It Takes a Village to.... By John ColderICE Lawson

Hi Everyone... :)

Just wanted to share the interview I did with John about our little village here.  I am very proud of us all!!!! 

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It Takes a Village to Sell Vintage Items Online:

The Vintage Village Seller Community

While having over arching groups for online sellers like The Ecommerce Group can be wonderful for learning how to keep your business chops up to date. Still are many niches in ecommerce that require specialize knowledge and tools. None, in my opinion, is more specialize that Vintage items. Selling Vintage has its own set of challenges and vocabulary. Vintage can be used to describe anything from table china to old vehicals, making market segment is HUGE and the people who walk in these circles are not only vendors but collectors. Where can one go to tap into that specialize knowledge and make friends in the vintage community? The Vinatage Village, were people got to buy, sell and get information on vintage and collectable items.

I had a chance to talk with the founder of The Vintage Village, she runs her own vintage store called Elsies Attic (follow her on Facebook) and I asked Lora how the she got started selling vintage items? Lora said she sold crafts on Etsy and began selling Vintage there too after a relative Elsie, the namesake of her shop, had to go into a nursing home. At one point in the past Etsy asked all vintage sellers to leave the site because they wanted to focus on handmade items only.The vintage sellers there were forced to scramble and figure out where to sell. The community of sellers was suddenly fragmented into smaller unproductive groups, so she decided to create a social site for sellers to join forces and network with each other.

Well, the site took off like wild fire, the word spread, and it began getting sellers from other venues like EBay and RubyLane and Artfire joining it. Today it has a life of it’s own. Satisfiying the obvious need for a community, because at the time there were many people selling AVC (Antiques, Vintage & Collectibles) on the web and as it turned out, they really needed a “Hub” to unite them. Over time Lora has tweaked it with users input and turned a Ning site into what folks needed. The site boasts a merchant directory, shopping portal and discussion forum and that is just a few of the cool things there. Member ship is FREE and they also have a premium membership offer to help promote your sales, right now this Village is made up of over 2,700 sellers and growing.

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