I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Shop Secondhand Directory, our newest product that connects buyers, resellers and service providers.

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Like, really thrilled. As far as I know, nothing quite like this exists yet. Now it does.

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The Shop Secondhand Directory, powered by The Vintage Seeker, is a specialized search website where vintage, antiques and secondhand shops and related services can be found by consumers, all in one place, no matter where they sell. 

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Okay, you’re thinking. I’ve seen online directories before, even for the vintage and antiques space. How is this one different?

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The Shop Secondhand Directory is highly customized for people who are interested in shopping secondhand, shopping circularly, and shopping locally. This is not the Yellow Pages or an AI-driven website — it was informed directly by the people who make up the secondhand market. 

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The best part? It’s totally free for the public to use, and free to list a business.

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You can find listings for shops, resellers and their related services in categories ranging from antiques and art and genderless clothing to shopping parties and authentication and closet clearouts, plus vendors that offer adjacent services such as upcycling, estate sales, tailoring and upholstery — local to you or further afield. 

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From there, you can contact these businesses directly through the website, or link out to their social media pages, websites, bricks-and-mortar locations, pop-ups, and online marketplace storefronts to browse their inventories or engage their services. 

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Why the Shop Secondhand Directory?

One of the cool things about the resale space is it’s comprised of thousands of independent business owners. They carry unique inventories that change all the time. 

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To shop secondhand is to hunt. 

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You can use the major online marketplaces to search for products. They work really well.

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Sometimes, though, the hunt is frustrating because you can't find quite what you're looking for. I know this because of the inquiries that land on my desk.

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Until now, it’s been a lot more difficult if you are specifically looking for the shops and services themselves — perhaps you have a general interest, purpose, category, or location in mind.

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Some examples:

“I’m looking for vintage shops that fit an overall cottagecore aesthetic.”

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“I want clothing sellers near me that specialize in 1980s clothing.”

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“I am going antiquing this weekend and want to see what stores, malls and events are on.”

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“I want to go to a vintage market today in Montreal to browse a bunch of shops at once, what’s on?”

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“I am looking for vintage streetwear stores and online sellers in Los Angeles.”

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“I love Georgian furniture and want to know online stores that specialize in it.”

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“I’m looking for private shopping appointments at vintage stores for my bachelorette party.”

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“I inherited furniture and I want to get it upcycled by someone who specializes in vintage.”

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“I want to build a list of antique militaria shops because I always need a gift for my dad.”

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“I’m interested in shopping secondhand, but I don’t know where to start. Are there small businesses I can check out near me?” 

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The Shop Secondhand Directory is going to be your new one-stop shop for it all. 

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Shopping secondhand and shopping circular is about more than products. It’s an overall mindset. Developing new habits, and building relationships with shops and services that can custom source things for you or help you with products you already own.

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Businesses that are near where you live, or that can ship to you or offer online services. Shops that you can visit on vacation with your places-to-thrift list in tow.

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We have to make it easier for people to shop pre-loved, vintage and antiques.

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If secondhand shopping, reuse and repair are central parts of the circular economy, then we need to enable more people to consume this way, in a way that is local to them, and ensure small shops remain viable by making them more visible.

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Because right now, so many of them are tucked away in antique malls, at pop-up markets, on social media or on marketplaces. They're damn-near impossible to find.

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How the Shop Secondhand Directory works

If you’re a shopper or a thrifter, you can use the directory to filter through businesses, searching by keyword, location, shipping options or features like budget-friendly shops, across more than 130 categories.

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Plus, you can grab coupons and promotions from participating shops — and find out which secondhand-related events to attend in your local area (we are continually building the events area out to be representative of many regions). 

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If you need help with searching the directory, visit our How to Search article or our Frequently Asked Questions section.

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And if you’re a vendor, the directory gives you the opportunity to market your business to a whole new set of people beyond social media. We built a little search engine that can get crawled by the big search engines.

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The directory is designed to shine a light on small shops and services and bring you traffic — no matter where you do business, online or offline.

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Four things to know about the directory

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1. It’s been designed to highlight local shops and services.

The Shop Secondhand Directory gives these businesses more visibility – to consumers in the local areas they are searching from, of course, but also small businesses in locales across the continent. Users can search by location, keyword, category, special filters, or a combination of all to further refine results. 

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2. Anyone can use it to search or list.

While we are currently focused on building out the directory in North America from an information-gathering and marketing perspective, any shops and services can list.

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3. It’s free to use as a shopper, and free to list as a business. 

For consumers, you can use it as is or sign up for a general account to save shops and services you are interested in. For businesses, there are options to upgrade your free listing for extra reach. 

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4. It is brand new. We are building it in real-time. It will grow.

This is phase one! We just launched the directory on Sept. 16, 2024 and are collecting feedback and populating more listings so this becomes very helpful for consumers – this is a really huge project, and while we have 2,600 businesses loaded in already, it is a drop in the bucket compared to what is out there. 

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In other words, you may not immediately find a business local to you if you search by location, but you certainly will find businesses in most if not all of the categories. 

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We are still working on a lot of things during the soft launch — some mobile display things, load times, etc. There are many moving parts with a website this size. (If you notice something that looks like a bug, please contact me.) 

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Who is listed in the directory?

• Vintage, antiques, consignment, thrift, pre-loved or resale shops and individual resellers selling offline in stores, markets, malls, etc., or online in marketplaces, apps, social media, websites, etc.

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• Antiques malls, collective spaces and other multi-vendor establishments that house secondhand vendors.

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• Markets, shows and other secondhand-related events. We have an events calendar and it’s moving to this site. You will be posting your own events.
  
  
• Any business or individual involved in the acquisition, ongoing maintenance of or downsizing of secondhand goods, even if not a reseller (e.g. auction houses, tailors, upholsterers, estate sale companies, liquidators, rental companies, organizers, etc.)

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As I said above, we are still building out the information, and it will become more comprehensive over time. If you have a favourite shop or service that isn’t listed, let them know they can do it for free to get some more online exposure for their small business! 

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How to get listed for free

If you have a secondhand, vintage, antiques or related shop or service, search the site to see if you already have a listing — if so, you can “claim” it for FREE to change your categories, add keywords and choose from special filters. (Please know it is not personal if your shop or service isn’t listed yet, we just had to start somewhere on research.) 

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If you don’t yet have a listing that shows up in search, click the “List your Shop or Service” button to register a free listing and let people know about your business!

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There is no obligation to upgrade. But if you want to, use code DIRECTORY15 for 15% off through Sept. 23, 2024, or SECONDHAND10 for 10% off through Oct. 18, 2024. 

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Continued below

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Continued from above

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I’ve posted lots of information on listing and all of the features of the Shop Secondhand Directory at that site’s FAQ page.

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And you can watch our Vendors Virtual Launch Party for a more detailed look at how the directory can help your business get some free online exposure, or check out our article on that site about why you should consider registering for a free listing.

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What’s changing at The Vintage Seeker

Not a lot as far as our publishing at The Vintage Seeker goes, other than once the initial wave of directory admin dies down, I’ll be back to posting regular content here. (I can't wait!)

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The most notable thing to switch on our main site is our Events Calendar, which, while so beautifully designed and functional, no longer made sense to host directly on this website, so it has moved over to the Shop Secondhand Directory site's Events Search.

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This also means our lovely Google Calendar that auto-adjusted for your time zone is gone, and event hours will be stated in their local time zones.

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The volume of events has been too big for us to bear administratively, so now shops and services will be able to add their own events as part of their listings on the Shop Secondhand Directory. For full details, visit the Events FAQ on that site.

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I’ll also be slowly updating parts of this website to reflect the addition of the directory to our portfolio and these changes, so please bear with me. All in due time! 

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Words of gratitude                                

The Shop Secondhand Directory has been an idea I’ve had for years and I’m so excited to make it available to the public.

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Directories are a tale as old as time in the publishing world that I’m from — in fact I started my career fact-checking listings — but to build one that meets the needs of an sector when there wasn’t one available that reflected the current state of the market has made listings seem like the coolest thing on earth to me. 

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This is the culmination of three years of research and conversations with buyers and sellers about what is actually needed to connect everyone in the space other than another product marketplace. 

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I can’t wait for you to be able to discover and support more small businesses.

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Thank you for your support. Whether you are buyer and seller, no matter how you came to me and The Vintage Seeker — by reading my newsletters or the website or our tip sheets, by chatting or sharing on social, by attending a past event, by telling me your thoughts in person or over email, by joining as a member of the Vintage Sellers Community, or by using and listing the new directory site — thank you for being open to something new in this space, and for embracing me in your community. 

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I’m not a seller, but I try to think like one as much as I think like a customer, so I can offer voice to both. They are often one and the same person in this space. But I can only do this because people in this sector have been so forthcoming with sharing. You have all informed the Shop Secondhand Directory. 

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I did not launch this project alone. I have many people to thank including:

• My husband Kendal for his constant support and ideas
• My mom, who’s my volunteer bookkeeper/event administrator/database coordinator
• My entire family and all of my friends
• My business advisors and professional development communities
• Our developer Juliet Gonzalez, who made an out-of-the-box solution for the directory site feel more like it's part of The Vintage Seeker
• Virtual assistant John Hernandez (shout out to The Virtual Gurus!) who helped me to gather listings over the summer
• Contributors Krista Montelpare and Karen Barr who have written forthcoming pieces related to the directory, and indeed all of the contributors to The Vintage Seeker over the past couple of years who have helped to expand it into the marketplace

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And so many others. It takes a village. 

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As for you, if you are still reading this (props!), we are going to grow the Shop Secondhand Directory together. 

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I welcome your feedback and ideas, and look forward to continuing to build this out with your input, whether you are a buyer or a seller. 

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Editorial transparency: How the Shop Secondhand Directory works with The Vintage Seeker

It’s been my goal from the start to have a repository of information like the Shop Secondhand Directory that I can point people to when they are asking for help finding shops and services. And they ask a lot! 

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But I want to be clear that the Shop Secondhand Directory, while owned and operated by The Vintage Seeker, is hosted on a separate website. 

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All listings on the Shop Secondhand Directory, including the free and claim ones, are considered advertisements. The listings on the Shop Secondhand Directory are guided by a posting policy, but I do not monitor or interfere with what they are posting. The listings are not written by me. I don't have the resources to write them myself.

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Listings that feature a coloured box on that website are paid promotions, and give listers better visibility and a bunch of other features. I do not necessarily personally endorse or recommend any of those shops or services, nor does The Vintage Seeker or the Shop Secondhand Directory itself.

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The Shop Secondhand Directory is a public information service so you can discover small businesses. Any content posted directly on the Shop Secondhand Directory website is in service of the directory and discoverability of its listings.

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What is published here, on The Vintage Seeker’s website (thevintageseeker.ca or thevintageseeker.com), is editorial content unless otherwise marked as sponsored or as containing affiliate links. 

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Members of the Vintage Sellers Community, our professional development and networking group for sellers, are offered occasional promotional opportunities on The Vintage Seeker, and those are always marked. We also occasionally publish guest posts; those are marked, too. 

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As the initial directory admin levels out, I will be back to posting regularly on The Vintage Seeker and featuring our editorial contributors. We will continue bringing you fresh and interesting insights on the secondhand market both on the site and in our newsletters.

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Who we cover on The Vintage Seeker is not determined by who pays on the Shop Secondhand Directory. If we write about a shop or service that we think you should know about, we will link you over to their directory listing so you can get more information about them if you so choose. 

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I consider many things when deciding what is worth covering on our main website. If you read about “5 jewellery shops to watch” here on The Vintage Seeker, or if something has my byline on it, then you know it is something I have researched and personally think you should know about or check out. 

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I am so excited to begin this new branch of my business in the Shop Secondhand Directory, and to continue serving this community across The Vintage Seeker and our Vintage Sellers Community membership as well.

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What a dream. Thank you for being here, thank you for supporting small business, thank you for shopping secondhand, and thank you for your support over the past three years. 

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I build this with you.  

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