Here’s a thing you can do.
Danish Modern Design is a style of furnishing and interior design that became a part of pop culture in the 60’s. I mostly know it from Mad Men and the waiting rooms of high-end chiropractors. It’s popular right now in Victoria and has been for about seven years. It’s likewise popular in Denmark, the source.
Danes are bonkers about weird-shaped lamps, stuff made of teak, and interesting chairs. They create them and sell them to each other, then will them to their children, who resell them to other Danes. It’s a whole world of fascination that I failed to notice in my life before 2017, because I was living in shared houses with degenerates who couldn’t be relied on to keep plastic plates and cups in good condition, let alone fine furnishings (I admit, I was as degenerate as the rest of them). I cultivated non-interest to avoid wanting things I couldn’t have.
However, in the past year I helped open a Danish vintage and retro furniture store, in Denmark no less. I learned how to identify a Bumling lamp and a Bretoia chair, and god help me, started to appreciate them. When I returned home from Denmark, my first acts were to gift my father a Louis Poulsen lamp that I brought home in my carry-on luggage, and refinish my parents’ teak dining room table.
Next I started thinking about a business plan that my partner in Denmark suggested to me. You could fill up a container with stuff for relatively cheap in Denmark, ship it here, ideally have every item sold before it came off the boat, and make a little money and a lot of entertainment.
This idea gave me a fantastic excuse to go to each store in Victoria that buys and sells Danish modern furnishings, or anything remotely similar. I made friends with the owners, showed them a photo album, and tried to gauge whether they could be customers or not. Here’s the catalog I showed them.
Easy Livin’ is on Mason Street in an old brick warehouse. The owners are a couple who refinish stuff at home in their basement. Their style is middle-high end and they can sell small dressers, dining room tables in the winter, and some ceiling light fixtures. Cheryl didn’t think she could use most of what I showed her, as it’s too literally Danish, like traditional farmhouse type stuff, as opposed to Danish modern. Good tips, and she recommended me several other places in Victoria as well as Vancouver.
Trig Vintage is also owned by a retired couple who run the place more as a hobby than as a moneymaker. They have more inventory space than some of the other places I looked at, and a big showroom on Fisgard Street. Their style is lower end and more eclectic than Easy Livin’, and more closely matches the style in my photo album. I didn’t get to talk to the owners themselves, but their employee Roshan was enthusiastic about my plan. He thought I’d be more successful in Vancouver though.
The Fabulous Find, further down Fisgard Street, is the most high-end of the lot – the owner, Trena, is younger and almost exclusively interested in brand-name designers and expensive pieces. She had a blue table painted with an extraordinary design that I’d call “unique”, except that the shop in Denmark has one just like it in red. Nothing in my catalog got her attention, but she wrote me a list of designers she’s interested in and told me to send her any other pictures of stuff I come across, and she’d be happy to give me prices.
Charmaine’s, on Fort Street, had the most inventory, most variety, and also the most customers of any of the shops I checked. Unfortunately, the owner was busy the day I went there, and I got two jobs and started working more than full time before I had a chance to talk to her.
I also had a long conversation with the owners of The Old Attic in Saanich. Although most of their stuff is on consignment, not really Danish at all, and they don’t buy much stock, they had plenty to share. The owner there gave me a long list of stuff she could move easily, a list that included “decanters”, “copper lamps”, “weird brass stuff”, “records, as many as you can give us”, and “mailboxes”.
On January 3rd I have an appointment in Vancouver, so I’ll probably stay for a couple of days and give the shops there the same treatment. Then the question is – how much is this all going to cost, how much money can I hope to make, and do they balance each other out? It’s a simple math problem, but there are a lot of variables.
For instance, what’s the tariff? Here’s the schedule of customs tariffs, which is rather detailed. Chairs, for example, are taxed at 9.5%. Lamps and lighting fittings are taxed at 7.5%. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a category for just “used furniture”? But it seems more intricate than that.
What does a shipping container cost? We priced one at $15,000, shipped, back in March, but I’ve written to some other companies for quotes. You can apparently buy your own and reuse it if you do this a lot. When you’re done, I suppose you could live in it, furniture and all…
And how do you get your stock? If my partner in Denmark is still on board, I can get help with that. He gets his stuff from people who bring it to his premises and sell it to him, from estate sales, and from containerpladsen auctions. Containerpladsen is the dump, in Danish. It’s more than just garbage – it’s next-level recycling as well. Plastic, metal, compost and paper are separated out. As well, anything that’s still useful, like books, bikes, clothing and household items are saved and sold through a little shop located in the center of the dump. Anything valuable is put up for auction on the dump-run website. I love containerpladsen so much I could write a book about them, and maybe I will. But the point is, my Danish guy has got a good eye for craftsmanship and excellent negotiating skills, as well as a 700 sq. meter warehouse for inventory. So it could work.
I’m not too worried about sharing this killer business idea with you all, because a) ideas are worthless until you put in the work and b) lots of other people are doing this already, which shows that a market does exist. So if you want to try stealing it out from under me, here’s the website of the containerplads auction, which is brilliant, and deserves another book: http://www.genbrugsauktion.dk.