quite a few direct routes into studio, which is always good.

And it's quite nice to do that when you're working on commissions for clients.

But I work, you know, I always want to cover the whole market for my clients.

I don't want to just go to the, you know, the few artists that I have relationships with.

So I want to offer them the, the broadest.

The whole market in the broadest sense of the word.

So I, I work a lot with the trade, a lot with the, with dealers, Lembers, slad members and members, you know, outside of that.

Well, galleries outside of that scope as well.

So mainly I don't really buy that much from Auction, actually.

But I do try and keep up the sales and if I have a client who, you know, says I'm looking for a particular artist, I will register that on the sale room and, you know, keep my eye open for what's happening.

But I prefer to work with the trade.

Do you travel much for your job?

Are you able to do it virtually or.

I don't.

I mean, I will travel for my job.

I just, at the moment, pitching for a hotel in Sardinia, actually, jointly with a.

With another dealer.

So I.

I will travel, but I tend to be sort of, you know, within about three hours of Henley on Thames, actually.

I seem to manage that with London.

So, you know.

And I remember going back to your Lapada days, if I'm not mistaken, that you were the person who started the Lapada at Berkeley Square.

Is this right?

Yes, that's right, yes.

So how did that come about?

Because I think this is one of the iconic London antiques fairs.

Yes, Well, I think the members always wanted to have a fair and when I came in, they'd moved around a little bit to a few different locations and it became apparent that they really wanted to be in Mayfair.

And I had.

We had been in the back of the Royal Academy for a couple of years and then that opportunity ceased because I think they were going to.

They had a house in Worth, one of the big contemporary galleries went in there for a short time while they were having their premises refurbished.

And I just thought, oh, it would be fantastic to have a marquee in, you know, central London.

That would just be.

That would be the dream.

And then we could.

Because everyone, even at the Royal Academy, they say, oh, you know, there were the good stands and the bad stands and it was all a bit of a rabbit warren.

And that' the problem with building in hotels or any of any buildings like that.

So, you know, I really wanted to have a marquee format in Mayfair and really I just went around looking at the.

The best squares and slowly digging and working out who I could speak to and how I could make it happen.

And I think just a bit of a terrier approach, really.

One out.

At the end of the day, after.

That bone, you're finding it.

That's it, that's it.

So you have the mark.

I know you're not currently doing it, but the marquee is built in an existing square and so all of it's put up, it's planned, but it's basically just the square that the marquees put up for a number of days or weeks.

Yes, that's right.

So it is extremely expensive and I think becoming increasingly expensive to, to do.

And it's a big logistical operation.

But, you know, we had very good marquee people, very good stand fitters, and, yeah, they pulled it all together.

And I think we then, as the fair does now, worked out that if we shared it with Pad, that we could share a lot of those costs and we could adapt the marquee and, and get a better structure than we would have been able to have afforded otherwise at the same price.

Really?

Yeah, it's one of the things.

So for our podcast, the Business of Antiques, most of our listeners are either in the antiques trade or they want to be in the antiques trade.

And so we have a lot of interior designers who are listening, but even, even the designers tend to be people who have a fantasy that someday they're going to open a store of some kind.

And one of the things that I try to do on our podcast is have people on the show that represent a variety of ways in which you can be in this industry rather than just the traditional dealer role.

And because I think there are a lot of different career, a lot of different careers in this industry that make the industry function.

I mean, you're sitting here talking to me, watching JP over my shoulder, and I can tell you very few things would happen at Antiques Diva if you weren't over there doing this.

So.

So there are a variety of careers that make the antiques industry function.

And I think, I think being a fair coordinator and launching a new fair is not for the faint of heart.

However, I.

I think it is a great way for someone wanting to be in this trade and maybe not necessarily wanting to be a dealer themselves.

I think coordinating a variety of dealers together and putting a fair is a great way to, to be involved in this industry in a collateral activity.

I loved it.

Yes, I absolutely loved it.

I loved the whole, you know, speaking to you, selling the dream and then getting all the dealers together and the sponsors and all those different sort of things that you have to organize.

I found it very satisfying.

And then seeing it all come together and then just collaborate.

It's a lovely collaboration with probably 100 plus dealers, isn't it?

What would you say was the hardest thing about putting on a fair of that size?

I think the hardest thing is repeating it year after year and not allowing it to go into a downward cycle.

It's very, very easy for that to happen.

You know, the first year, everyone's very excited about the prospect, and you get them all in and you manage to persuade some people who are prepared to take a chance on it and you, you know, and then it works quite well and you're able to get a few more, you know, high profile dealers in and then they don't make any money and then they decide that they don't want to, you know, go again.

And then this sort of whispers through the industry and it's just really hard.

Not necessarily because you're not doing a great job.

It's market forces.

It's really hard to keep it fresh and relevant every single year.

And at the end of the day, you have to have an event that's bringing business.

If it brings business to the dealers, they'll come back and come back.

But everything goes through sort of ebbs and flows and, you know, has bad years and then a certain formula that worked for 10 years suddenly doesn't.

And, you know, that's just, that's just life.

It's all about the evolving market, really.

Absolutely.

And, you know, if we could predict why things are not going to work sometimes, it would be amazing.

There, there are moments in my career where everything suddenly is exploding and I stop and I.

It's like if you're sailing in a boat, you know, you lick your finger and you're trying to feel the wind around you and catch what direction the wind is coming from.

Because I think working in this industry, sometimes figuring out why something failed or why something was successful is as simple as trying to figure out where the wind came from.

And you can't always predict and plan.

You can't always predict.

No.

But from a fair perspective, I think as an antiques dealer, it's the best marketing you can ever do.

Like I tell my clients, do a fair and be thrilled if you make money and sell things and it's a very profitable endeavor.

But do it for the marketing standpoint because you're getting, you're getting directly in front of your target audience.

The people that you want to be in front of are coming by you.

So even if they're not buying from you today, if you do your marketing right, if it's a marketing expense that hopefully you make money from too.

But I, I don't think there is a better way to get in front of the target audience than myself.

I think you're right, but I think probably most dealers will do that and take it on the chin for three years.

But if they've made a loss three years in a row.

Yeah, exactly.

So, okay, so going back to Holland Ridge, what do you think the future looks like for your company, you're getting some really interesting opportunities.

What do you think's next?

Well, I think my main focus at the moment is what I would love to be is on the speed dial of all the top interior designers so that they get a project and that they think who's going to help me with the art or some sourcing?

Sarah Percy Davis and they give me a call.

That's really my aim at the moment.

I love it when I bump into someone or I meet someone through a contact who has a lovely house and says, sarah, come and help me with it.

And I work with them directly.

That's also great.

But it's difficult to get the quantity of projects that you need to sustain the business like that.

So at the moment when those come in, that's hallelujah, you know, love to do them.

But I'm trying to work with sort of developers and high end interior designers because they're working with clients who've got money to spend on projects and that's.

You're over the first hurdle then and they want to decorate their house and they've got some walls without things on.

So, you know, I think that's, that's where I'm really focusing at the moment.

And from a marketing perspective, what do you do to find clients?

I mean, first of all, I think everybody in this industry knows who you are, but still you do.

I'm certain you have to have some sort of marketing strategy.

And so I'm curious on perspective of the listeners, what they can learn from you for their own marketing plans.

Well, it's very simple really.

I probably don't do enough, but at the same time I can't do loads of projects because it's really me and I've got, I can, then my Alex Hammersley can come and help me if I need extra help.

My previous business partner and you know, I've got a small admin team but we're very small so I can't do, you know, lots of projects.

So I, in a way I haven't really needed to do loads of marketing because word of mouth has worked to give me just about, but I think it's the best.

But I, but I do try and, you know, keep Instagram interesting.

I try and I do a monthly newsletter to my existing clients which, and which I think is helpful to a group of interior designers.

And then just actually, honestly, nothing better than just getting out and about and talking to people about what you're doing and doing something like this, for example.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I have to tell you, I have been thrilled and honored that you took the time today to come and be on the Business of Antiques podcast.

And I don't want to keep you too long.

I want to be aware of your time.

But I just want to thank you for being here.

And can you tell our listeners how they can find you everywhere if they want to get in touch with you?

How can they get in touch with you?

Well, thank you, firstly, Tom, for having me, because it's been a pleasure speaking to you.

And if anyone does want to get in contact with me, just go onto my website, which is hollandridgegroup.com or onto my Instagram, which is @hollandridgegroup, and you'll find contact details in there.

Fabulous.

Well, and la personal volta in Italiano.

Better the next time you come visit me in Venice.

Perfect.

Perfecto.

Arrived.

Ciao.

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

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

Talk to you next time.

Ciao.

Ciao.