We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Barnard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Amy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

The vintage retail business is bigger than ever. One dominant factor is due to climate change, and the increasing important awareness of buying used clothing, and avoiding “fast fashion”. The internet has also played a vital role in emphasizing the trend of thrifting. Platforms like Tiktok have allowed millions of (mostly) millennials and Gen Z-er’s to post about their trips thrifting, what they buy, putting outfits together on a budget, and many other thrifting content related videos. It’s funny because when I was thrifting back in the day, it was almost an embarrassment and you didn’t want anyone to know your clothes were used! A lot of resellers over 35 have expressed their concerns over the lack of available inventory at second hand stores due to the increasing popularity of thrifting. Along with this, thrift stores are having to add more staff members to keep up with increasing crowds, thus in tern raising prices on donated items, and making a slimmer profit margin (or no profit margin at all) for resellers. Estate sales, flea markets and other places to source are also experiencing a surge in popularity. No matter what your motivation is to buy second hand, it’s a wonderful way to shop. Shopping for used items keeps more out of the landfills, and there’s plenty of good second hand stuff out to go around!

Another key observation we’re seeing, is that a lot of shoppers of younger generations categorize “vintage” and “thrift” stores as one in the same. Although “vintage” items are at least 20 years old, consumers relate the two, solely because both categories are “used” items. This has caused some upset with dealers that sell only true vintage items, because it devalues the nature of the word. A lot of consumers come to a vintage store, and think it’s too expensive because they are expecting thrift store prices. This is confusing for everyone, and some shoppers end up writing a negative review online of “vintage” stores. Having only been mildly affected by this, we remain grateful and happy to see all our customers, no matter brought them in!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve loved shopping for antiques, vintage, and junk with my mother and grandmother since I was 10. When I was in middle school, I started buying vintage clothes for myself, and by high school I was selling clothing, furniture and household items at the flea market on the weekends. Being told by the world that you cannot make a living off being an “antique dealer”, I went off to culinary school (cooking was another love of mine), worked in the food industry for several years, then bounced around to a few other creative careers, all while selling vintage goods online. I knew I wanted to be a reseller full time, as it was my one true love. The combination of timing, money, and freedom all aligned and I decided to strike. I found the perfect location in Raleigh, NC and brought my mother and best friend on board. We opened one week before quarantine shut us down. We were determined to be successful, so we took to Instagram to post several items a day from each vendor, in order to help boost sales, and keep our vendors engaged and excited about what was to come.

We chose the name “trunkshow” because our store is basically a permanent trunkshow! Our business model is one of a “vendor mall”. This model is set up to where vintage clothing, and household vendors are able to rent a space, and sell their goods inside our store. A majority of the store is inventory that my mother and I source, since we ourselves are dealers. This business model allows us to do what we love, as well as have a thriving brick and mortar to incubate others. In addition to vintage items, we also rent to several artists and local makers in the store. Those that are interested in selling with us fill out an application, and are carefully selected based on their products appeal to our clientele, market trends, and quality. Our business model also allows several different small businesses an affordable place to sell their goods and grow their brand. In addition, we are very interactive in promoting our vendors on Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok.

We currently have over 35 resellers possessing different buying tastes, which allows us to sell a wide variety of items to customers that are all looking for something different. In a world where online shopping is king, we find our store to be a destination for people to get out on a “treasure hunt”. We are proud to currently have a 36% return customer rate!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Instagram has been the best strategy for growing our business. Because we have several vendors in our store with their own social accounts, engaging about the store with their followers, it helps promote everyone inside trunkshow. This has allowed us to cast a wide net to gain more followers for trunkshow, and each vendor. When it comes to advertising, we have found the best value for our money is paying local micro influencers (those with between 1,000-100,000 followers) to promote the store. We find this especially useful when we have events, because you can track the statistics, and we usually keep our budget to around $100 per influencer. With print publications, it’s very difficult to know if you are gaining new customers from a certain Ad, and it’s quite costly. Tiktok has also been effective in attracting the attention to a few celebrities that have come to the store when they’re in town, and then posted about their finds.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I believe the best way to foster brand loyalty is through authentic customer service. We take pride in going the extra mile to help our customers. Whether it’s finding them a certain item in our store or a different one, or offering frequent returning customers discounts, we want to show that we appreciate them. It’s important to make shoppers feel special and it 100% works, as we have a 38% return customer rate. It may sound old fashioned, but in a world where so much is online and disconnected, people are often surprised by genuine kindness and extra effort.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.trunkshowraleighnc.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/trunkshowraleigh
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/trunkshowraleigh
• Other: tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@trunkshowraleigh

Image Credits
Mary Brady