Silk Road
By Hal Brown

    After eight years on the Post Road in Westport, David and Barbara Loeding just wanted to do something different. They put Silk Road on the information highway and cleared the way to take off for parts, if not unknown, at least exotic - again.
    Silk Road, their Asian antiques business, was transformed into an Internet-based warehouse business in South Norwalk, at 68 Water St. The Loedings got more time to travel the original trade routes in Asia.
    "We wanted to be able to travel together more," said Barbara Loeding. "We had the kind of business that the person who is in the warehouse, the gallery, whatever, needs to know a whole lot about it. It would have to be a person who has traveled a great deal in Asia."
    The Loedings were interested in antiques even before they began to travel the Orient, but Asian antiques proved more interesting than American and European wares. With retirement - he from the University of Maryland as a psychologist, she from IBM's communications department - Asian antiques became a business.
    The name Silk Road was a natural for the business, conjuring up images of caravanserai and treasures. The Loedings even lived for several years in Xian, China, the old Tang Dynasty capital, at the end of the original Silk Road.
    "We have things from places most people do not associate with the Silk Road, such as the Republic of Georgia, which was a major stop," said David Loeding. The Silk Road, which wanders through more than a score of countries, is not a single thoroughfare but sea routes throughout Southeast Asia and at least two overland routes - the more northerly from China to Rome by way of Russia and a southerly path into India.
"We travel all these places and do the buying ourselves," David Loeding said. "That's the reason we're in business - we're used to doing the travel."
    Running a small business, a multinational small business, presents its own set of problems. The logistics of packing, customs and shipping from, say, Nepal to Norwalk were new for both Loedings.
    "That's the thing where we had the steepest learning curve," Barbara Loeding said. "Of all the things associated with the business, it gives us the biggest trouble and it's of the least interest."
    Take packing and shipping, for instance.
    "In Japan, you never have a problem," said David Loeding. "It comes the moment it's due, and it's packed so well I would feel comfortable if they packed me for shipment. On the other hand, you take the Republic of Georgia or Indonesia or to some extent China, and it's a whole different animal. The largest shipment we received from [Georgia], they just literally dumped it into cardboard boxes. Paintings were mixed with metal, mixed with woods ... a lot were small parts and were just lost."
    Georgia has intelligent, sophisticated people, Barbara Loeding said, but it's been in the global economy only since 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up. Longevity in international trade equals better packing, she said.
Longevity in international trade doesn't necessarily translate to trust, though.
    Five or six years ago, Barbara Loeding was trying to arrange for seagoing transport from landlocked Central Asian cities. Sea transport is the least expensive option for international shipments, she said. "They said you could send it by train to Vladivostok, but you'd have to hire somebody with guns to protect it on the way. I said, 'Forget it.'"
    "It's the same in Nepal," David Loeding said. "In Nepal they tell you we always ship air freight. To send by sea it would have to go up through India or Pakistan, across country. They say if it's less than a container, they guarantee it's going to be stolen. You're taking a chance with a container."
    Customers tell them the process of finding items is almost as fascinating as the items. "One of the consistent comments we get, and many of our customers are very well traveled, especially in Asia, [is] 'Where do you find these things?'" he said. "Well, it's our job. They don't find them for two reasons: They're usually there on business - they're busy doing other things - and they don't get out into the hinterlands like we do. How many things can you find in Bangkok? We bring things in that you don't normally find."
    Shopping, though, can be a bit sticky at times, as the Loedings found in Indonesia.
    On Bali, they decided to make a side trip to Semarang, an industrialized city off the main tourist routes, despite warnings from the sometimes overly cautious U.S. Embassy.
    "We thought, 'Yeah, well, we can just dash over and do what we have to do,'" Barbara Loeding said. "We got into a taxi at the airport and drove straight into a demonstration and it wasn't fun."
    The taxi driver extricated them from the situation, David Loeding said, by "putting the cab in reverse and going very fast."
    Away from the demonstrators, outside Semarang, the difficulties were far from over. "When we got out to the areas where we actually do some purchasing, they had closed the banks, so there were no travelers' checks, you couldn't use a credit card," he said. "Anybody who was caught there without a lot of cash was just in trouble. They were canceling flights out of the country. It really got a little sticky. We had people conniving to go by sea, by ferry, wherever. It was just absolutely crazy."
    "Definitely our own fault, though," said his wife. "We really do try to avoid places like that.
    The places they visit yield many interesting objects: temple bells from Korea, gamelan gongs from Indonesia, samovars from Russia, lacquer offering bowls and step-like Tansu chests of drawers from Japan and singing bowls from Tibet - the last complete with red-inked characters that are the equivalent of a Lhasa pawn ticket, David Loeding said.
    "We tend to collect things and also bring things to sell that have very strong cultural connections," Barbara Loeding said. "There's a lot to choose from. Ten people could go to Asia and buy things, bring them back and they'd be completely different because there is a wide range of tastes"
    "Most of the things we have are antique, from the 12th century all the way up to contemporary," said her husband. "We have a few reproductions because we don't bring things in necessarily because they're expensive or they're extremely old - that's not our criteria. Our criteria is, is it interesting?"
    The store started on the Web in November, at www.silkroad1.com.
    "We've started to receive messages from people out of the area asking about things," Barbara Loeding said. "It generally requires several messages to kind of get to know people a little bit over the Internet. It's not like face to face."
   Longtime customers told the Loedings that part of the charm of the business was walking around, looking at the new acquisitions - a bit of a problem for a Web-based business, so they kept a warehouse/showroom.
    Keeping the space to show off their wares means the dynamic between longtime customers and the store shouldn't change, David Loeding said.
    "I don't think it will change as long as we have a space like this for people to come to," he said. "It became generational [at the old store]. We had kids coming in and buying things for the parents, and parents buying things for their parents and fathers and grandmothers. There were several generations that would come in and buy gifts for each other."
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