NEPOTISM
There is nothing wrong with selling antiques. There is nothing wrong with owning an antique shop. And there is certainly nothing wrong with making a living from antiques.
But when the person who owns the marketplace starts competing with the people who are paying to be in it, things can get a little uncomfortable.
That, to me, is where nepotism comes in.
We see it occasionally in the antique trade: an antique centre offers dealers space to sell their stock, while the owners of the centre are also buying antiques themselves and selling them through the very same premises.
Now, before anyone reaches for the telephone, this isn't about saying that someone shouldn't be allowed to buy and sell antiques. Of course they should.
It's about whose side of the counter you are standing on.
At Top Banana, our dealers pay for their space. They are independent businesses, with their own stock, their own prices and their own customers. Our job is to provide the building, the footfall, the advertising, the facilities and all the rather less glamorous things involved in keeping an antique centre running.
We don't want to be competing with them.
Quite the opposite.
We want our dealers to sell.
Because when our dealers sell, everybody wins. The customer finds something wonderful. The dealer makes a sale. The centre continues to thrive. And, hopefully, the customer comes back and does it all over again.
It seems to us that there is something rather healthy about keeping those roles separate.
It's a little like an estate agent selling houses. If you are selling my house, I quite reasonably expect you to be acting for me. If, at the same time, you are quietly trying to buy my house for yourself, the relationship becomes rather more complicated.
And then there are the auctioneers.
At some of the larger antique fairs you will see auction houses actively buying stock. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an auctioneer buying antiques. But when those items subsequently appear in auctions run by the very same auction house, you can understand why a dealer might raise an eyebrow.
The auctioneer is no longer simply providing the marketplace. They are also a participant in it.
And that raises a simple question:
Who are you competing with?
Perhaps there is nothing improper happening at all. Perhaps everything is perfectly transparent and above board.
But antiques have always depended on something rather more valuable than being merely above board.
They depend on trust.
And trust is easily lost when the person running the marketplace is also competing with the people using it.
We take a slightly old-fashioned view at Top Banana.
We think an antique centre should be a place where independent dealers can get on with selling antiques.
We think an auctioneer should run an auction.
And we think customers should be able to walk through the door knowing that the person providing the marketplace isn't secretly trying to beat them to the best piece in the room.
Maybe that's old-fashioned.
But then again, we sell old things.
And perhaps that's the twist.
We don't see independence as a disadvantage. We see it as one of the reasons Top Banana works.
Our success depends on the success of our dealers. Their success depends on having somewhere people actually want to visit. So we have no reason to compete with them.
We have every reason to help them.
That's not nepotism. That's teamwork.
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