Buying Services

Antiques Diva Buying Services

When You Can’t Travel Abroad to Stock Your Store, Let Us Buy For You

Antiques Diva Buying Services
This is what it looks like when a 40-foot container filled with English, French and Swedish Antiques arrives at a client’s shop!

While we offer tours/trade-only-tours”>antiques shopping tours for the trade, we also offer buying services. Most of our trade clients really WANT to travel and buy abroad, but it’s difficult finding the time to go abroad when you run a successful business. We’re your man on the ground in Europe and Asia. You and I both know that the fact is you can scout web pages and search out Asian and European antiques all by yourself all over the web… the internet has made the world really small that way. So why would you hire The Antiques Diva & Co to scout in Asia and Europe to source goods for your store when you could skip the middle man and shop yourself online?

The problem with buying online is that you don’t always know what you’re buying or if it looks as good in person as it does in the photos. You likely do not have relationships with the dealers or someone to vet the inventory on your behalf before you pay a bundle to get it carted half way around the world. You don’t know who you should trust or shouldn’t. When buying online you just click “add to cart” –  no negotiating takes place, so you never really know if you’re getting the best price or if you could have gotten a better price. And if you want to buy from multiple stores, shipping becomes a disaster because you’re paying more to ship a few things individually than to bulk everything from various sources when shipping them together in one lot would have cost a whole lot less. And most importantly… the best antiques sources in Europe and Asia aren’t online.

the best antiques sources in Europe aren’t online

Most wholesale warehouses in Asia, Europe and the UK don’t sell online, they provide an exclusive service to their trade clients by keeping their prices and inventory off the web for the discrete few who are lucky enough to gain entry into their world.

An Introduction To Key Wholesale Antique Suppliers in Europe and Asia
That’s where we come in. The difference between Old World Culture and New World Culture is the secret handshake. In Asia and Europe, having an introduction gives you entry into an inner circle you can’t gain access to on your own. Our job – whether you’re on a tours/trade-only-tours”>To The Trade Antiques Buying Tour or using our buying service – is to show you the secret handshake and introduce you to the people in Europe and Asia you need to know.

antique sourcing service buyers look book from The Antiques Diva
This is an actual sample of the look book an Antiques Diva client receives during antique sourcing services; in this case the client was buying mid-century modern and contemporary art for a project in California

How Antiques Diva Buying Services Works
When we buy for a client, we ask a lot of questions about what you’re looking for and pour over your website so we understand your aesthetic.  We want to know you and your style inside out.  Trade clients email us random photos from Pinterest or scanned from magazines, books, etc saying “I want everything in this picture”. Our job is when you tell us what you’re looking, for we go to our best contacts to source your shopping list, and send you photographs and specifications of the inventory we recommend for you.

Some of the things we suggest will be in response to what you’ve told us you want… but other things we suggest are things we think you might like.  You’ll get a lot of photos sent to you. We understand you need to kiss a lot of frogs to find your perfect piece… so we’ll give you variety in colors, in scale, in quality, in age, and in price. After we’ve sent you photos you’ll come back to us and give us feedback on what you don’t like… but here’s where it gets good. You’ll also say “OMG where have #12, #16, #33 and #42 been all my life. BUY THEM”. A lot of the vendors we go to are wholesale dealers only – and they don’t negotiate. For those vendors we’ll tell you the price is X and X is what you’ll pay.  BUT – then we’ll tell you that photos #16 and 42 are vendors who will negotiate and we’ll go to town on your behalf.

dealers typically sell their pieces for 3 – 5 times over the purchase price

How You Get Your Purchases Home?
We not only help you source, but then we will also help you ship. The Antiques Diva & Co™ offers white glove fine art and antiques shipping services, and will also liaise with your preferred shipper. We’ll take your purchases from 5 or 10 different sources – often in different countries – and help you coordinate ONE shipping. We’ll sticker your purchases, fill out your shipping purchase orders, even take Tylenol on your behalf as we handle headaches to get everything across the pond to you.

For More Information

Contact to:info@antiquesdiva.com”>info@antiquesdiva.com to discuss how we can
give your company access to wholesale antiques sources in Europe
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