the good the bad & the snarky

Today was a good day..
Great design goodies.. no I'm not saying where I found 'stuff'. Suffice to say I went through a tank of gas and much $.

The a-number 1-more-common-than-pennies question is: Where do you get all this stuff??

Everywhere, it is really and truly no lie that things come from everywhere. The important thing to remember is 90% of the real meat of the business is the search, the hauling, the storing and the caring/repairing of, the goods. All of which costs. I wish stuff just fell off trees but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

I really do think it's an Austin thing for people to confuse vintage and thrift, the major issue is thrift stores get their stuff for free. FREE. And it's delivered to their back doors.

Vintage and antique stores (usually single owner/operated hence 'owner' and 'store' are interchangeable) have to spend years (or at least they should) learning about items, spending thousands of dollars on research materials, building relationships with sellers, attending auctions, we have to own large trucks or vans that guzzle gas by the second and rent warehouses to store things in... After that basic initial step, we have to drive, fly, and haul across country or continents items that we have sought out and paid for to bring them home and offer them for sale to the end user.

We provide the service of locating items that have been professionally looked over and inspected, damage will be noted, we don't sell junk, seriously flawed items, we don't consider something vintage or store worthy just because it's old.
The phrase "well edited selection" used to bug me but after winnowing out the chaff there is something to be said for pre-selected and inspected items.

My taste isn't going to be everyone's and mine changes every year, some of my customers love it and some feel that I'm not carrying enough of what they like. But you know, there are tons of stores in Austin that DO carry 50s toasters, teapots, shabby chic and original Nancy Drew books, it's just not at my store.

I don't like dark stores, and while I dig the 'ye olde curiousity shop' feel of a really dusty shop, I keep our store well lit and as clean as possible. I'm always happy to have someone come in and say Wow this place is: beautiful, gorgeous, so cool, so clean, so pretty, smells so nice, amazing.. I really love to hear it because I work hard to keep it that way. I spent weeks agonizing over paint colors, lost the tip of a finger putting in the big maple wall. The heart, soul and more has gone into the store and so it's wonderful to hear the compliments.

Of course the downside to all that heart and soul is some people get all the way up my nose within 30 seconds of walking in.
When someone you've never seen before walks in and says something really nasty just to be an ass, it can be a little off putting.
Usually I can shake it off, however twice (in 5 years) I've asked people to simply leave and not return. It's easier that way. For everyone.
I'll get around to telling those tales some other time.

Be warned, if you walk into a vintage or antique store, it's 90% likely you'll be talking to the owner. (and now for something completely different... it's like a segue)
One of our friends is a film maker and we joked about spoofing the movie Clerks at the store, while I think it would be hilarious and probably would be great for a laugh, it might be too close to the truth.

I'm more of the 'Black Books' persuasion anyways. Bitchy cranky chain smoking drunk Scottish guys crack me up. We're big BBC fans in the Austin Modern household. The dogs are named Spenser and Fergus, of course.... nevermind.
Spence, master beggar at work
Fergus AKA The Nuuuge
Speaking of.... How NOT to Decorate on BBC America is back on with new episodes. Nothing gives me the giggles faster than listening to two whip smart queens read someone's bad 80s home design. We've also been checking out Design Sponge online, one of our customers turned us on to it last year and we've been closet addicts ever since.