I’m so lucky to bring to you guys 2-part interview with the brain children behind School of Vintage, an online vintage shop selling all my favorite goodies. Jeannine and Erin have been tag teaming their adventure and I was able to chit chat with them about how they started their business and how they work to maintain it. Starting your own business, no matter the scale of the project can be extremely daunting. I hope the suggestions and insights from these ladies will make things a bit easier. If you AREN’T starting your own business, it’s still nice to hear about how much passion goes into what these gals do.
The first part of this feature will mention the idea and how to evolve that idea into the earlier stages. Part 2 (tomorrow) is more about the logistics of making everything happen. Enjoy
Q: Sounds like the both of you met in college and had a shared love for cute vintage things. Who had the idea to start a vintage shop and how long did it take to get the project moving in the right direction?
A: Yes, we met in college. In microbiology class to be exact. Our shared love of vintage was realized at that time, but we didn’t open School of Vintage until recently. We had been collecting vintage for years and years when we met and actually attempted to open a shop on eBay, but it didn’t last long since life got in the way.
When we started to get more focused, we opened separate Etsy shops (Jeannine focusing on clothing and shoes and Erin focusing on housewares) then quickly realized that our dream from eight years earlier was still alive and thriving and decided to take it much more seriously. It took about three weeks from when our collaborative idea was born until we were a registered business. We even had a commercial space picked out in that time frame as well. We were not messing around.
Q: I’m an extremely impatient person and one of the hardest aspects of starting my own business has been that I want things to happen NOW. What has been the hardest aspect of starting School of Vintage and do you have any suggestions to call our impatient hearts?
Hahaha. A: We are both the definition of impatient. We like to say that we’re not necessarily impulsive but that we know what our guts are telling us and we listen to them (immediately). So, our advice for patience is to listen to your gut. Really listen to it. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Sometimes your gut won’t talk to you for a few days. It’s trying to work some things out. While that’s happening, you have to wait. A lot of times it’s your brain and gut battling it out. But that’s what patience is: waiting (quietly) for your gut to tell your brain what to do next.
We’ve also learned that it’s hard to wait for other people. And when you start a business you inevitably have to deal with other people. But, again, you have to be patient. We realize that we’re both definitely ‘Type A’ personalities and we like to get things done right away and we like to do them well and have a lot of control over what we do. But we’re finding out that not everyone else operates like that so we’re learning how to deal with it all as patiently as possible. It’s a learning process like everything else.
Q: One of the hardest parts of dreaming up my online shop was coming up with a name that would allow my company to evolve over the years. How did you come up with the shop name School of Vintage and how do you see the brand evolving over time?
A: The name has meaning going back to our early days. We met at school, so we wanted our name/brand to encompass a lot of that. Deep to our core, we are science nerds, and since we both majored in biology/biochemistry/chemistry, we wanted to incorporate that into our “brand”. We got together for a business meeting one night and high on our list of things to do was pick a name. We came up with things like Chemistry Vintage (which actually is a really cool name) and Vintage University (not so cool) until one of us said, “School of Vintage”.
We both became immediately silent and then started screaming like little kids. That was the name. We had found it. We hope for it to evolve into exactly what a school is. A place to learn. The most fun is researching items and learning about their pasts, who made them, their value, the inspiration behind them, etc. Perhaps it’s our background in research, but we want to be a wealth of knowledge on all things vintage, for us, and for others. The name makes sense as a literal sense since we met in school, but it actually means a lot more to us than just that. A school is a place where you learn and grow as a person, so symbolically, we want our business to mean that. We want to have community involvement in the future and include artists and other small businesses. We want it to almost be a safe haven for fashion, art, music…an institution. It means a lot for us.
Q: I’m about to launch my new shop in June and I’m looking into ways to promote what I’m doing. What have you found to be the best ways to promote your shop? Digitally and traditionally?
A: Digitally, we use Twitter, Facebook, and blogging to help us promote our business. In person, we use business cards, promotional magnets on our cars and we put ads out in local newspapers. So far, promotions via blogs and twitter definitely have brought the most traffic to our store. We have found that networking with other vintage dealers is a great way to cross-promote. f you come across as sincere and truly believe in what you’re doing, then it’ll go a long way – not only in the vintage community, but in the business community as well (and any other community really). Be willing to help and promote others. All the positive energy you put out there, more positive energy will come back to you, two-fold. We promise.
Q: For me, one of the most fun aspects of starting my new project is researching the market and learning about the history behind a variety of old items. How do you guys research your products to make sure you are selling your products around the right price range with the correct story behind it?
A: We’ve both been very much into vintage for about fifteen years now so there are definitely aspects to pricing and branding that we are already familiar with. But, we certainly don’t know everything. There is a wealth of information on the internet and in books specific to whatever we are researching. We’ve acquired a lot of books on the topic ranging from clothing to furniture to housewares. If we’re unsure about something, we’ll usually thumb through our resources or surf the web until we find a price we’re comfortable with.
But, overall, when pricing something, it all comes down to the label, year and condition. Those are the three MAJOR things that need to be researched before a product is given a price tag. If there’s a range of prices that we find, we usually tend to go with the average or low average. We try to be fair and not purposefully overprice things.
We might sell vintage goods, but we’re also very much vintage consumers. And if there’s one thing that puts a bad taste in our mouth, it’s when people overprice things just to overprice them. That type of practice can alienate potential buyers and that’s exactly what you don’t want to do.
That’s a wrap for today. More greatness tomorrow and if you’re anything like me, you’re thinking WOW…these girls rock. I thought these questions were perfectly answered, specifically the answer to the patience question. Come back tomorrow for some more!
You can find these girls on Twitter, Ebay, Etsy, Facebook, and Blogger!