The Barn - A Place for Vintage Wonder, and Market Research! -Asheville, NC

Please excuse the Retro Inspired and Shaky Pictures, these were taken with the Hipstamatic Camera Application on my iPhone.

While down in Black Mountain, we stopped in at Greg's parents favorite Antique Shop... The Barn (actually called the Tobacco Barn Antiques, but I don't think anybody calls it by the actual name).

It's beautiful in there, and I know one of the shops we visited I've seen on a popular blog somewhere, I just ain't sure which.

 These are some Antique Keys, and Fishing Lures.  While I don't exactly have an outlet for these up north, I'm tempted to start researching how I can get my hands on some.  They were super cute!

The Barn is really nice, but it was a big eye-opener regarding the brick n' mortar Retail world for Antiques.  Right now, I'm on a non-Retail budget with my Vintage Acquisitions (lol), so most of my purchases I need to flip, and I was in the wrong place for that...But I was definitely in the right place for some Field/Marketing Research.....There were a ton of things I thought were absolutely charming, and worth taking home....but

I realized that the competitive pricing for small scale brick n' mortar stores is very different from the challenged I face online.

 

 

While many brick n' mortar shops strive to maintain pricing integrity, to reflect the effort in providing a product to the consumer, I deal with a tremendous amount of undersell online, even though I already try to provide reasonable pricing and market myself as an affordable option for Vintage Collection and Unique items.  Heck, I named my store "LeftOvers4Dinner" because there have been times in my life where I was eating leftovers at my parents house, but I had the most amazing Vintage Find, or the Coolest Yarn to come out that month in the trunk of my car....But if I go out into the real world, and do  "Marketing Research", then go online, it's hard to find a middle ground.  How do people do it?

 I understand many "in real life" stores deal with this as well, but I wonder, what do I have to do as an online entity to properly survive these challenges?

Someone said "I shoulda went for a Bike Ride today" for a very long time, but never did...Sigh.

Sometimes, I wish I had my own brick n' mortar shop... The pricing for items at the Barn was reasonable to mostly reasonable for a Brick n' Mortar location, and I like that kinda of stability and trending.  I've noticed online, I don't seem to find that.  If you price too low, people think your stuff is "Junk", if you price too high, well, people still think you have "Junk", but they think you have "Overpriced Junk"...Yet, when I look at the online stores and entities I admire, some of them seem to be a lot more upscale, and I'm struggling to figure out how they do it....Being in the Barn, and realizing I could personalize and truly setup an atmosphere that best reflected the items I sell and share, with so many interested people, and curious people, who are there to look at what you provide, and inquire about the items, stories, history, or just wanna talk 'shop with ya (I did a bit of that at the Barn myself)....makes me wonder....ponder about creating another goal for myself.

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Location:Fairview Rd,Asheville,United States