Class of 1923
The trick of converting a hobby into a successful business has been well illustrated by Robert Landreth Coller (Bobby on the Dartmouth campus). Trading in antique furniture was to him first of all a pastime. But his business now is successful from two points of view; first, because it provides Bobby with the activity from which he derives a real pleasure, and, secondly, because it has been quite remunerative.
Thirty-three years ago, Bobby was born at Sheboygan, Wis. Two months later, he and his family moved to Brooklyn, where they lived until he went to Dartmouth. Bobby tells me that the most pleasant days of his boyhood were spent in his basement workshop. As far back as he can remember, he has been making things with his hands, but until his twenty-fifth year, this activity expressed itself chiefly with mechanical gadgets. When he was twelve years old, he decided to build an automobile, and construction started in the basement workshop. A motorcycle engine was installed for power, and after several months of consistent effort, a not bad kid's motor car stood on the basement floor. The only trouble with this fine piece of work was that he could not get it out of the basement. Bobby did not tell me whether or not it is still there.
Motorcycles provided his next form of diversion. Six of these he bought secondhand, which he repaired and rebuilt, later selling them for a profit. As time went on and the motor car industry grew in America, so did Bobby's interest. Bobby tells me that he has owned three Mercers, two Dusenbergs, an Italian Fiat and other makes numbering in all seventeen, but to date, has never owned a new car in his life. He was able to obtain real enjoyment from remodeling racy automobiles to the point where they were still more racy. Those who knew Bobby in college will remember that much of his time was spent—when not playing on the baseball team—in designing motor car bodies, and thus it is only as expected to find him employed by an automobile company in his first job after graduation.
The kind of work to which he was assigned at the Rolls-Royce plant at Long Island City was not to his liking, however. The art of creating new designs was not materially improved in his opinion by lying on his back looking up into the works of a car beautiful enough from the top but just so much mud and grease from underneath. So for two years he knocked around from one job to another, mostly with motor car companies, but never getting exactly what he wanted. He knew that he would never be successful until he was doing a kind of work that he really liked, and having the courage of his convictions, he kept changing jobs until the right thing did come along.
During those two years of experiment, however, he acquired a hobby, that hobby being an active interest in antique furniture. He read a good deal about it, and then began buying and selling in a small way for himself. He liked to have good collector's pieces in his possession, and occasionally was able to make a little money on the side. His hobby did not completely sublimate his interest in automobiles, however, for during this time, he assembled and built seven quarter-mile racing cars. Bobby tells me that a quarter-mile racing car is usually an underslung Ford used for racing on dirt tracks at county fairs. The way he got his materials for building these cars is interesting. He had a friend on Long Island who was the owner of an automobile graveyard." Bobby made a deal with this friend to let him carry out as many parts as he needed for one automobile for the sum of twenty-five dollars. In his own shop he would reassemble these parts, make the body by hand, supply racing wheels and a 16-valve head for the motor and sell the finished product for about six hundred dollars.
As time went on, his hobby became more and more dominating. He became better able to recognize good pieces and appraise their value. In 1925 he became so enused about antiques that he made confections with H. Douglas Curry, a man having one of the finest collections of English antiques in the country, and it was with this firm that Bobby made his start. Mr. Curry did not have a shop at that time, and Bobby persuaded him to start one. He was put in charge, and for more than a year worked at the bench restoring antiques and doing some design work of his own. Bobby bought the machinery used in the shop with his own money, and therefore, when he was ready to go into business for himself, he was able to sell this shop—which he had put on a selfsustaining basis—for enough money to set himself up in business. In 1926 he made a start, first occupying a small space in the rear of another shop on East 64th St. In six months, however, business had come his way with such rapidity that he required the whole shop and was employing from twelve to fifteen cabinet makers. During the prosperous days of 1928 and 1929, the volume of his business afforded him substantial profits. A display room was opened at 64th St. at Madison Ave., but then came that memorable October in 1929. Bobby says he is not a good business man, but all that is needed to prove the contrary is knowledge of the fact that Bobby did see the "writing on the wall" and dispensed with this luxury within a few months.
A good antique dealer must have good motor transportation, and running true to form, we find Bobby buying another automobile which he could remodel to his own liking. Rolls-Royce cars—even when passed along from one owner to another—are not inexpensive, but at an opportune moment, Bobby was able to buy one at considerable advantage to himself. Running true to form, the Rolls was rebuilt "a la Coller."
Bobby describes his present business as follows: A dealer in antiques;—a reproducer of period furniture;—a designer;an interior decorator. This business now occupies two floors of the building at 320 East 63d St., and Bobby also maintains a country antique shop near Ridgefield, Conn. The place in the country is open only half of the year when Bobby lives there with his mother and father. The Ridgefield place is an antique in itself, being an old tavern built one hundred and fifty years ago, and known at that time as The Tavern of the Three Roads. Bobby now calls the place "The Antique Shop of the Three Roads," and if you happen to pass a place almost buried in flowers, that is Bobby's country antique shop. Flowers are his mother's weakness, and he employs a gardener to see that she is well supplied.
The art of his work seems to be of greater interest than the business. Bobby insists that he has no desire to have a big organization; says there is too much grief connected with that. He described his feeling about business when he left Hanover as being like medicine—something to take. And about business, as such, he still feels the same way. Perhaps it is this right mental attitude that has made him successful; that is, the business of putting the art of his work, and the joy of creative effort ahead of a single track desire for profit.
Secretary, Box 14, Wall St. Station, New York
