asianculturalfestival.org

By KELLY GREENE

Marky Olson, a 63-year-old Seattle blogger, hit rock bottom the day she sneaked eight photo albums out of her parents’ apartment and chucked them in a dumpster.

Already, she had spent two years trying to make a dent in the stuff crammed into her parents’ two-car garage at their retirement villa, finding a home for a boat, model trains and other objects large and small.

After her parents moved to an assisted-living facility and had to cull again, Ms. Olson reached her breaking point. A nurse tried to stop her, but she jettisoned the photos anyway.

“I just couldn’t handle dealing with all the stuff anymore,” she says.

As older parents approach death, they often leave lengthy to-do lists for their children. The tasks can be both physical and financial. Some children must deal with a tangle of arrangements—everything from heating-oil contracts to trusts—along with jumbled stock certificates, car titles or life-insurance policies for which there may be no backup copies. Others must sift through boxes or rooms full of belongings. Sometimes siblings get involved, complicating matters further.

When the chores become overwhelming, it can be difficult for family members to recover sentimental treasures or tie up financial loose ends. At the extreme, the sheer volume of stuff can clutter a house and weigh down its value—a problem if the home must be sold quickly.

It used to be much easier to dispose of estates, experts say. But the slow recovery from the recession has softened the market for antiques and collectibles drastically, according to more than a dozen professionals who handle estate sales and elderly moves. People have curtailed recreational shopping and aren’t moving into bigger homes, stifling demand for furnishings. At the same time, younger homeowners’ decorating tastes have changed in the past decade or so away from the traditional furniture, formal china and silver tea sets found in many older homes.

Julie Hall, an estate liquidator in Charlotte, N.C., says she is seeing people eschew stately grandfather clocks for utilitarian items—even cleaning supplies—they can pick up for cheap.

Here is how to deal with your parents’ stuff while preserving family harmony and finances.

Go Slow—but Don’t Stall Out

When a loved one dies, it is especially difficult to start sorting through his or her stuff quickly. Many families, hoping to avoid getting bogged down, hire a liquidator to clear out everything fast.

On the other hand, if your financial situation allows it, taking some time can help you deal with your grief. Arleen Stern, a geriatric-care manager in New York, spent four months with her family emptying her mother-in-law’s apartment after she died. “She was a Holocaust survivor, and she saved everything,” Ms. Stern says. “It let us reminisce about her life, and that’s a very important way for people to spend time together after a recent loss.”

The trick is to avoid stalling out—or becoming too paralyzed to start. Adult children inheriting a home could wind up on the hook for bills if the estate isn’t settled yet.

Jada Krall, a 41-year-old hospice nurse in Tampa, Fla., says that for several months last year she ignored the task of emptying her parents’ 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home in Charlotte. “I just couldn’t wrap my head around it,” she says. Meanwhile, she and her brother had to pay the mortgage and other bills themselves.

When Ms. Krall hired an attorney to help her handle the estate, he urged her to hurry up and sell the house to stop the financial bleeding.

A real-estate agent connected her with Ms. Hall, the estate liquidator. In three days, Ms. Hall emptied the house, sending valuable pieces to an auction house. They didn’t bring much. Even an antique pump organ that Ms. Krall’s mother had painstakingly restored fetched only $125 at auction, she says: “I was shocked at how little things brought. You think that house is full of so much value, but in this economy it’s not.”

Many Different Options

Long-distance families, sibling rivalries and time pressure all are reasons to consider bringing in professionals to help sift through family belongings.

The question is which type of professional is best suited for your situation.

Estate liquidators, auction houses and consignors typically charge a percentage of the contents’ sale price—often 25% to 35%. Liquidators are the most likely to act as a one-stop shop, and they may bill in different ways for different services. Ms. Hall, for example, charges a percentage of the items that sell, and also an hourly rate starting at $110 for appraisals, clean-outs, and shipping items to auctioneers or charity. The American Society of Estate Liquidators (ASELonline.com), which she runs, provides local referrals.

If you want to sell select items and handle the disposal yourself, you could hire an auctioneer, preferably one who knows your specific merchandise and works well on the Internet, says Susan Devaney, owner of Moving Mavins in Westfield, N.J.

Consignment shops typically charge up to a 50% commission and put an item on their sales floor for 30 days. Find out upfront what happens if it hasn’t sold at that point. You might have 24 hours to a week to come get it—and if you don’t, it is theirs, warns John Buckles, president of Caring Transitions, a network of senior movers and estate-sale businesses.

Senior-move managers and professional organizers charge an hourly rate but typically offer more customized help. They can tap movers, reputable resellers, and auctioneers and charities willing to take books, clothing and home furnishings.

Their rates range from $40 to upward of $125 an hour, depending on where you live and the complexity of the job. Movers and organizers who have joined trade groups that provide training can be found at nasmm.org, napo.net and MoveSeniors.com.

Charles Naftalin, a partner at law firm Holland & Knight in Washington, hired Transitional Assistance & Design, a senior-move management company in Gaithersburg, Md., after his father died, and it quickly emptied his parents’ century-old Victorian house—including 20,000 books.

“We had a deadline,” he says. “We put the house up for sale, and my mom was moving to a one-bedroom apartment.” Mr. Naftalin says he was amazed at how much they accomplished so quickly. He hired the same mover when his mother moved from the apartment to an assisted-living facility.

Take Care of Financial Matters Quickly

In addition to dealing with the furniture and dishes, don’t forget to track down bills for monthly utilities, cancel credit cards, figure out if anything was on auto-pay from bank accounts that may be closed and tie up other bill-paying loose ends. Otherwise, the estate could end up paying late fees or bills for services no one is using—and if the estate hasn’t been settled yet, you could wind up on the hook for some of the charges ranging from utility bills and lawn service to homeowners’ association fees.

The same applies when your parents move to a long-term-care facility. When Jean Dorrell, a Summerfield, Fla., estate planner, traveled to Texas to clean out her father’s home after he moved to an assisted-living facility, she found stacks of mail and soon figured out that he was having $460 a month deducted from his bank account for magazine subscriptions and other purchases—a third of his monthly income.

Financial records can be particularly daunting. Caroline Yates, a homemaker in Rochester, N.Y., served as power-of-attorney for her octogenarian great uncle. She had to make room in his Westfield, N.J., home for health-care aides before a rehab center would release him, following an illness in 2010.

But she had to be careful not to throw out any uncashed checks or stock-sale records, since he had run a small financial business from his home with no computer records. After his death last year, she went through 16 filing cabinets searching for a set of stock certificates—before finding them in a bank safe-deposit box. She wound up hiring Ms. Devaney’s firm to help her clean out the house and sift through the important records.

Dole Out the Heirlooms Diplomatically

Some of the biggest family feuds erupt over the division of day-to-day objects. Those fights can become financial headaches if they hold up the settlement of the estate or, worse yet, drag the family into court.

The most foolproof strategy also is the most awkward: Parents and children discussing what the children will get while the parents are still alive and well, says Marlene Stum, a professor at the University of Minnesota who heads its “Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate?” project.

Aging parents and adult children often don’t realize which objects really matter to one another. Children might not know how the parents wound up with various heirlooms, and the stories might justify keeping what might otherwise seem like junk.

For their part, parents often are surprised to learn their children are more interested in everyday objects used while they were growing up—a pie plate or serving platter—than a coin collection with some monetary value, says Prof. Stum.

But what if a parent dies without talking with the children? First, the siblings need to agree on who is in charge, be it a family member or a professional, and give that person final say, advises Robert Spielman, an estate-planning lawyer and certified public accountant with Marcum LLP in Melville, N.Y. Next, they should determine who was promised something and who wants something that was important to him or her.

After that, they should consider giving everyone color-coded stickers to put on things they want, along with a number ranking it, and list it on a spreadsheet.

“By indicating how important a particular thing is to you in a way that everybody else can see, you’re much more likely to compromise,” says Francine Russo, author of “They’re Your Parents, Too!”

Document Deductions

Next comes the liquidation part. One option that can ease the emotional sting: making donations to charity. Doing so when your parents downsize “can make mom and dad feel good about who will get their stuff,” Mr. Buckles says.

After the second parent’s death, family members should choose the possessions they want, Mr. Spielman says. Next, the estate’s executor sells, or hires someone to sell, everything possible. (If the estate is taxable, estate tax is owed on those assets, whether or not they are sold.)

The children, as the heirs, typically get what is left after any tax is paid. They also get to claim a tax deduction for the fair-market value of any stuff donated to charity on the date of the donation, according to Mr. Spielman.

For donations, the Internal Revenue Service requires the item to be in good condition, and that you get a receipt.

“If the people at the Salvation Army think it’s worth $8,000, get a receipt for $8,000,” Ms. Dorrell says. “Your [accountant] can bring that number down if he needs to, but he can’t bring it higher.”

The IRS, Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries all post lists of suggested values on their websites. But if you have a higher-value item, such as designer clothing, take a digital photo to document it, Ms. Devaney advises.

Donations worth more than the IRS limit may require a formal appraisal, Mr. Spielman says.

Write to Kelly Greene at kelly.greene@wsj.com

By COLLEEN DEBAISE

Read an excerpt from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL COMPLETE SMALL BUSINESS GUIDEBOOK (Three Rivers Press).

The economic downturn has dimmed many entrepreneurs’ hopes of opening a small business, as sources of funding have dwindled or dried up completely. And while many hope 2010 will be better, the outlook continues to be bleak.

The majority of entrepreneurs use personal savings or contributions from family or friends to fund their ventures, but personal wealth, often connected to the value of stock portfolios or homes, hasn’t bounced back.

Meanwhile, banks—under scrutiny by regulators—are continuing to strengthen capital reserves, making it difficult even for entrepreneurs with track records and years of experience to qualify for loans. And professional investors, stung by the financial meltdown, are meting out fewer capital infusions.

Kenneth MacKinnon moved to Los Angeles over two years ago with plans to start a tapas wine bar, but despite a high credit rating and collateral, including a home, the Scotland native says he has been unable to secure the $300,000 he needs from banks or private investors.

“The money supply has been shut off,” says Mr. MacKinnon, who had run a successful seafood eatery for 15 years in the U.K. that he sold in 2007 before moving to the U.S.

Funding from angel investors, or high-net-worth individuals who provide capital to young companies, fell 30% to $9.1 billion in the first half of 2009 compared with the same period a year earlier. That figure is expected to remain flat for 2010, according to Jeffrey Sohl, director of University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research, which tracks the data.

What is encouraging, Mr. Sohl says, is the number of deals has ticked up slightly. While angels are investing less—$370,000 per deal in 2009, versus $530,000 in 2008—about 24,500 ventures received funding during the first half of 2009, compared with 23,100 the year earlier.

“They are still doing the deals, but the deals are much cheaper now,” he says.

Venture capitalists, too, are continuing to invest, but typically in later-stage companies already in their portfolios rather than new prospects, says Mr. Sohl. The average deal size declined to $5.7 million in the first half of 2009, compared with $7.4 million to $7.8 million between 2005 and 2008.

As for Small Business Administration-guaranteed loans or conventional bank loans, the best thing about 2010 is that it won’t be 2009, says Bob Coleman, publisher of “The Coleman Report,” a La Canada, Calif., trade publication for SBA lenders. “We’re better off than where we were 12 months ago, but we are nowhere near where we were two years ago,” he says.

The SBA approved less than 45,000 loans for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, down 36% from a year earlier. Total volume for its flagship 7(a) loan was $9.3 billion, off year-ago levels by $3.4 billion.

Stimulus-related measures, however, contributed to an uptick in SBA lending in recent months. Mr. Coleman expects that trend to continue for 2010.

But SBA loans make up only about 1% of overall small-business lending, Mr. Coleman estimates. That figure may grow to 5% to 10% in 2010 as the government provides more incentives for financial institutions, especially community banks, to provide financing to small businesses, he says.

Still, getting the money may be a challenge. “Whether it’s an SBA loan or a conventional loan, you really have to be perceived as the ‘cream,’” Mr. Coleman says. Start-up entrepreneurs in particular will have to show they have a significant amount of their own savings in the venture, plus solid cash-flow projections, he says.

Maria Coyne, executive vice president and head of SBA lending at KeyBank in Clevand, agrees that start-up entrepreneurs will have to have a solid plan and assets. “They’ve got to get a good hunk of skin in the game, too,” she says.

Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., estimates that entrepreneurs need on average $65,000 to start a business, two-thirds of which comes from personal savings and the rest from “informal” investors such as relatives and friends.

Although the stock market is starting to recover, housing values remain weak. Two years ago, relatives were more willing to invest because “they might have seen they had a couple hundred thousand dollars in equity in their house,” says Babson entrepreneurship professor Andrew Zacharakis. “Today, that’s a scarier proposition.”

Lack of access to capital will also likely hamper entrepreneurs interested in buying a franchise, says Matt Shay, president of the International Franchise Association in Washington. The group estimates 2% growth in franchises for 2010 to over 901,000 establishments. That’s better than zero growth in 2009, but off the average 5.6% growth per year from 2001 to 2005.

In the past, potential franchisees could finance a purchase if they could put 15% to 20% down. Now, banks require large down payments of between 40% and 50%, Mr. Shay says.

Babson’s Prof. Zacharakis says he’s seeing companies doing more with less, including asking friends and family to work for free. “Instead of capital infusions, there might be a lot more exchanges of services or trading favors,” he says.

In Los Angeles, Mr. MacKinnon says he’s considering taking on partners so he can open his long-planned bar. Instead of starting from scratch, he might invest in a failed restaurant.

University of New Hampshire’s Mr. Sohl says he believes “we’re done with the downdraft,” though he remains cautious for 2010. “People aren’t ready to bet the farm,” he says.

Write to Colleen DeBaise at colleen.debaise@wsj.com

By SHELLY BANJO

When sales at his wholesale business started to wane, Eli Mechlovitz decided to take a direct approach.

Mr. Mechlovitz and his family had been selling glass and tiles wholesale in the New York area for more than 20 years. But as the real-estate bubble began to burst, the company’s retail clients started losing shoppers and slashing orders.

GlassTileStore.com

Eli Mechlovitz, co-owner of GlassTileStore.com, at the wholesale company’s warehouse

So last September, the co-owner launched a specialty Web site, GlassTileStore.com, to sell custom tiles and mosaics directly to consumers. The site allows customers to see close-up images of tile and mosaic designs. And they can call in for a design consultation.

“People always want to redo their kitchens,” Mr. Mechlovitz says, but with the economic slowdown, they “aren’t willing to go out and spend a lot in a store. They are looking online for deals.” He says some of the products they sell online cost as much as 50% less than what they would at a retail store.

The move seems to be paying off so far. In August, the Web site sold 20,000 square feet of mosaics made of glass and stone, as much as the wholesale business typically sold in a busy month, Mr. Mechlovitz says. The wholesale side of the business will continue to operate as well, he adds.

Where the Shoppers Are

With inventories growing and sales at retailers continuing to shrink, an increasing number of wholesale companies are cutting out the middleman to some extent and turning to the Web to hawk their products — at wholesale prices — directly to consumers. The hope is that consumers who are hesitating to, say, buy that new tile in the home-improvement store will be enticed to do so when they see it for substantially less online.

But shifting gears from wholesaler to Web retailer isn’t seamless. The biggest obstacle: Wholesalers are generally not accustomed to dealing directly with consumers. So they are being forced to learn about customer service — how to answer questions, for instance, and ease consumers’ concerns, offer advice and fix problems. And they are getting a crash course in consumer advertising to get themselves noticed online.

“Web sites need development, Web marketing…search engines need to recognize your site,” says Bruce Clay, an Internet business consultant in Moorpark, Calif. “In an e-commerce world, this is something a wholesaler [may be] ill prepared to handle.”

‘More Work’

Mr. Mechlovitz admits that selling online is “definitely more work.”

Before, he says, interacting with customers mainly meant receiving orders from repeat retail clients and setting up delivery. Now, workers must interact daily with individual consumers, helping them with tile selection and answering design questions — tasks that used to fall to the retail clients who dealt with the customers.

With the online business, the company answers about 50 to 100 customer phone calls a day. The site receives about 50 orders daily, with the average order going for $300 to $500. That’s a big change from the wholesale operation, which typically processed a handful of bulk orders per month worth thousands of dollars each. The online business generated about $700,000 in sales last year, while the wholesale business had sales of about $600,000.

To get its name out there, GlassTileStore.com pays for services from companies that specialize in pay-per-click ads, search-engine optimization and Web graphics. Mr. Mechlovitz says he spends about $5,000 monthly on maintaining the Web site and online advertising.

“Wholesalers new to the e-commerce world need to make a strong investment in infrastructure that supports all aspects of customer service, technical support, product support, returns,” says John Metzger, chief executive of Metzger Associates, a Boulder, Colo., communications firm that helps companies create online business strategies.

Whereas retailers wouldn’t typically fuss over one or two broken items in a large shipment, he says, “if something is broken, the consumer expects it to be fixed right away and they want someone to help” them fix it.

Building Confidence

Customer service has been key for the online business of C.D. Diam LLC, a wholesaler of loose diamonds and other jewelry.

When Yomesh Shah saw sales from his family’s 30-year-old New York business stagnate in August 2007, he launched an online site, B2Cjewels.com, to reach a wider audience. But because most people were unaccustomed to shopping for big-ticket, personal items such as engagement rings over the Internet, Mr. Shah says, the company’s main challenge was to make customers feel confident and secure about the site — and the products.

First, Mr. Shah carefully selected the products offered online. “We stuck with the basics — pieces people had already tried on at stores [and] were now online looking for a better deal,” he says.

To personalize the items for budget and taste, the site allows customers to create their own rings, earrings and bracelets — leading them through a step-by-step process of picking a metal, setting and stone.

To make the customer feel more comfortable with the Web site, Mr. Shah, a gemologist by training, created a glossary of terms — such as alloy and aquamarine — as well as a number of tutorials to help customers learn more about diamonds, pearls, gold and gemstones. The diamond guide, for instance, talks about cut, carat, shape, certificates of authenticity and the proper way to care for your jewelry.

“We put every possible detail about the product,” Mr. Shah says.

He also created a customer-service team of three people with experience in both gemology and jewelry manufacturing, whom customers can talk to over the phone. To further help assuage concerns, all purchases have a free 30-day return policy.

“Customers can examine the product and make sure they are completely satisfied,” Mr. Shah says. He adds that “we’ve seen a return rate of less than 3%.”

Since August 2007, the company has had more than $500,000 in sales from the site. Last year, it had $25 million in overall sales.

Mr. Shah says the key to getting those sales was quickly realizing “that just making a great product or site wouldn’t really help. The most important thing is to get the word out there about our business.” So B2Cjewels.com explores every possible advertising channel, including posting on blogs about the jewelry industry and buying pay-per-click ads.

Getting Noticed

Indeed, getting noticed is one of the biggest issues for the wholesalers expanding to online retailing. With the wholesale business, advertising often means simply supplying a retailer with catchy displays for a store.

“It’s like being a store out in the woods,” says Mike Zippelli, chief executive of mattress and bedding wholesaler Classic Sleep Products Inc. and its online store Abed.com. “If no one visits it, it doesn’t matter how good your products and prices are.”

Mr. Zippelli’s business, stung by the decline in home sales and a slowdown in consumer spending, tried to make up for declining mattress sales at retail clients and expand its brand recognition by launching an online store about six months ago. It also uses the site to sell discontinued products at a discounted price.

Because it didn’t have previous knowledge of running an online site and interacting with individual customers, the Jessup, Md., company hired two full-time employees to focus on customer service and two others to work on Web-site design and advertising. Mr. Zippelli says the employees spent months experimenting with different page designs and pay-per-click advertising to see which pages received the most clicks from Web users.

They also post comments and links to the company’s Web site on various blogs and even place certain products on auction site eBay to drive traffic back to Abed.com. The site spent $350,000 on advertising in 2007.

The mattress company’s online sales are at about $2 million a year, which is still a small percentage of its wholesale sales. Last year, the company had total sales of $30 million. But “our big goal is to extend our brand image and strengthen the recognition of our company,” Mr. Zippelli says, “and that has definitely worked.”

Write to Shelly Banjo at shelly.banjo@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B9