YouNeedArt.co.uk Interview
The wait for Newark Antiques Market is almost over, not only are our wonderful visitors excited for the return of our markets, but our antiques dealers are also itching to have our markets back on!
Richard Laker, a Newbury art dealer and frequent iacf stallholder, is one of the hundreds of stallholders that will be selling at Newark next week, let’s find out what Richard has planned for Thursday 15th & Friday 16th of April!
What are you most excited for coming out of lockdown?
A mixture of pleasure and a little trepidation coming out of lockdown. For some weeks now we’ve been buying well but without much of an income so like many we need things to start adding up again by selling more fairly soon. The trickle of business you get online, including some Instagram fairs keep things ticking over but it’s no substitute overall for a great actual fair with face to face customers.
Do you have anything planned for your return to iacf antiques markets?
Our first fair is due to be Newark starting on the 15th April. Frankly it feels like unopened presents at Christmas. Very exciting, full of expectation, hoping the keenness of many buyers to get out again will make up for the financial hesitation on the part of some others. Definitely a glass half full and hoping It will be another roaring 20s as lots have suggested!!
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On the bright side We’ve never had quite such a long lead in time to buy stock and because we have good connections with various artists and other suppliers we feel we’re in a very strong position and we’ll be coming to fairs with a good amount of truly original stock including many pieces of art new to the market.
We heard that you plan to bring your ipad to future antiques markets, how will this help your customers?
Yes, it became apparent in 2020 that as we have several hundred pieces of art we can’t possibly bring every piece out to every fair, so we’ll be adding an iPad to our selling tools in 2021 so that we can show a lot more pieces to customers that might not actually be in the back of the van. We’ve got used to posting a lot more over this last year or so and I think this trend will inevitably continue so the iPad will facilitate this.
Thank you for speaking with us Richard, we cannot wait to welcome you back to our antiques markets. To find out more about Richard and his business, YouNeedArt.co.uk, watch our Interview with Richard, where he talks about all things art and gives us an insight to some of his favourite pieces of work, why he started selling at iacf antiques fairs and some sneak previews of stock!
Visit YouNeedArt.co.uk today!
