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On April 13, 2000, I interviewed Sharon Boccelli, an auctioneer and owner of Sharon Boccelli & Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sharon got started in the antiques business over 20 years ago having no knowledge or experience in the field, no capital and not even a college degree. Her profile is inspirational and shows how hard work and determination pay off, something we online auctioneers can take heart in knowing. Sharon shared her story with me, and she has some interesting things to say about the antiques business. Here is her profile, interspersed with excerpts from our interview.
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Sharon Boccelli & Company is located at 358 Broadway in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University and MIT. The exterior of the building reminds one of 19th century London: the quaint lettering on the shop window, the antiques and curios on display. Inside, the shop is crowded but not cluttered, full of antiques to be sold at an upcoming auction. The building has been carefully and tastefully restored. The shop is sunny, clean and refined.
We conducted the interview in Sharon's large office upstairs. With a fire crackling in the fireplace, Sharon told me her story in a broad Boston accent as she sipped a cup of tea.
Sharon was 26 years old when she started in the antiques business.
"I had a corporate job at General Motors. I started working on a line building cars, and then I mistakenly went into management, which was a nightmare. So I wanted something else to do. One day I walked up to Harvard Square, went into Wordsworth in the business section and there was a book there. I was looking at all the books, and the smallest book for the cheapest amount of money was 'How to Get Started in the Antiques Business.'"
Sharon read that book cover-to-cover and promptly sold her car and bought a pick-up truck. "I got the trash schedule from all the surrounding communities. I would get up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I would go pick trash and throw it in the back of my truck. And I would refinish the pieces. And I didn't know anything about antiques or anything else. If it was attractive and looked good, I would take it."
After filling a room in her apartment from floor to ceiling, front to back, she went looking for a storefront. She found one a few doors down from the business' current home. She kept her job at General Motors while her lover at the time ran the business. After about a year and half, Sharon decided to jump into the antiques business full time. "I decided, all right, I'm leaving this job, this secure job, to go and do this. And my income level dropped tremendously." It was the first of many major risks Sharon has taken in the course of her career.
Four years into the business, she purchased the house at 358 Broadway. "All of the reasons not to start a business is my story, because even when I bought this house, I bought it blind. I never saw the inside of this property."
A big antique dealer owned the property, which had been up for sale for several years. Sharon says it was "substandard" - one step above condemned. There were "tenants from hell" living in the rent-controlled apartments, and a shop on the first floor.
Sharon called the owner one day and told him she'd like to buy the building, but that she had no money, no down payment, and she couldn't get a loan, but that if he financed the deal, she would buy it from him. After another interested party backed out, the owner called Sharon back.
"I told him, 'You have your lawyers draw up the plans and I'll sign them.' He said, well, do you want to know how much it is? And I said, 'oh yeah, I guess I should know how much it is.'"
She paid $65,000 for the building, with balloon payments of $5,000 due each April 15th. She closed the deal on April 11, 1982. "I walked in and I started crying because it was such a dump, I was like, Oh my God, how am I going to do this?
"Everybody was saying to me, you're nuts, he's [the seller] going to screw you, he's going to screw you, but nobody else was giving me any opportunity, and I figured this was really something that I could do.
"It didn't matter, because I just busted my ass and went to work, and I paid off the loan and got an equity line and finished paying him off. And I finished renovating the building, and, amazingly, I did it. I don't know how I did it - I couldn't do it now. I'm too old now."
Sharon needed to move her inventory a lot faster with bills and overhead and repairs. So, while continuing to pick trash for inventory, she started attending auctions, and tried to supplement her income any way she could. "I did everything, I used to cater peoples' auctions. I used to move furniture. I did house moves. I bought a cube van and moved people that needed stuff moved. We cleaned basements and yards - it was amazing, the stuff we did, when I look back.
"One day in 1983 I was working for some auctioneer. I used to make a thousand dollars catering his auctions because he had so many people there. It was summer and they were thirsty and hot and hungry. I looked at the auctioneer and I said, you know, I want to do that, because you're moving the stuff and making money." It was that day that Sharon Boccelli decided to become an auctioneer.
She attended the International Auctioneer School in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. "I came home and I had my first auction, which grossed probably all of $12,000 or so. I was selling marble-topped commodes for $50. God bless the people that gave me an opportunity when I first started, because they really, they sort of paid my dues for me, the
consignors. We did everything that we could to make sure that we ran a fair auction and advertised properly and all of that, but when you're new, you sort of have to pay your dues one way or the other."
Sharon advertised her auctions in the Boston Herald newspaper ("back then it was the Herald, not the Globe"), the Newtown Bee, and mailed flyers to people. "We had a guest book in the shop, and we would have everybody sign. I mean, we tormented people into signing the guest book. So we developed a small mailing list, probably a few hundred names. Now our mailing list is 3,000, and every auction, we delete people who have not been to the sale in a year and a half."
Sharon learned much of the business side of auctions at auction school. "They covered so much territory, like legal documents and that kind of thing. I see and I learn, and that's always been what I do. My knowledge of antiques comes from my library and research, and I'm constantly reading and researching and trying to take in as much information as possible. And I used to, before we were so very busy, try to take courses in specific types of antiques."
I asked Sharon whether there is an "elite" feeling to the Boston antiques business, and how the community received her arrival.
"The way our storefront is, you can hear every single thing that happens on the sidewalk, and to this day, we'll be in here laughing because there'll be dealers outside, talking about how stupid we are and we're never going to make it in this business. I've been in this business for 21 years now, and I'm still here and I still exist.
"There is a lot of elitist - not quality - but types in this business that think that they know everything. You can't know everything in this business. Nobody ever does. There are those people that do think they know everything about everything."
"Dealers?" I asked.
"Dealers, collectors, everybody. It is a very aesthetic business. When I go out on calls I'm in a suit and I have a briefcase. There may be nothing in there, but I have a briefcase.
"We often joke too within the business. All of my employees have college degrees and most of them have masters' degrees. And Ingrid has a PhD. And I'm a high school kid from Lynn, so they often joke about my accent and we make fun. I always say to them, but the bottom line is, you all work for me."
Well, in this day and age, when people work their hearts out and struggle to find time to spend with their families, Sharon has the last laugh. Every July and August, she closes the shop and heads to her cabin in Vermont. It's clear that if Sharon had something to prove 21 years ago when she set out on her new career, she has made her point.
"I always tell people to follow their dreams."
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