How flea market dealers
are rethinking work

When I first visited Paris’s iconic flea market three years ago, I could have hardly imagined a more vibrant picture: buzzing alleys filled with foreign voices bargaining over a piece of French cutlery, amateurs marvelling at a 19th century palette allegedly belonged to a renowned painter, lively banquets reserved to dealers in every corner. 

Today, these once very bustling streets used to large heterogeneous crowds resemble more a chilled village market in the early hours of the day, with only a handful of visitors here and there. That’s certainly not enough to allow over 1700 art and antiques merchants to earn a living at the “marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen” - the full name of the Paris flea market, which lies just north of the capital. 

It’s considered the largest antiques and second-hand market in the world. It is home to an eclectic variety of boutiques whose offers stretch from high-profile Louis XIV furniture to vintage clothing. 

When the pandemic took a serious turn in France at the beginning of March, national authorities asked for an immediate interruption of all non-essential activities. The “marché” was by its very nature one of them. And so it was that, by the end of March, merchants saw themselves forced to shut their doorless businesses, with almost no alternative way to sell their goods, as very few of them could rely on online platforms.

“I haven’t sold a single item in two months,” a dealer trading all kinds of home supplies, who asked to remain anonymous, told me on a quiet Saturday morning towards the end of June. “My business is not of the kind you can easily shift online,” he explained, with a sad smile. If things didn’t improve, he said, he might have to sell the property, a family heritage since 1918. “I am now living on unemployment benefits, but they might be interrupted in a few weeks. I don’t complain, we [dealers] can’t forever be a burden on the state.”

Up until now many independent dealers have benefitted from temporary state support made available to compensate for forced unemployment, but the French Parliament has yet to decide whether this system will be extended. 

Social distancing rules have hit flea market vendors severely – arguably worse than any other category of salespeople. That’s because proximity and warm face-to-face interactions remain essential to closing a deal. 

Since the reopening in mid-May, visitors have returned in worryingly small numbers. One reason is that many people still fear contracting the virus; another is that international travel restrictions have kept the tourist flows unprecedentedly low. 

“Vous voyez, it’s hard to sell to invisible clients,” the owner of an antiques shop in the iconic “marché Dauphine”, who didn’t want to share her name, says with irony. “What brought me to the “Puces” (flea market) in the first place was the international client base - but where is it now?”

A grim outlook

As the world’s number one tourist destination pre-Covid (with up to 90 million annual visitors) France is badly hit this season. For people who work at the Puces, this year is more about survival than profits. 

Aya Okamoto Besset was only entering her third week as an antiques dealer in Saint Ouen when I met her, and yet she had a very clear understanding of what to expect. “There’s simply nobody! When I decided to rent the shop, I assumed it was a good spot for business”, she recalls painfully. 

 Aya is the young owner of a bric-a-brac store mostly selling Japanese and French pieces collected during her travels. After renting the space in February, she flew to Japan in search of other memorabilia, but remained stranded after quarantine measures took hold. Now that she’s back in France, she can do nothing but hope for the situation to improve, but “with no tourists in sight, selling becomes practically impossible”. 

As a general rule, markets follow a seasonal calendar. A good summer with many foreign holiday makers visiting the flea market is generally followed by a lucrative September, with French visitors willing to stroll down the alleyways on return from their holiday. 

But this year, even la rentrée may look very differently. According to a study released by the OECD in June, unemployment soared to 8.7% in April – 1.1% above February figures – regardless of the 45 billion euros mobilised by the government in a bid to prevent mass layoffs.

Another way of doing business

Things aren’t made any easier by the fact that many independent businesses say some of their difficulties predate the pandemic.

“Gone are the days when foreigners – predominantly Americans – used to buy entire containers of antiques without even asking for a discount,” says Dominique Agrinier, the owner of a store that sells items from the 1960s. The spread of online sales at discount prices has now meant that many visitors take to hard bargaining. 

Adapting to digitalisation has been a challenge for the older generation of dealers, whose traditional methods revolved around the art of persuasion – not creating brand identities or posting viral pictures. 

But Dominique is confident that shifts in consumer behaviour still offer opportunities for independent businesses like hers. Online can facilitate on-the-spot sales, rather than replace them entirely, she points out. “I believe we can invent a new way of doing business at the Puces. Being more active online is an imperative, and it can help attract more visitors in person.”

Félix Maison, an antiques and marble dealer who says he managed to secure 20% of his normal turnover during the lockdown period thanks to online activities, echoes this point of view: “Our profession is in the midst of a revolution. Nobody can afford to not to be showcased online, but our physical presence at the market place is just as vital: it remains an extraordinary aggregator of potential clients.”

While the pandemic has sowed much uncertainty for art and antique traders, some suggest it could become a wake-up call, prompting a rethink of the way they work. 

Dominique believes a deeper trend is at work and won’t soon disappear: despite all the hardship, demand still exists. Younger generations, she says, “have understood that there is nothing more modern than buying old.”