Antique attraction

Every antique has a story. So it should come as no surprise that most antique shop owners have a stockpile of tales from their encounters with visiting dealers.

"I got a call from a dealer from Memphis," Mary Robertson said. The dealer was staying at a local motel, and he told Robertson that his partner had taken their truck antique shopping and left him stranded in the room.

"He told me if I would come and pick him up, he'd shop in my store for three hours," she said. She did, and three hours later, his partner came with the truck and helped him load up $2,000 worth of merchandise.

Robertson's is one of 18 antique stores in Cape Girardeau. Robertson said that right now, customers like the couple from Memphis are too few and far between to support all of these outlets.

Although the local industry may appear to be saturated, Southeast Missouri State University economics professor Bruce Domazlicky said that isn't necessarily the case. In fact, he says the high concentration of shops can be seen as a boon to make Cape Girardeau a regional and national antique destination.

Robertson and other local dealers agree. All they say they need is to get the word out.

"Having this many shops can be deadly or wonderful," Robertson said. "I think Cape Girardeau is ready to do something big, but we've got to be promoted."

Robertson said the local economy alone can't keep all these stores in business. The key, she said, is pulling long-distance travelers off the interstate and into the city. From her perspective as a motor home traveler, Robertson says she knows a lot of people heading north and south on Interstate 55 are just looking for something to do.

Rick Crow, president of the Antique Centre Mall on William Street, knows this to be true. As it turned out, Robertson's Memphis dealers happened upon Cape Girardeau because they saw a billboard for the Antique Centre Mall as they were driving on I-55. From there, Crow and his colleagues sent them further into town by recommending other Cape Girardeau shops like Annie Laurie's.

"The number of antique shops has grown to the point that there's an awful lot of reasons to come to Cape for antiques," Crow said. But as Crow can attest from $101,000 worth of billboard fees paid over the last 14 years, making people aware of that reason can be costly for a single shop.

Seeking tourism help

Robertson thinks that this is where the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau should step in. She said promoting the city's plentiful antique resources would be a great way to bring more sales tax dollars into Cape Girardeau. However, bureau director Chuck Martin said the bureau can't afford the billboards and besides, that really isn't his job.

"It's our job to get people into the community," Martin said. He said it is neither ethical, nor is it economically feasible, for the bureau to promote one segment of the city over another.

"In my opinion, it is the individual businesses' responsibility to bring them into their store," Martin said.

That notwithstanding, Martin said he definitely sees the potential of antiques as being a key element in bringing shoppers to Cape Girardeau, and it's something the Convention and Visitors Bureau includes in its advertising in travel publications. The bureau has also worked with local antique stores to put a unified ad for the city in Antique and Collectible News, a regional trade publication that is distributed at antique shops. But Robertson argues that because the publication goes to antique shops, it does little to pull outside people into their stores. She wants the bureau to help with roadside advertising.

Crow agrees with Martin that it's the stores' job to bring customers through their doors. That's why he says the city's antique dealers should band together and form a local antique association to curb the costs of advertising, pool together to hold events such as antique fairs and create a network through which all the stores can communicate and help the local industry grow.

Some local antique merchants agree that an association could nurture growth.

Harlen Smothers of Smother's Antiques in Gordonville thinks an association is a great idea in theory. But as he's learned from trying to start an area dealer's group twice in the last 20 years, it only works if every shop involved pulls its own weight. Smothers said that after he started and headed up the first Cape Girardeau Antique Dealers Association in 1984, he ended up being the one doing all the work.

The growth potential of the antique industry is what brought Charles Bertrand back to Cape Girardeau last December. Coming from Texas, he saw a historic downtown stocked with antique stores as an ideal place to set up his own antique shop, Spanish Street Mercantile.

Bertrand said Cape Girardeau is ideal as an antique destination because it has so many things to complement such businesses: historic buildings, the Mississippi River and an accessible downtown filled with shops that can work with antique shops to bring sales tax money into town. He said the city's decorators, bed and breakfasts, restaurants and specialty shops all offer antique buyers places to spend their time and money while on the hunt for the perfect item.

That's why Bertrand decided to promote what he calls the downtown "antique district" on his three billboards on the highway. But his vision is not limited to downtown. The way he sees it, the more shops throughout Cape Girardeau, the better.

"You can't saturate the market," Bertrand said. "Antiquing is an economy within itself."

Bertrand cited the variety of goods that local antique shops offer along with the dealings between those city shops that, if combined with outside dealers coming in, would actually make room for more antique stores in Cape Girardeau.

Bertrand also agrees that it isn't necessarily the city's job to bring his store business, but he does think that the city has to work with local businesses to promote Cape Girardeau and what it has to offer. He said the best way to do that is make it easy for incoming business people to renovate and fill the older buildings downtown. He also said the city organizations like the Convention and Visitors Bureau need to focus their resources in the same direction, toward things that can help the economy. He said the murals and free tours that the Convention and Visitors Bureau brings are nice, but they don't necessarily bring sales tax dollars.

"Free things don't increase the economy," Bertrand said.

That is precisely what frustrates Robertson. Having spent four years on the Convention and Visitors Bureau board, she understands the constraints Martin is under. But she can't see why the bureau won't get behind their efforts to attract spontaneous spenders from out of town and jump start this potential antique boom in Cape Girardeau.

"We could not exist if we depend on the local economy," Robertson said. "There could be a whole new revolution for antique shops, if we just got the proper support."

trehagen@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137