The times they are a changing: important news and a big SALE!

*There is sort of a long and a short story to this!  If you're in a hurry then scroll down to the highlighted short story :).

First and foremost I want to sadly inform you of the closing of Dashfieldvintage.com.  This site is now officially no longer.  It hadn't been open for business for quite sometime but was still costing me every month so I made the difficult decision over the weekend to shut it down completely.  I have also decided to take a break from the market scene (for real this time!).  After nearly 3 years of being a regular on the vintage market scene I found that lately it just didn't excite me as much as it used to.  Marketing is something that you have to feel quite passionate about as it requires an awful lot of time and energy (often without huge financial rewards).  Having said that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time selling thousands of vintage treasures to happy customers.

The life of Dashfield Vintage

 It really all started after a road trip through the South Island.  We hit every op shop down the West coast and back up the East coast in a retro frenzy!

On returning we suddenly found ourselves with bags upon bags of treasures and not the slightest clue of what to do with them.  After months of marveling our new loot we finally decided that the most sane thing to do is sell them.

So with my then marketing buddy in crime Jane, we loaded the car one cold, dark afternoon and headed for a small community hall out in the countryside.

 We were so nervous!  We had no idea what to charge, we wondered if anybody would come, we beamed with every small sale.  By the end  of the night we counted our earnings and went home on cloud nine!  It's fair to say that we were hooked after that.

I've lost count of just how many markets we did over the next couple of years.  It sure feels like a lot!  At some point Jane ended up having a beautiful baby girl and doing the markets became too difficult to juggle.  I was definitely sad to see her go and felt a little bit lost on my own for a while but decided to soldier on alone.  Then in early 2010 I decided to leave my job (which wasn't getting me where I wanted to go anyway) and decided to take things a step further by opening Dashfield Vintage online.  Phew if I thought the markets were hard work then I had another thing coming here!  I've never been particularly computer savvy so I had an awful lot to learn about things like coding.  How many times I nearly threw my computer on the floor in a fit of frustration!  Although I got there in the end, I never quite had it looking the way I wanted.  I did land myself some other jobs because of it though which was fantastic.  Eventually however I found that I was selling more on Trade Me than anywhere else and loved that feeling of turning up at the post office with an armful of packages every week!

And that basically takes us up to the present day.  There have been a lot of discussions about the future lately (between my partner and I mostly) and we've decided that we're ready for a change in scenery and would like to move to Melbourne early next year.  I'm nomadic by nature and am yearning the kind of culture and action that you just don't find in New Zealand.  And Nic also has a longing to live somewhere else for a while.  So that means that it's time to start tying off loose ends, saving our pennies and halt our usual hoarding (well as much as is possible for us)!  I can tell you that we are both really very excited about our plans.

So where does all this leave Dashfield Vintage you're wondering??  It's going to go a little something like this;

- Dashfieldvintage.com is gone

- Dashfield Vintage at the markets is taking an indefinite break

- Dashfield Vintage on Trade Me is having the mother of all SALES!!  The aim is to post 50 items per week until basically all the stock is gone (trust me it's going to take a while).  There will be everything from clothes, shoes, bags, accessories... you name it, I'll probably be selling it.  I will post one update a week on the blog but for all other news, listings, updates etc I highly recommend that you LIKE us on Facebook.   The sale will begin this evening with the re-listing of items (so if there was something you loved, but felt it was a bit pricey then it might be worth checking back) and new items will be listed early next week.

- This blog will remain!  It will just be less about advertising markets and shop updates and more about other things.  I certainly look forward to sharing our time leading up to the move, and then of course life in Melbourne!

I'm not saying that I will never return to selling vintage, and I am certainly not hanging up my vintage boots altogether.  I'm just taking a break in order to focus on other things.  It also doesn't mean that I won't ever pop the odd thing out to sell, in fact as we get closer to moving I'm sure I will have all sorts of treasures to part with! Anyway, I already have other big plans that I am working on for the future ;).
If you have any questions or queries please don't hesitate to contact me either here or at info@dashfieldvintage.com
xx