How That Sarah Mac Vintage Store Came to Be...
It was a bleak, slate-gray February day in 1990s-small-town Massachusetts — my brand-new driver's license still warm from the printer. My first hours of my license-holding freedom. I fired up our wood-paneled Dodge Caravan with one destination in mind — my first chosen journey — the Goodwill.
True story. That day, saturated-sepia in the 90s of it all, I haunted the clothing racks. Looking for vintage t-shirts with unintentionally ironic sayings or retro illustrations, army boots or Doc Martens (please, God, please) and vintage designer bags. In other words, treasure.
If anything, my lust for a good treasure hunt has only grown over the years (okay, decades) since that first 1990s Goodwill run. No Estate Sale unturned. No curb alert gone unexamined (hello, leather West Elm couch and vintage marble coffee table). Trip to Paris? Hours at the Paris Flea. Any travel landed me at a flea market or the local thrift. But eventually a treasure-hunt-filled house is an overfilled house. Charming maximalism tipping into an A&E guest spot.
Friends began to ask to go thrifting with me, or to keep a look out for xy or z. And that’s when the little whisper of ‘open your own vintage store’ piped up louder. After doing a few shockingly successful sales on my IG stories, I toyed around with running my own ecomm site before deciding the first step was Etsy. Test the waters. People go to Etsy for handcrafted wears and art, but also thrift. Or, at least, I do let’s hope I’m not alone.
I started my Etsy store with inventory from my own personal collection. Obsessing over which treasure I could actually part with, then putting them back on my shelf, then back off, then… you get it! It was hard to choose what to offer. And eventually realized I could SHOP! I needed to. I could do my favorite thing (and my kids' idea of red-hot-hell) I could wander the aisles of my most-loved second-hand shops and roll up on every Estate Sale in a 30-mile radius all to curate a beautiful collection of retro, vintage, and antique delights. To give them new life in your homes!
So welcome to my favorite place. This is meant to be your treasure hunt. And if you find treasure calling to you, I’ll carefully package it up and get right out my door to yours.
Here's to your home, your safe little nest, warmed and feathered with treasures found.
