Nashville Antiques Week Buyers Say New Site Is Much Needed

Jan. 3, 2012 - PRLog -- NASHVILLE, TN-- When NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com launched in November 2011 as the destination site for the antiques shows and happenings that make Nashville the place to be the first week in February, not even the site’s co-founders expected it catch on as quickly as it has.

But, Eric Miller, co-founder along with Regina Kolbe, announced today that traffic is building exponentially, faster than the blog postings can go up. “It’s clear,” Miller, stated, “that the thousands of affluent buyers preparing to go to Nashville need clarity on the events.”

Over the past last 31 years, Nashville has blossomed into an antique buyer's center. The recent addition of Antique Archaeology, a retail store owned by American Picker Mike Wolfe helps cement Nashville's destination status. The longest running show is the Heart of Country Antiques Show at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, now in its 31st year.

It's complimented by Jon Jenkins’ successful Tailgate-Music Valley Antiques Show this year at the Hendersonville Expo Center. And the Nashville Antiques and Garden Show is a benefit antiques show for Cheekwood, a 55-acre botanical garden and museum located on the Cheekwood Estate.

Finally, the Fiddlers Antiques Show continues this year, filling the Fiddlers Inn.

For the collectors who make the trip to Nashville to shop the finest dealers and galleries, the diverse and spread out venues for the shows have proven somewhat of a logistical problem. NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com unifies everything with maps, listing and attractions – all in one place.

The goal of the NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com is to create a seamless experience for seasoned collectors and new buyers. It offers content about the types of antiques and arts being presented and where. It also lists Shows, Attractions, Places Stay, Local Information and Maps. NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com will be accompanied by a mobile app that can be downloaded free.

Miller and Kolbe state that Like its sister sites, AmericanaWeek.com, AsiaWeekNYC.com and PhiladelphiaAntiquesWeek.com- NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com will be kept current year round, giving a full year’s worth of Internet exposure to advertisers.

Named weeks came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s as a way for show promoters to create sales venues for multiple dealers. During the heyday of “antiquing,” they enjoyed enormous success. In recent years, business has fallen off. That is partially due to a shift in America’s taste, the retail nature of auction houses, the strong art dealer communities.

Miller, who launched Urban Art & Antiques in 2007 and Calendar of Antiques.com in 2010, and Regina Kolbe, President of PR To the Trade, a public relations firm specializing in antiques and art marketing, conceived the idea in spring of 2011, after an attempt to rebrand Asia Week as Asian Arts Week to make it a more educational experience while representing a broader segment of auction houses.

“What we discovered,” Miller said, “is that the antiques world is really a universe of a lot of smaller worlds, each tied to a show or an event, each with its own established audience. Our research showed that there was rarely an attempt to broaden the scope of the event through branding or the educational events.

NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com is still accepting advertisers for the site and the mobile app. For details, dealers and antiques show promoters can request a rate card by contacting Eric Miller at eric@antiquesweeksmedia.com. Advertisers need not be from out of town. Local galleries can promote themselves by buying space on the site.

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About Antiques Week Media, LLC
Antiques Week Media, LLC is the publisher of category-specific destination web sites for America's popular antiques weeks. Sites include AmericanaWeek.com, NashvilleAntiquesWeek.com, AsiaWeekNYC.com and PhiladelphiaAntiques Week.com. Regina Kolbe is President of PR To the Trade, a publicity and marketing agency specializing in promotion of arts and antiques. PR To the Trade is the industry’s leader in aspirational marketing. Clients include auction houses, appraisers, antiques show weeks. Eric Miller is a web publisher, writer and promoter. He publishes the popular web magazine Urban Art and Antiques and is co-founder of the Calendar of Antiques.