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Essex Antiques & Collectibles, LTD |
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Experts in Transition Management |
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About Us |
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Phone: 847-869-3310 Fax: 847-869-3352 E-mail: Info@Essex-Antiques.com |
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Success story: Beanie Babies to heirlooms November 27, 2008 By RUTH SOLOMON rsolomon@pioneerlocal.com It all started in 1996 with the Beanie Baby craze.
That was when banker Richard Meliska and his wife, Merrill Essex, who left a career in marketing to be a stay-at-home mother, discovered the power of eBay.
Merrill Essex and her husband, Rich Meliska, examine a pair of prints at their Evanston business, Essex Antiques and Collectibles Ltd.
Merrill Essex, a graduate gemologist, examines a diamond in her office at Essex Antiques and Collectibles Ltd. in Evanston. Trading in the cute stuffed animals proved as feverish as the run-up on tulips back in 1600s Holland. At its height, "Rich's Beanie Bungalow" was selling 5,000 of them a month.
And even though the Beanie Baby market disappeared, Essex, a Paramus, N.J., native who holds a master's degree in business administration from Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Meliska, who holds master's in both business from Loyola and is a certified public accountant and licensed Illinois auctioneer, realized they could use eBay to sell other items worldwide to the highest bidder.
Now the husband-and-wife business partners run a successful business, Essex Antiques and Collectibles, out of their Evanston home. Meliska, a native of Chicago, has been at the business full-time since February 2006, when he left his last job in banking.
Seeks highest bidder Essex Antiques and Collectibles handles liquidations from appraisal to sale. But they don't hold traditional onsite estate sales. Rather, they look for the highest bidder for each individual item, quite often on eBay but also through a network of dealers and other contacts they both maintain. The idea is for the customer to receive the highest price; Essex, in turn, gets a percentage of the proceeds. The percentage varies, going down with larger estate sizes.
The couple's main customers are those going through a major life change, usually as part of the three "Ds," as Essex puts it - divorce, downsizing or death. Essex handles customers who are not just trying to find a buyer for one or two items, but a whole slew of items. This could include not only furniture, but also works of art, gems and other collectibles.
Growth expectations While not revealing their sales revenue figures, the couple say they plan to double last year's total. This year, they have grown to the point that they now have grown from four to six part-time employees, who work from their homes to do the eBay listings and prepare shipping documents. They now sell items through as many as 2,000 auctions a week, and have the highest rating by eBay. This trustworthiness of customers and potential buyers is key to the success of their enterprise, said Ellie Thompson, president of the Midwest chapter of the Women's Jewelry Association. "A business like theirs is built on their reputation," said Thompson, who noted that she has known the couple for five years. "A high level of integrity is what maintains their reputation. And when all you have is reputation, you work hard for your client."
Appraisals aside, Essex said a corollary skill she has developed has been hand holding, while her customers anguish over parting with items that have sentimental value.
Owner attachments "There's an attachment to it. Once they go beyond the attachment and are willing to part with the jewelry, we step in," Essex said. "It's often a trying time. For example, one woman wanted her (late) mother's diamond ring appraised but she (the woman) wouldn't take off the ring."
Essex ended up determining the ring's value while it remained on the woman's finger.
They have found cultivating trust in their customers to be key. "After you engender their trust, they bring out the more important items," said Essex, telling the story of an elderly gentleman who ended up bringing out a photograph of the Romanoff family, killed in the Russian Revolution, with hand autographed signatures. "Only Anastasia's name was clearly legible. But we had been to Santa Fe and saw a book where the (Romanoff) girls were wearing the same clothes. We vetted it through art dealers," she said.
It fetched $12,001. |
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