About Greg Arbutine
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Greg Arbutine - This Page is all about ALAN Development’s co-founder and business partner Greg Arbutine.
Greg has been involved with the commercial and residential developing along side Alan for the past 30+ years mostly as a back seat driver, but sometimes more highly involved, especially with the finances, IT and larger strategy decisions.
Greg served as the company CEO and President of his family's $35,000,000 a year gold, silver, flatware, bullion and jewelry business "The Silver Queen Inc." from 1990 to year 2021. Greg also acted as the company's real estate leasing agent for its extensive rental property portfolio for over 17 years. Greg divested his interests in his family's business in year 2022 and retired from there.
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Greg now runs his own company The Silver Museum LLC. Greg is also still actively involved with Alan Development as its Chief Technology Officer, Head Content Creator, Website Designer and Strategic Planner. Greg is also an Artist under his brand Artist Greg Arbutine where he creates photographic artworks and home decor accessories.
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Education
1977-1980
Gulf Coast Museum of Art
1981
American Numismatics Association
1979-1983
Largo High School
1983-1985
St. Pete College
1985-1987
The University of South Florida
2002-2005
The University of South Florida
Continuing Education Program
2003-2006
Gulf Coast Museum of Art
2009
Art Wolfe Educational Program
Greg completed several art courses in Water Color Painting, Acrylic Painting, Ceramics, Drawing and Jewelry Making
Greg received his certificate of achievement in the detection of counterfeit and altered coins
Greg completed his high school degree with honors
Greg completed his Associates in Arts Degree.
Greg received his Bachelor's of Science of Business Administration from The University of South Florida.
Greg attended several continuing educations classes including HTML, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and several other graphics arts and computer courses.
Greg spent 3 years learning the art of sculpting in ceramics and became adept at creating sculptures of busts and figural sculpture.
Greg took a 4 day class studying under the famous photographer Art Wolfe who taught him the art of photography, composition and artistic design
Work History and Major Accomplishments
1972
Salesperson at The Swap Meet in Tucson, AZ
1972- 1976
Salesperson and all around Operations Guy at Belleair Coins in Belleair Bluffs, Florida
1976- 1983
Salesperson and Buyer at Belleair Coins in Belleair Bluffs, Florida
1976- 1983
Unofficial Operations Manager and Chief of Technology at The Silver Queen Inc.
On Saturdays and Sundays, Greg helped man the booth at the local Swap Meet in Tucson, Arizona with his parents selling odd and unusual African trade beads, unusual silver monies, currency and medals from Asia.
On Saturdays and on most afternoons after school, Greg helped his parents run their coin and silver jewelry store. Greg was responsible for stocking coin albums in the store. He also sorted coins and prepared them for resale by stapling them in holders and sorting them into customer accessible trays. Greg also strung beads for store stock. He also waited on in store customers to sell coins, Native American jewelry, and unusual eclectic items his father had imported from Asia.
Greg continued to work most Saturdays and afternoons after school to help with the now two companies: Belleair Coins and also The Silver Queen Inc. At Belleair Coins, Greg was promoted to a buyer of gold, silver, diamonds, numismatic coins. He received a certification from The American Numismatic Association in Colorado in their course on How to detect counterfeit altered coins. In 1980, when the Hunts cornered the market on silver and the metals rose, Greg worked full time during that summer and was one of the store's most knowledgeable and best buyers. Greg also helped figure out customer flow by coming up with the idea to hand out numbers to the store's incoming customers, since so many more customers were coming in than there were buyers at that store. Greg also went on buying calls to customers homes as well as other dealer's places of business. He had one buy for $100,000 in 1982 from a crematorium selling all their dental gold extracted from their cremated clients.
At The Silver Queen Inc. Greg was instrumental in organizing the growing inventory of estate "gently used" sterling flatware. He advocated strongly for his mother to get rid of all the wooden storage chests that the silver was kept at in favor of installing a streamlined shelving and bins system. After Greg's mother suffered a hernia from constantly lifting the heavy silver chests, Greg was given the green light to buy the shelving and bins. After that, the inventory was easy to access and locate which increased productivity in the warehouse 10 fold. When Greg was a senior in high school in the year 1983, he learned his first computer language which was Microsoft Basic. He then convinced his mother to ditch the archaic hand written error prone card file system she had used for managing the inventory pieces and instead computerize it in database. Although the computer software which was called Data Perfect was very limited and needed a lot of manual input to keep it afloat, at that time in 1983, customers were dazzled and impressed that the small company was managing its inventory on a small database. It also enabled my mother and small staff to be able to easily quote prices both in person and nationally on the phone to customers looking to add pieces of sterling flatware to their sets of silver.
1983- 1987
All Around Buyer and Salesperson for Belleair Coins, Gold & Diamonds and The Silver Queen Inc.
From 1983 to 1987 Greg attended college at St. Pete College at The Clearwater Campus and then later completed his last two years at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. During those years, Greg intentionally would schedule four of his classes to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays with one night class on Monday. This allowed Greg to still work two full days per week on Fridays and Saturdays at The Silver Queen and Belleair Coins, Gold and Diamonds. During this time Greg acted more as an all around guy pitching in wherever was needed for both buying and selling. Greg's main focus was mostly on his college activities and he was not coming up with many new innovations or general improvements to the stores at large. One of his highlights during this time, was that Greg was able to fully man by himself running the Countryside location of Belleair Coins, Gold & Diamonds. The company at this time had expanded and was in three locations: Belleair Bluffs (the original location ), Tampa and in Countryside (Clearwater.) The Countryside location was a very small coin shop operated by just a single person and when that manger would have an occasional day off on Saturdays, Greg would fill in and run that shop. Greg's combined knowledge of coins, jewelry and silverware buying and selling knowledge enabled him to successfully run and operate that entire shop autonomously and all by himself at only the age of 22.
1987- 1990
General Store Manager for
The Silver Queen Inc.
Buyer for Belleair Coins, Gold & Diamonds and The Silver Queen Inc.
Greg graduated from The University of South Florida in the year 1987. In June of that same year, Greg started working full time at Silver Queen and Belleair Coins, Gold & Diamonds. Initially, Greg thought he'd be working side by side along with his father Art Arbutine. However, Greg soon began to understand that his father was not looking for a wing man from Greg Arbutine and that there was little to no upward mobility being under the wings of his father. His dad was a good ole boy and didn't want a person working under him that potentially could eclipse his spot in the limelight.
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However, unlike his dad, Greg's mom Patricia Arbutine recognized a great potential in Greg and took him on board to run The Silver Queen Inc. side of the business. Although he was not given an official title, his mom had given him the role of general manager. Greg was thrust into doing all the marketing, buying and managing of the staff as well as pursuing his goal of upgrading the store's IT infrastructure. Greg's mom offered Greg an incentive and gave him sales goal amount to reach of $1,000,000 per year for the silverware. If he achieved this goal, he'd be made the CEO and President of the The Silver Queen Inc. At that time, the silverware sales were only $250,000 per year annually.
Under Construction
Work Skills and Expertise
Under Construction
Currently
​​​​​​Greg now runs his own company The Silver Museum LLC. Greg is also still actively involved with Alan Development as its Chief Technology Officer, Head Content Creator, Website Designer and Strategic Planner.
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Under Construction
Since 1992, Alan Development has been procuring land and developing commercial, mixed-use and multi-family projects. Our company also acquires existing buildings and turns them into viable income properties.
We do projects completely on our own or partner with corporations, investors, lenders or private individuals.
Contact us today to discuss investment and partner opportunities.
Commerical Real Estate Development & Investments