Centerpiece : It’s Haggle Time : Economy: Swap meets offer merchants a large and profitable pool of shoppers--and shoppers a chance to drive hard bargains.

Steve and Melanie Brown took their two children to one of their favorite Ventura markets a few Sundays back, scanning the aisles, as is their custom, without a list. But as soon as Steve spotted something he wanted, he did what has become customary among shoppers there.

He picked up the item and immediately found fault with it.

He said he could live without it.

He complained about the price.

And finally, after receiving an on-the-spot discount of 20%, he walked away the happy owner of a scratched, black motorcycle helmet for $35.

“It’s OK to buy them used if the headlining is intact and the fiberglass shell isn’t cracked,” said Steve, rubbing an elbow across the helmet’s hazy, plexiglass visor.

The Browns, of course, haven’t exactly discovered something new. Ever since the 1800s when the French first coined the word for open-air markets, flea markets--or swap meets as they have been called since showing up in Southern California in the 1950s--have regularly attracted bargain hunters with a taste for the odd, the unusual or the just plain cheap.

Driven by the axiom that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure, swap meet enthusiasts have been known to comb through boxes for the slightest possibility of a good find, while the less driven have been content just to browse among the bric-a-brac while catching a few rays.

But soon, observers say, that may be a description of the swap meet shopper of the past. Nowadays, there’s a new breed.

“Now it’s like they practically want you to give it away,” said Dave Himovitz, a swap meet vendor for the last 23 years, who says the easy banter he used to have with customers is quickly being replaced by a more intense negotiating style.

“Anyone who thinks doing this is easy doesn’t know,” Himovitz added, gesturing toward the rows of unpriced hammers, wrenches and lengths of pipe spread out on the fold-up table before him. “You offer them what you think is a fair deal, but they still want to haggle.”

Haggling by shoppers is only a part of the story. In the last few years, a change seems to have taken place at swap meets throughout the county--a change that many people believe speaks as much about people doing the selling as people doing the shopping.

Once places where used, castoff items were the order of the day, swap meets today are quickly resembling open-air mini-malls. Vendors range from established local retailers to would-be shop owners. And, in a bazaar-like atmosphere most say they are trying to reach out to shoppers who, just like themselves, are feeling the economy’s pinch.

“In a way, what’s happening here is just a reflection of what’s happening everywhere,” said Jim Hibbs, executive director of the Ventura College Foundation, a fund-raising auxiliary group that puts on the college’s weekly swap meet. “Dollars are dear now. People are shopping a lot harder.”

In the three years since Ventura College started holding its market, Hibbs said he has watched the number of weekend shoppers increase dramatically. The same has been true at Ventura’s Pacific 101 Drive-In Swap Meet, where Manager Terry Leach said more than 500 vendors now occupy stalls on Sundays and about 9,000 to 10,000 customers embark on a pilgrimage that, for many, has become a weekly ritual.

“This recession is affecting just about everyone,” Hibbs said. “People are really struggling. There are probably a lot of people coming (to the swap meets) now who wouldn’t have done it before.”

That was the case with Beverly Allen, a Ventura grandmother who used to buy gifts for her grandchildren at toy stores and department stores. She turned to swap meets three years ago, she said, after she discovered that she could pick up many of the same items she wanted--brand-new and still in the boxes--for a fraction of the cost.

Since then she’s found that she can do a lot of her other shopping there: There are vendors selling new T-shirts, socks, blouses, designer jeans, name-brand athletic shoes, housewares, cosmetics and even personal hygiene items.

Some of the items have price tags, but that doesn’t prevent Allen from negotiating.

“Today I bought these for my son,” Allen said, proudly displaying a pair of black cotton slacks as her granddaughter looked on. “Where else can you get a pair of pants for a buck and have fun doing it?”

Joy Somers of Simi Valley, who brought her 12-year-old daughter, Robyn, to the Simi Valley Swap Meet one recent Sunday, has been a “browser” at the markets for the last 20 years. She, too, now buys many of the kinds of items there that she used to buy in retail stores.

“It used to be that there was just old stuff. But now it’s a lot more commercial,” she said. “I like the new things, though. You can get good deals.”

Somers was browsing through a Simi Valley art gallery’s stacks of framed prints, which had been unloaded from a nearby truck.

“I’m not really in the market for art right now,” she said, flipping through prints. “Actually, I probably wouldn’t go into a gallery. . . . But having it out in one place is different. The store comes to you. If I saw something here that I liked, I’d probably get it.”

Somers is exactly the kind of shopper that an increasing number of retailers throughout the county are hoping to attract. Faced with decreased foot traffic at their stores--and a corresponding decrease in the volume of sales--many established business owners are looking to alternative merchandising to stay afloat.

Although statistics for Ventura County alone are not available, the U. S. Bankruptcy Court’s Central District, which includes Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, reported a 33% jump in bankruptcy filings in 1991 over the previous year.

“I have not seen this type of hardship in the county in 20 years,” said Jim Barroca, executive vice president of the Greater Ventura Chamber of Commerce. “Small businesses are having a rough time.”

For many, at least a partial solution has been in the mountain-to-Mohammed approach. By clearing out slow-moving merchandise and taking it to customers at local swap meets on weekends, some businesses are making up for lost profits during the week.

“We have a lot of shop owners from downtown who set up shop here,” said Ventura College’s Hibbs. “Instead of having a sale all the time at their stores, they do some housecleaning, discount it and bring it here.”

Bill Thunell, vice president of R. G. Canning Attractions, which puts on the swap meet at the Ventura County Fairgrounds every six weeks, said established local businesses that set up shop at the swap meets often develop a “recognition factor” that pays off down the line.

“A lot of times they may not sell that much, but people (at the swap meets) begin to familiarize themselves with who the stores are and what they sell,” Thunell said. “(The retail store) Clothestime, for example, really got its start in flea markets. Now they have stores all over the place.”

With success stories such as that, Thunell said he doesn’t find it surprising that more diverse types of businesses are showing up on weekends.

“Why, I’ve even seen chiropractors at swap meets,” Thunell said with a chuckle.

One of them might have been Glendale chiropractor Dr. Gary R. Vitullo, who has been setting up a table at swap meets, including the one at the Ventura Fairgrounds, for the last year. The idea came to him, he said, when he was browsing one weekend at the swap meet in Pasadena.

“In the past, getting public exposure has been a problem because chiropractors usually don’t have the resources that other medical professionals do,” he said. “When you’re a new doctor, you have to get to a point where you become known in the community. The way to do that is to get exposure.”

Vitullo doesn’t give free samples of his work at the swap meets, a decision he said he made “to maintain the dignity of the profession.”

Nancy Wesley and her musician friend, Bill Furman, used to have a collectibles store in Lake Arrowhead. It was a nice store, she said. Then the owner upped the rent.

“That was it. It put us out of the market,” recalled Wesley, who said she packed up her wares and moved most of them to a stall at the Ventura College Swap Meet 18 months ago.

Business at the swap meet hasn’t exactly been great--Wesley said she pulls in about $400 each weekend--but it’s been enough to get by.

“It’s not making us rich, but it’s giving us a sense of freedom,” she said.

Driving a Hard Bargain

‘Now it’s like they practically want you to give it away. Anyone who thinks doing this is easy doesn’t know.’

Dave Himovitz

swap meet vendor

‘Today, I bought these for my son. Where else can you get a pair of pants for a buck and have fun doing it?’

Beverly Allen

shopper

‘In a way, what’s happening here is just a reflection of what’s happening everywhere. Dollars are dear now. People are shopping a lot harder.’

Jim Hibbs

head of Ventura College fund-raising

group that puts on swap meet

POPULAR MEETS

Hot to swap? Here’s a list of some of the county’s most popular swap meets:

* The Ventura College Swap Meet is located in the east parking lot at Day and Telegraph roads every Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. One of the largest college-sponsored swap meets in Southern California, the market has plenty of arts and crafts. Live country music is offered. Admission is free.

* The Oxnard College Swap Meet is on the campus parking lot at Bard Road and Simpson Drive. The market is open on the first and third Saturdays of each month from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Lots of new and used items, arts and crafts. Admission is free.

* The Pacific 101 Swap Meet is held at 4826 Telephone Road in Ventura every Saturday from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and Sundays from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. One of the bigger, more commercialized markets, the venue has hundreds of vendors. Admission is 25 cents Saturdays; $1.25 Sundays. Children under 12 free.

* The Simi Valley Swap Meet is held every Sunday in the parking lot of the Simi Valley drive-in, about one block west of Madera Road on Tierra Rejada Road. Hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Plenty of new wares, along with second-hand items and bric-a-brac. Admission is $1 for adults; children under 14 are free.

* The R.G. Canning Flea Market is held at the Ventura County Fairgrounds about six or seven Sundays a year, with the next market scheduled for Aug. 2. Hours are from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. Admission varies between $3.50 and $4.