Ventura Boulevard Dealers as Alike as Mismatched Porcelain
The nature of antiques shopping on Ventura Boulevard can be summed up with a story about a map that no longer exists.
It was created by a pair of store owners who hoped that a guide listing all the antiques shops between Sherman Oaks and Studio City would give the San Fernando Valley’s premiere commercial street an identity as a destination for buyers and collectors.
While other shopkeepers also saw the wisdom in presenting such a united front, the map’s ink was barely dry before the squabbling began, recalls one veteran dealer.
This merchant thought his store’s name should go ahead of that merchant’s. One store objected to the inclusion of another that sold reproductions as well as antiques. And so on.
Not long afterward, the women who published the map went out of business, taking with them their vision of cohesion.
Although carried out six or seven years ago, their failed experiment is an apt metaphor for the eclectic, individualistic and disparate character of the antiques trade along Ventura Boulevard.
Within a three-mile stretch, enough vendors offer enough kinds of merchandise to make a visit worth it for those who don’t mind a hunt-and-peck approach to antiquing, particularly on weekdays when metered parking is fairly easy to come by.
But it would be more than a stretch to consider the collection of about two dozen far-flung businesses an antiques district per se.
“Here, we are just every man for himself, and everybody is pretty much across the board in terms of what they sell. Little stores spring up and they spring down,” said Rick Johnson, whose 17-year-old Sherman Oaks Antiques Mall at 14034 Ventura Blvd. showcases the wares of 97 dealers selling everything from exquisite vintage jewelry to Pokemon cards.
Yet even though Ventura Boulevard’s pedestrian-unfriendly streets don’t exactly encourage leisurely browsing or window shopping, some individual stores have become destinations unto themselves.
The venerable Mitchell Litt Antiques at 14918 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks has been selling fine English and French antique furniture and decorative accessories for 26 years without ever advertising or holding a sale in its 25,000-square-foot showroom.
Another local draw is the Cranberry House, 12318 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, a 7-year-old store featuring top-of-the-line collections of 140 dealers that has been described as “the Nordstrom of antiques malls.”
Smaller specialty shops, such as the 22-year-old Piccolo Pete’s, 13814 Ventura Blvd., an emporium for Art Deco devotees, and Hadley, 13023 Ventura Blvd., a 4-year-old purveyor of decorative home furnishings in a romantic “shabby chic” style, also have loyal clientele.
Frank Piccolo, owner of Piccolo Pete’s, says his store is so established that he has started selling to the adult children of some of his longtime customers.
During the years he’s been in business, more than 200 brides-to-be with a passion for 20th century modern design have registered at Piccolo’s store.
“My customers have grown with me,” he said. “Tastes change, but within the style, not necessarily from style to style.”
Ventura Boulevard also has several stores catering to budget-conscious consumers whose taste in antiques is informed more by function than form.
Ross Crawford, who opened A Place in Time Antiques at 13327 Ventura Blvd. about 18 months ago, takes pride that the highest-priced item in his store--a burled walnut armoire--sells for less than $3,000.
“At some of these places you need a loan officer and a tax accountant when you go to buy a piece of furniture. That’s just not my style,” said Crawford, whose store specializes in painted and inexpensive antique furniture.
Crawford credits the moderate success of his business more to the foot traffic generated by several nearby restaurants and a carwash across the street than the presence of other antiques stores in the area.
“We get people from Agoura Hills and Westlake who are working nearby or going to see a friend for lunch and happen to see us and stop by. They didn’t come shopping here,” he said.
The lure of wholesale prices has also made the cleverly named Aunt Teek’s at 4337 Woodman Ave. (just off Ventura) a popular haunt for dealers and designers. Owners Edna and Larry Lee opened the store five years ago after they bought an entire houseful of furniture from a retired actress.
Today, they get their inventory from estate sales and individuals who sell their goods on consignment. Among the arcana on display recently was the moose-engraved front door from a former home of Shirley Temple Black, as well as several pieces of furniture from the Benedict Canyon home where the Manson murders took place.
Although several shop owners stressed that pricing their merchandise reasonably is essential to success in the Valley, they also rely heavily on customers from outside the Valley for much of their business.
Hadley Gilkey Davis, owner of Hadley, gets virtually no walk-in traffic at her store and estimates that as much as 90% of her sales go to interior decorators and private collectors from Beverly Hills, Malibu and other parts of the Westside “who come here for the price,” about a third lower than on the other side of Sepulveda Pass.
Shabby chic “is a young look, it’s new money. The Westsiders are the ones who understand it,” she said.
One advantage to doing business on the boulevard is the relative proximity to the television studios in Studio City.
Johnson recalls that when “Quantum Leap” was on the air, set designers for the show were a stable source of sales for many of the stores in the area.
“Every week they had to buy a brand new set, ‘20s through the ‘60s. That helped us out a lot,” Johnson said.
Parts of episodes of both “Practical Jokes and Bloopers” and “L.A. Law” were filmed at Piccolo Pete’s. Mitchell Litt and the Cranberry House rent pieces to studio productions.
According to several longtime shopkeepers, the boulevard had more of an “antique row” flavor before the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The quake, combined with rising rents, the growing popularity of estate sales among the general public and the notoriously hit-or-miss nature of the antiques business, caused many smaller stores to close their doors. In their places opened new furniture stores and services such as pet-grooming salons.
“For somebody to start in the antiques business today would be very hard unless they had been collecting for a very long time,” observed Piccolo. “You can’t just open a store and fill it. What is takes besides the money is the merchandise, and the merchandise is not there anymore in abundance.”
Johnson believes the recent advent of Internet auctions could turn another round of small, single-proprietor antiques stores into relics.
“The days of the little old lady who sits in her shop with her Depression glass all day are over,” Johnson said. “We are all fighting the computer.”
Jessica LaMar, co-owner of the Cranberry House with her daughter, Monica Wheat, thinks that despite the growing influence of the Internet, retail antiques outlets will always have a role to play, as long as they are willing to change.
At the Cranberry House this has meant appealing to customers by offering services such as a reference book center, a snack bar offering complimentary coffee and cookies, and custom gift wrapping--in other words, “doing all the things necessary to have a viable business.”
“This is a business that is very tactile,” said LaMar. “When you are shopping for this sort of thing, it’s shopping for the moment. It’s rarely shopping for pure need.”
