A version of this article appeared in The Seller Scoop, our biweekly newsletter for vintage, antiques and secondhand sellers and vendors. Stay inspired with your own copy: Sign up here and select the option for resellers. ‍

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The best things come in threes, don’t they?

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Finding a set of leather-covered Maitland-Smith nesting tables at a yard sale being sold for a song.

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Trolling the thrift-store aisles with two milk glass vases in your cart and spotting a third hidden behind some crazed ceramic cookie jars.

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Unzipping a garment bag in a closet at an estate sale to find a three-piece Italian wool suit worn maybe once.

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I find it’s the same with ideas.

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Two issues ago, in what was the start of what is now going to be at least a three-part series in this newsletter on drumming up new customers, I wrote this:

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“The people who currently shop mostly or entirely new, or who are just dipping their toes into the secondhand world. Where do they live? Where do they currently shop? How do you get in front of them? Are there markets you can go to? How can they currently find you?”

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I’m not the only one thinking about this.

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About a year ago, in August 2023, I wrote another edition of this newsletter highlighting a few sellers who are pushing the traditional boundaries of where to sell vintage and antiques (great ideas in there for your own shops if you missed it, so have a peek).

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One of those people was Brigid Milway, founder of What, These Old Things? and The Curio Collective in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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Full disclosure: Brigid is a friend at this point, and also a member of The Vintage Seeker’s professional development group for sellers, the Vintage Sellers Community — but the reason I like to share what she is up to is not because of either of those things.

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It’s because she’s truly innovating in this space.

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Last week, she and her By The Pound Thrift Pop-Up co-founder Charlotte Genge of Clothing Reincarnated announced a partnership with IKEA Halifax that will see local vintage and secondhand vendors participating in mini markets right inside the store.

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‍Once more, louder for the people in the back: Independent vintage sellers...in IKEA!

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On August 3 & 4, a By The Pound Thrift Pop-Up will see hundreds of pounds of secondhand clothing carted into the store’s community room, with everything sold for $6.99 per pound.

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Shoppers will arrive at IKEA to look for a cute desk lamp, or to hunt for a new storage solution, or to plan their new kitchen, or to stock up on those cheap dish scrubbers.

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These people aren’t necessarily thinking about secondhand clothing, but they’re going to happen upon the pop-up and have the chance to consider it.

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Continued below

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Continued from above

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Then, on September 7 and 8, during the busy back-to-school week at IKEA, the Curio Collective, Brigid’s tri-annual vintage show, is hosting a pop-up that will feature local vendors.

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I can’t stress enough how important this type of partnership is for the secondhand sector.

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While you subscribe to this newsletter because you already think secondhand, there are countless others who don’t actively go to thrift and vintage stores, or markets, or to secondhand vendors online.

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They might be tangentially aware of it, or at least considering secondhand and just haven’t gotten around to digging deeper — but they also might not have given it a lick of thought and now it’s about to quite literally pop up onto their radar while they shop new. (Reasons also why I love secondhand pop-ups that happen inside shopping malls).

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IKEA Halifax is simultaneously normalizing shopping secondhand and supporting local businesses all at once.

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This is the kind of narrowing the firsthand-to-secondhand gap that this industry needs. How great would it be if the pop-ups became part of their permanent programming?

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Sharing space with vintage vendors does not mean a traditional retailer is cannibalizing its own sales.

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It’s actually a symbiotic thing for IKEA Halifax: perhaps it convinces someone to buy that desk they’re looking at because they found some fun vintage decor for the top.

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Or it gets someone thinking about a new PAX wardrobe because they overhauled their closet at the By the Pound Thrift.

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Or — and most importantly as far as the circular economy is concerned — it convinces someone to consider reuse and repair to the point that they begin exploring IKEA’s As Is Marketplace and Sell-Back programs, where consumers can buy and sell secondhand IKEA pieces.

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You may remember that IKEA Canada was behind a popular campaign earlier this year that petitioned the government to get rid of the secondhand tax.

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For their Halifax outpost, making space for secondhand wasn’t just a marketing tactic.

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Other brands would do well to take notes.

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Whatever city you're reading this in, I hope this note inspires you to look for partners in unlikely places that can get your inventory in front of new people.

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