Katrina's Legacy Changes Landscape For Royal Street Antiques Dealers

NEW ORLEANS, LA.

:Since the dawn of the Twentieth Century, Royal Street in the Vieux Carré has been a destination for high-end antiques. Many of the dealers whose shops line the quaint, slate sidewalks are third- and fourth-generation scions with aging parents who still like to maintain a daily presence in the stores.

"Newcomers" to this group tend to follow the same formula for success laid out by the old guard - opulent offerings, a diversity of period pieces and styles and person-able sales people as adept in the social arts as they are knowledgeable.

According to Bill Rau of M.S. Rau Antiques, who is also president of the Royal Street Guild, an antiques retailers organization, Royal Street brings more than $100 million worth of business into New Orleans annually. Hurricane Katrina hit at the beginning of the profitable fall convention season when doctors and software experts pour into town by the thousands and spend generously. It wiped out what will surely be the entire fourth quarter.

The challenge that the dealers face now is how to survive the coming months.

The good news is that all of the Royal Street dealers and their families escaped harm, though their tales of evacuation are as harrowing as any reported in the media. Four dealers who were able to be reached via email and after many calls made to the erratic 504 area code and England corroborated the whereabouts of others. Among the list of employees, only two have not been located. And the owners reported that they have been able to keep everyone on the payrolls.

Remarkably, Royal Street's buildings and the merchandise within suffered little damage. Located two blocks from the Mississippi River on relatively high ground, Royal Street was not flooded when the levees broke. Nor was it looted. With the Eighth District Police Station and the Royal Street Courthouse positioned squarely in its midst, the area was among the first to receive protection.

Notably, only one shipment of antiques was put at risk on the high seas. "I had just shipped my most expensive container to date," Arthur Harris, proprietor of Harris Antiques, said. The container was rerouted to the Bahamas and, barring evacuation due to Hurricane Rita, was due to dock soon in Houston, Texas.

Having fared better than expected, the dealers' future would seem to be little more than a waiting game. Unfortunately, such a ploy could do irreparable damage to profits.

Historically, antiques dealers are slow to adopt innovative marketing techniques. Yet the Royal Street dealers embraced the Internet as a sales tool in the mid-1990s. It may turn out to be their salvation, as the websites have been their conduit to customers and vendors in recent weeks. Ida Manheim of Ida Manheim Antiques said she has received more than 2,000 inquiries from clients and friends. She is answering each, one at a time, "for as long as it takes."

When asked when she plans to return to New Orleans from California, she said, "hope-fully, within the month." Manheim, who specializes in European furniture as well as Dutch tall case clocks, will begin the recovery by sending her clients catalogs, corresponding with them by mail and contacting them by phone. She expects her personal touch to be a determining factor in the way the health of the business and the city is perceived. Manheim conceded that it may be necessary to do selected high-level shows until New Orleans gets back into full swing.

Harris was equally optimistic about reopening. He, too, acknowledged that doing shows or even opening a satellite store might be the means of reaching a wider audience. With merely six employees, however, the strategy poses logistical issues. Harris, who claims to have one of the largest selections of Nineteenth Century statuary in the south, believes that if enough dealers support the notion it could engender a new spirit of cooperation. In the meantime, he vows that he and his sales-people will work the phones, send out photographs and encourage business on a one-to-one basis.

Rau, the first of the Royal Street dealers to initiate a large-scale multi-channel marketing approach that includes print ads, four-color catalogs mailed eight times a year and the Internet, was able to have his firm's toll-free number rerouted and staffed relatively quickly. Rau then reached out by email to a database of 25,000 about ten days after Katrina.

Rau, who specializes in antiques with exceptional provenance, jewelry and Tiffany silver, stated that he too will reopen the Royal Street shop as soon as possible. He also made the unprecedented an-nouncement that he will inaugurate an M.S. Rau showroom in New York City. With two of his salesmen having coincidently evacuated to the New York metropolitan area, the move makes sense.

The generosity of third-generation dealers Alan and Stephen Wachman of Charles Cheriff Galleries makes it possible. The Wachmans, who specialize in French antiques, have moved the contents of an entire floor of their building at 84 University Place onto other floors, thus freeing up 1,800-square-feet of space for Rau's property. M.S. Rau, Manhattan, plans to open in early October.

Just one dealer said he had no plans to continue to make Royal Street his headquarters. Andrew Hall, who holds the grandfather clock concession at Harris Antiques, last spring moved the majority of his stock to Newark, England and set up shop.

Hall commented that the atmosphere for brisk sales is more conducive to his type of merchandise in the United Kingdom. He will not abandon Royal Street completely, though, and hopes to continue to display inventory in Harris's while seeking additional Southern outlets for his merchandise.

Through the years, Royal Street has weathered fire, floods and depression. It is unlikely that it will falter now.

Only time will tell.