The Business of History - American Pickers

Eclectic consumer tastes, innovative interior designers, progressive urban developers and a legion of treasure hunters are fueling new interest in the antiques and artifacts of a bygone America. Shaped by tastemakers across TV and the web, the contemporary collectibles business extends from the dust and rust of the flea market circuit to the rarefied air of the auction house, running the gamut from lowbrow culture to high art. Discover the wheelers and dealers reclaiming the past to forge one of today's most compelling entrepreneurial opportunities.

Americana Idol
Everything old is new again on American Pickers, the TV show that's rejuvenating consumer interest in the antiques and collectibles market. Now creator and star Mike Wolfe is leveraging a multigenerational passion for the past to build the multimedia empire of the future.

Mike Wolfe is in his element. The star and creator of History channel's hit showAmerican Pickers weaves his way through the vintage motorcycles, folk art and random oddities that line the floor of his new storefront in Nashville, Tenn.'s Marathon Village, a sprawling small-business complex that a century earlier housed the short-lived Marathon Motor Works auto factory.

When construction is complete, the 3,000-square-foot site will serve as the Music City outpost of Antique Archaeology, the collectibles retail shop Wolfe founded in LeClaire, Iowa, more than a decade ago. For now, though, it's a work in progress, to put it charitably--with the scorching summer months closing in fast, the space still has no air conditioning (no electricity whatsoever, for that matter), the front window is shattered and the walls are in dire need of a contractor's attention.

Wolfe could not care less. "Look at these beams, man," he raves as he tours the room. "Look at these poles--they're like masts off a ship. Look at the brick. You just can't re-create this kind of space."

Wolfe lives for this stuff. Each week on American Pickers, he and his co-host, childhood pal Frank Fritz, travel the country's highways and byways in dogged pursuit of hidden gems and one-of-a-kind artifacts languishing in small-town attics, basements, barns and junkyards. But the genteel, fragile heirlooms and curios that once dominated the antiques market are not Wolfe's forte. He loves rust, dust, dirt and grime almost as much as the Curtiss V-twin motors, Airstream trailers and circus sideshow banners that lurk underneath.

And he's not alone: Launched in January 2010, American Pickers attracts more than 5.7 million viewers each week, less than 1.5 million off the pace set by sibling series Pawn Stars, History channel's flagship show and basic prime time cable's highest-rated original series.

With the American Pickers cult flourishing, Wolfe's passions are going mainstream. Collectors are clamoring for the Americana curiosities and oddities that make up the bulk of what he and Fritz pick each week, and their mud-caked, sunbaked aesthetic is shaping interior design trends as well.

"I've always bought what I liked, and I've made a living off of my eye and my gut and what I think is cool," Wolfe says. "On Monday nights, I have an hour-long commercial on what I think is hot. Imagine being in business and having that opportunity. Whatever we're finding, people are like, ‘Wow, that's cool. I love it. I want to buy one of those.'"

Wolfe is parlaying that opportunity into an empire, balancing his production responsibilities (every two weeks on the road filming, every other two weeks off) with a host of projects that promise to further cement his stature as the new face of the business of old stuff. Foremost among Wolfe's ambitions: Kid Pickers, a series of educational books on collecting with a corresponding social media website designed to connect children with others who share their interests. There's also an official American Pickers Guide to Picking, scheduled for publication in September, and even Music to Pick By, a CD assembled by Wolfe and legendary Nashville record producer Brian Ahern complete with three new songs composed and recorded by Wolfe and country singer/songwriter Dale Watson.

"I'm a businessman, so I'm gonna make hay while the sun's shining," Wolfe says. "I've been self-employed for 23 years. That's an accomplishment in itself. You gotta be out there hustling. If you're not, you're not gonna make it."

Labors of Love
American Pickers, Pawn Stars and the myriad copycats spawned in their wake--American Restoration, Storage Wars and Auction Hunters among them--have made unlikely celebrities out of the small-business owners who make their living buying and selling the collectibles at the center of each series, blurring the line between PBS's venerable Antiques Roadshow (the granddaddy of the genre) and more blue-collar, mainstream TV fare. But what sets American Pickers apart is that it focuses less on the monetary value of the items Wolfe and Fritz uncover and more on the larger-than-life collectors they meet in a day's work.

"The people we pick are the real stars of the show," Wolfe says. "Audiences remember [fan-favorite collectors] Hobo Jack and the Mole Man. They remember the people, not what I bought from them. Frank and I are just telling their stories. It's a business, yes, but it's always been an honor that people open their homes and their hearts to us."

Community Effort
Although American Pickers ranks among the most popular and talked-about shows on TV, Wolfe understands the viewing public is notoriously fickle. "Everything has an expiration date," he says. "I'm a realist. Do I think I'm Pickin' Jesus? No. That's ridiculous."

So Wolfe is busy building the foundation of his post-American Pickers life and career, looking to his own past to set the future in motion. His Kid Pickers social networking platform (which, unlike the History channel-owned American Pickers brand, is Wolfe's and Wolfe's alone) is designed to offer today's children something the young Wolfe himself craved but never had: a means to connect with other kids who share a passion for picking and collecting. Children, it turns out, make up a sizable chunk of the American Pickersaudience.

"We have so many people who tell us that our show is the only one they watch as a family, and that's such an honor," Wolfe says. "Sometimes kids come in to Antique Archaeology and bring their collections with them. Their parents can't believe how much they know about this stuff. Every kid is born a picker, and we're gonna teach them how to pick and what to pick. Kid Pickers is going to be my legacy."

In the meantime, Wolfe still has a business to run. Expanding Antique Archaeology to Nashville further strengthens his ties to the local design and decorator community, which constitutes a vital component of his client base.

"They rely on guys like me to find these amazing statement pieces," he says. "I'm not the guy who can finish a room, but I'm into space and color, and when I look at something, I can see past it not having an antiquity value."

Setting up shop in Nashville also brings Wolfe into close contact with the city's vibrant creative culture. Already, he has commissioned Hatch Show Print (a letterpress print shop first opened in 1879) to produce a limited-edition poster commemorating Antique Archaeology's opening.

Wolfe is giving back to Nashville as well. With the city putting the finishing touches on an $8.7 million effort to restore the historic Franklin Theatre, a 74-year-old cinema house that reopened in June, Wolfe stepped in to complete work on its green room, unearthing vintage 1940s fixtures that evoke the building's glory days.

The Franklin faced imminent demolition before local residents mounted a grass-roots campaign to bring it back to life. Now it lives on, allowing elder Nashvillians to relive their memories of the venue--and giving future generations the opportunity to create memories of their own. Maintaining the ties that bind yesterday, today and tomorrow is what drives Wolfe above all else.

"My job is putting things in their rightful place. If I don't buy something, it's going to rot, so I have to rescue it," he says. "One time I sold a green, wooden toolbox to a woman. She told me, ‘When I was a little girl, I used to go out to my grandfather's shed. I would stand on a green toolbox just like this one, climb up on his workbench and spend hours with him.' For me, those kinds of emotional connections are what this is all about."