Vintage clothing is driving a retail revival in Santa Cruz

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Mely Olmeda is the owner of Virgo, Santa Cruz. She was scared when she decided to make the switch from car wash salesperson to vintage clothing seller in 2019. But after selling at different events on the weekends, she knew the market and saw vintage’s increasing popularity in the area as an opportunity to fully dive into the job. She opened her store in Pacific Avenue, April 20, 2022.

It’s a ripe time in the city for vintage clothing. The downtown Santa Cruz area has seen a rebound in foot traffic following pandemic lockdowns.

Analysts and retail watchers say Santa Cruz’s vintage boom is being driven by younger shoppers and their increasing preference for unique, environmentally sustainable second-hand clothing over mass-produced new items. Owners of stores also attribute the success of antique fairs to their ability to build an audience. They have also seen a trend where vintage clothing businesses pooled resources and shared retail spaces to cut down on costs.

“I think specifically in Santa Cruz, the market had become really popular,” Olmeda said. “There were more events happening. The Alameda Antique Fair was held the first Sunday. [of the month]Santa Cruz’ antique fair is held on the second sunday. There were just a lot more opportunities to make money at these events.”

Shiri Gradek, brand director at the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz, which provides support to local businesses, said she’s excited about these new vintage stores opening up, especially because the proprietors are of a younger demographic than many downtown store owners.

Gradek says that a younger business owner generation brings a whole new customer base. “It’s really cool to see this next generation because they know their audience,” she said.

Neil Saunders a retail researcher at the market research firm GlobalData says that these Santa Cruz owners of vintage shops are tapping into a growing market in America.

“The second-hand market for apparel has been one of the success stories of American retail,” Saunders said. “It’s been growing very rapidly for the past five years or so and it continues to grow.”

Saunders stated that the vintage trend was widespread throughout the United States, however, GlobalData survey results showed a slight preference for the West Coast compared to the Midwest or the South.

According to him, this is due in part to the greater fashion interest that exists in California and the greater awareness of environmental issues. Market research has shown vintage clothing as one of customers’ top choices.

Rebecca Unitt, economic development manager at the City of Santa Cruz’s Economic Development department, believes the proliferation of vintage stores in Santa Cruz is tied to environmental concerns.

“To be able to have this more sustainable retail experience versus consuming new products really speaks to the eco-conscious mindset of our community,” Unitt said.

One of the main reasons that some new owners opened their shops was to provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to purchasing brand new clothing. Mikey Huynh, 29, owner of Motherlode also on Pacific Avenue, said vintage is important to him because of fast fashion’s impact on the environment. Fast fashion — which refers to mass-produced, on-trend, often cheap clothing from companies like Zara or Shein — is often The point of view Waste and water pollution are major contributors to carbon dioxide emissions.

Olmeda concurs. “I just don’t want to see people walk into Forever 21 and spend $300 on 50 pieces when they could get more unique pieces and better-quality pieces that would break down much sooner in a landfill because it’s more organic than the polyester you find at Forever 21,” she said.

Gen Z and millennials are the audiences currently driving the growth in the vintage market, Saunders said, and the ability to find something that’s one-of-a-kind is a key factor drawing in young consumers.

Laurel Preschutti (31), a Santa Cruz-native who runs StellarVintageJeans a vintage store on Etsy says that she believes this individuality interest is part of why Santa Cruz has a strong vintage market.

“Santa Cruz is such an individual place and I think tons of people have realized that … so it makes sense that these unique shops would pop up because it kind of just matches the energy,” Preschutti said.

Saunders stated that while young consumers shop vintage on sites such as Etsy or Poshmark they still prefer to visit brick and mortar vintage shops.

“People quite like vintage shops. They’ll pop in constantly to see what’s new, see what items have come in and what treasures they can find,” he said. “There’s a real treasure hunt to shopping vintage and that lends itself to a physical store.”

Olmeda said the majority of her customer base is people just walking into her store, excited by pieces they’ve not seen anywhere else.

“People are just looking for unique pieces and they find that at the vintage shop in downtown, as opposed to going to Urban Outfitters and seeing three people walk out the store with the same thing,” Olmeda said.

Many of the new vintage stores provide something different from some of the other vintage shops in the area, Huynh said, including unique pieces from the more recent past, like the early 2000s: “There’s more selection and it’s not all just older, true vintage. It kind of goes into a little bit of Y2K and contemporary stuff.”

Huynh had been collecting and thrift-shopping for many years. During the pandemic, he began selling his items primarily on Instagram, and realized that he could start a small business. Huynh had been toying with the idea of opening a shop for some time before he and his partner opened Motherlode last July.

“It’s not just about the money, it’s about being the middleman and finding things that people think are cool and can get excited about,” he said.

Vintage clothing retailers are finding cheaper ways to establish brick-andmortar stores in Santa Cruz. They share space with other local sellers, vintage dealers and even vintage buyers. The result is a downtown revival that has been sparked by the pandemic.

Most of the vintage shops in downtown Toronto have an unusual structure. They also sell unique items. Instead of having one vendor fill the entire store with vintage goods, owners lease out space for other sellers.

At Motherlode, for example, in addition to clothing that Huynh sources, the store’s racks are filled with stock from 35 other vintage sellers. Huynh’s first experience with this was at Virgo. Angel Aura followed with a similar structure. Huynh did the same with Motherlode, as did Oasis, opened by one of Huynh’s former employees. Huynh stated that this type of cooperative structure is becoming more common.

“More vintage shops are opening up with this idea because each vendor pays monthly rent plus commission, usually, so that you can fill up a bigger store with less of your inventory,” he said.

This also benefits the smaller vendors who want to sell but cannot afford to open their own shops, said Teresa “Teresita” Madrigal, 35, a former stylist in Los Angeles who just opened Restyled Vintage this April in her hometown of Watsonville and has worked sourcing vintage for over a decade.

“We were like why don’t we create a community of vendors and have that opportunity here in Watsonville that’s only available in Santa Cruz, in Monterey, in San Jose?” Madrigal said.

“I wanted to give them a house where they can sell in-person throughout the week while they’re doing their day jobs,” she said, “or if they’re doing this full-time and want to have a location where they can continue selling.”

According to Huynh, the vendors who sell in his shop are largely friends and friends of friends — people in the network of vintage sellers from the area and other nearby areas with a vibrant vintage community, like the Bay Area.

Olmeda says that members of the community are often friends and go to thrift shops together in order to get new stock for their store. Though sourcing vintage stock can be competitive, especially as the industry becomes more popular, she doesn’t see that as a bad thing for sellers in Santa Cruz.

If the city “becomes a vintage shop destination like [San Francisco’s] Haight-Ashbury is right now, that’s not a bad thing to me,” she said. “More stuff in downtown means more people in downtown, more people shopping. And that’s the great thing about vintage clothing or being a curator, and having vendors that I hand-picked myself, is that we all have different stuff.”

Madrigal says she wouldn’t be surprised if downtown Santa Cruz was full of vintage shops in a couple of years. She hopes Watsonville will eventually become a vintage mecca itself, and agrees that there’s enough room in the industry for everyone because there is just so much clothing sellers can source from.

“If you think about it, vintage is every 20 years, so right now we’re looking for things before 2003,” Madrigal said. “Next year, it’ll be before 2004. And that year alone probably has trillions of pounds of clothes.”

Also, she said, it’s better that it is small, local vintage sellers, rather than large corporations, who are tapping into the trend. “If not us, it’s probably going to be Target creating a vintage line,” she said.