LAKEPORT — When Angie Ratto rented the 3,000-square foot building at 101 S. Main St. two years ago, she wasn”t thinking in terms of the maximization of market accessibility or quantifiable risk analyses.
That”s not her entrepreneurial style.
“I was thinking more like, ?If you build it, they will come,”” Ratto said.
So Ratto started building her Lakeport Antique & Art business — and sure enough, the vendors started signing on, and then the customers started to come.
She”s since expanded her antique and art mall into two adjacent buildings. Now she has a total of 4,400 square feet of retail space, which she rents to 30 vendors.
Ratto”s theories on how to succeed in the retail world are based more on physics — or metaphysics — than accounting or marketing.
“It”s all about energy,” she said as she took a walk through the three connected buildings, past a dozen small rooms plus another dozen or so nooks, niches, and alcoves — all individually rented by collectors, artists and others who want to display and sell their wares but don”t have the time to tend to the day-to-day demands (and headaches) of the retail antique or collectable business.
“It”s for all the people who have a whole other life outside of here,” Ratto said.
“It was an empty building and the place took on a life of its own,” she said. “There”s a lot of good energy here. I think everything is about energy. And I think the vendors who put a lot of their energy into the spaces here are the ones who do really well.”
She has one vendor who pays her $10 a month for a card rack. Another pays $300 a month for a room full room of collectables. She also gets 15 percent of all sales.
“My goal is to keep the rent really affordable,” Ratto said.
Ratto likes the energy of all the old, rare and nostalgic merchandise that lines the shelves, adorns the walls and sits in the corners — glassware, jewelry, lamps, furniture, televisions and radios, dishes, antiques, pieces of art and other collectibles.
Ratto keeps busy. She owns and runs Lake County Cleaners down the street, having bought the business from her parents. She”s a seamstress. She loves buying antiques and collectables, which take up about 1,400 feet of her mall.
“I like the hunt,” she said of shopping for good deals at estate sales.
She might need some more room at her mall some day, but she says she”s ruled out expanding into the building next door.
“It”s a mortuary,” she said. “I”d rather stay out of there.”
