Antique Shop in Bournemouth

When my Brother-in-Law Donald was demobbed from the army in 1946, the shop in Torquay was trading quite reasonably. My sister Rene and I agreed that we both needed to be independent from each other. I felt that in the past year, she had proved herself to be effective and capable to manage and run the shop without my assistance. She was a wonderful saleslady; and although her knowledge of antiques were not the greatest of her attributes, she was learning speedily. Her knowledge of jewellery was improving daily. Jewellery was new to me too, and it became, a very important part of the business.

When Donald came out of the Army, he stepped into a thriving business. We had always been great pals, and in the total time of our partnership, we never had a quarrel or dissent through the fourteen years we were together.

We decided that as the economic situation was becoming more unsettled, we were worried that one shop could not support the expenses of two families. One of us would try our luck in another location. Bournemouth was the obvious choice, as it was not too far away and it was also considered a very prominent holiday coastal resort.

We decided to go together in his car to choose a suitable site in the town. As I was the experienced partner, I was nominated to open the shop once we had decided its situation.

When we arrived in Bournemouth and enquired at the estate agents, the prominent vacant shops were too expensive to rent, and we were advised to try the shopping area at Southbourne in the east part of the town. In the end, we managed to find a large premises on the corner of Grand Avenue. The rent was £1000 per annum. After a discussion, we decided we could afford it, so we signed the contract and celebrated with a super lunch at the Royal Bath Hotel.

We did not bother to find out if the area was a suitable for a quality up-market antique & jewellery shop. The wide roads and the nature of the surrounding shops seemed to be of a prosperous and successful disposition.

It was early Spring and all the superb rhododendrons were ablaze in their wonderful glory, and I immediately fell in love with this clean and beautiful town. While I always felt that Torquay was a superb resort, I could do a lot worse by not opening in Bournemouth. I even thought that I was destined to seek my future there, and returned back to Torquay. I had to sell my little house and garage (that had cost me £1000) hire a van, and fill it with some good antiques from the Torquay shop, thinking that I was about to conduct a similar program of success that I had achieved in my first shop.

It was agreed that our partnership would continue, as before, and we were to remain partners, using the same bank account held in Torquay.

I must say that I was very proud of the display I made in the new shop. The furniture was 18^th century, Sevres & Ormolu clock sets, crystal chandeliers, Miessen figurines, and a nice selection of reasonably priced jewellery. I thought the shop gave a lot of class to the area, and looked forwards to the opening day when I would put all my hard work into practice.

Donald, my Brother-in-law, was with me and we opened up at nine o'clock. The locals seemed to be very interested, and the windows were full of onlookers. Soon the shop was crowded with admirers and the curious, but no one volunteered to make a purchase. The people there were quite charming, but most were elderly folk. Little did we realise that Southbourne was only a trade backwater of the town, and that Southbourne was at that time inhabited by retired people, all living on reduced incomes. The locals were certainly not able to purchase the high quality antiques that we wanted to sell.

I took only a few weeks for me to realise that we had opened in the wrong part of the Town, and I started to look at premises in the Town Centre where most of the more salubrious citizens and visitors would abound. We had seven years on the lease left to run and we had paid £500 ingoing to take the Southbourne shop. This was a great deal of money for us at that time. Negotiations were started with the landlord to release us from our responsibilities and after a great deal of bargaining, he demanded £500, to take back the lease, which we accepted, making plans to vacate the shop at the beginning of November.

The lesson we had learned, was to make a more detailed investigation, before such an important decision was made. We should have realised that Southbourne was easily bye-passed from Bournemouth, and although it is a lovely part of town, it is a separate and distinct community, certainly not fitted to support a luxury shop like ours.

After three months searching for a suitable premises, we discovered a small but likely shop, on Richmond Hill in the Town Centre.

We decided to have a ‘closing down sale’ and put all our secondary antiques in the window, at greatly reduced prices. As we had only taken less than £3,000 in the previous eight months, we were amazed how the local residents reacted. When I arrived at the door of the shop for the beginning of the sale, I noticed a large queue of about 50 people waiting for me to start the sale.

I quickly telephoned my Brother-in-Law, to help me serve the crowd, as I would be unable to handle them on my own. As it was 9:00 a.m. and he was still in bed, he initially thought that I was playing a joke on him. This was quickly dispelled when he arrived about 10 minutes later.

We opened the door and they all rushed in. It was like a mad house. People were buying everything in the shop. We had cleared out our entire stock in a week. In fact there were some items of jewellery on display that I had not found the time to reduce and before I could drop to the sale price, I was informed by an irate woman, that she had been first in the queue, and she demanded to be served first.

It appeared to me that the locals would only buy if they could obtain 'bargains'. Little did they realise that the original stock was the real treasures, and I am sure that the stock I had at the opening of the shop would have appreciated tenfold.

When I opened the shop on Richmond Hill in 1947 it was an immediate success, and as far as luxury goods are for sale, shop position and location would always be, for me, of prime importance.