Are Social Media Influencers Changing The Antique & Vintage Marketplace?
Is this new generation of tech-savvy influencers actually transforming the antique and vintage market in a way that hasn't been seen before, or is this just the rehashing of an old familiar story?
As the recent worldwide pandemic revealed, people headed indoors for two years and started looking for something to do - including, creating new online profiles - with some estimating a thousand-fold increase in accounts related to the resale trade alone. The Art Basel survey of "Global Collecting For 2022," also estimated that purchases of antiques and collectibles online accounted for over twenty-percent of total decorative arts sales - an increase of almost double since 2019.
Former marketing analyst at Meta (Facebook/Instagram), John Chapman, who now runs his own decorative arts consulting and ad-placement firm for online entrepreneurs, says there's been a massive change in how people are conducting business today... Chapman says that before he left Meta for his own start-up, some of the biggest account growth he witnessed came from within the decorative arts community.
Tina Humphries, who's company specifically promotes growth-and-development strategies for accounts on sites like Instagram, Etsy and Tik-Tok, believes that popular success comes down to a lot of networking which helps spread the word. In her considerable experience, many of the younger players she's seen come to her with dreams of expanding their reach have already done a lot of the important work - namely - they've managed to get others to promote them by sharing.
Ashford.com AIA Staff December 8, 2022
