Salvage Sundays started with Drew Pritchard hosting Instagram lives on Sunday Evening at the start of lockdown in 2020 with the aim of supporting the trade to continue as fairs closed down and face to face selling became impossible. Drew's live chats and the online selling forum around it provide a lifeline for many dealers during this time and provided the opportunity for many new dealers to start to experience what buying and selling could be like.
This summer the fairs restarted and we all took a break from Salvage Sundays on Instagram to get back to the business of meeting up with other dealers and customers. As the fairs slow down, the question is what's next for Salvage Sundays?
Drew handed the reins over to Dawn from Retrovation so it naturally fell on her to try to answer this question. She couldn't do this alone so has teamed up with Angela from Sunshine Antiques to try to look forward. Angela is one of the most experienced of the Salvage Sundays dealers and one of the key drivers of Salvage Sundays.
So, what are the plans?
Firstly, is there any need for Salvage Sundays or something similar going forward?
Dawn and Angela believe the answer is yes! Covid was a unique situation that forced the change, but there are many other factors that are making Salvage Sundays as relevant as before. Social media is not going away and is becoming an important tool for everybody's business. Antique dealers love to meet face to face and that won't change, but there will be a place for social media to market, engage and sell.
So, what will Salvage Sundays look like going forward?
Salvage Sundays has been very organic with no clear direction which has been great fun, but a bit chaotic! To be sustainable, it needs to have a clear direction and purpose and Dawn and Angela believe that is best to go back to Drew's original direction with a focus on the trade:
The focus should be on finding great quality pieces and selling them at a good price moving them through the trade and ultimately to the right customer.
With this in mind, Dawn and Angela want to focus Salvage Sundays on dealers finding and presenting fresh to the market quality antique and salvage pieces. They want to build a community of on the ground dealers finding fresh pieces along with trade buyers and customers who want the opportunity to buy direct from source.
So what's next? Are their big plans?
Next is to get the Sunday evening event started again, but not to move too fast. Just a few dealers to start to see what works. And reaching out to trade and end customers to get their feedback. No grand plans yet! Do get in touch and let us know what you think?