Potential target users

The usefulness of our site for companies and businesses looking to break into the vintage niche market is something to think about.

Consider the recent 'recycle-it' line by Sports Girl which attempts to tap into the vintage trend by selling "limited edition re-worked vintage fashion."

Businesses and larger corporations could find our investigation of how online media is facilitating the vintage trend useful. In highlighting the process by which individuals are buying and selling vintage online the site can also help companies generate ideas for the ways inwhich the vintage market can be penetrated.

Who collects vintage?

Although vintage and antique collecting has largely been associated with an older demography it is a younger generation that seems to be embracing this trend and taking vintage online with their technologically savvy skills.

This is particularly evident if we look at the process of selling and buying vintage fashion online. Young female collectors generally between 20-25 years old started online vintage stores using a combination of facebook, blog sites and twitter as a way of marketing their e-bay store.
Consider the example of 'oh deer vintage' which has its own facebook, twitter, blog, to direct potential customers (predominantly young women who engage with these forms of online social networking) to her e-bay store.

Gary Pepper Vintage and Tuula are two other examples out of a wide range of'vintage brands' that have emerged out of new forms of online technology.

An exploration of this process of buying and selling vintage therefore seems to suggest that the internet is playing a major role in the revival of vintage as a trend among young people, specifically women. The fact that new technology is actually facilitating nostalgia and reconnecting people with objects of by-gone eras points to an interent paradox which we can investigate through our site.

A few websites that may be good points of reference

 The Vintage List :"The idea for The Vintage List came to me when I realized that the way vintage is being bought and sold online is changing - in the Web 2.0 world, buyers and sellers can no longer rely on just one shopping venue! Vintage shops are popping up all over the web, on various venues and on individual websites. I saw a real need for a way to bring all of these shops together, and The Vintage List was born!"

Fashion Dig (Vintage Clothing): "Fashion Diggers love to talk about all things vintage, especially their fabulous finds. After all, it's not just the clothes...it's the story behind the clothes that count. Share your knowledge, or dilemmas, about vintage fashion and style with other like minded people here."

Swap Vintage: Swap Vintage is a unique online community set up specifically for members to be able to swap vintage items with one another - while it has a lot of the features of a regular social network, the main focus is to facilitate swapping"

A news article on how online vintage fashion retailer ModCloth utilizes the participatory and user-generated aspects of Web 2.0 / crowd-sourcing: "ModCloth takes its customers' fashion advice to improve its buying decisions, but it's also about building community. Customers leave comments on clothing samples and vote, but can also share their views with friends via Facebook or Twitter. It results in a group of people who may not know each other, but share in common an interest in fashion and a desire to talk about it. These fashionistas are a part of a community more complex than garments, though. ModCloth's blog, ModLife, covers everything from fashion to recipes, and provides "cool links" on the Web. There's even a link to a Flickr account where customers upload photos of their favorite ModCloth outfits...Online shops generally have a narrow frame of thought, assuming their customers came to them for only their products. But Web 2.0 is about community, and ModCloth was right in assuming that its shoppers have more in common than clothing."

Online vintage fashion communities in which geographically dispersed users upload photos of themselves in their day-to-day outfits, many focused on or incorporating vintage:

Chicismo: "a global community of girls sharing their personal style and inspiring others."

LOOKBOOK.nu: "The Internet's largest source of fashion inspiration from real people around the world" and "collective fashion consciousness." Typing 'vintage' into the search box on the homepage brings up 5265 look matches and 99 different users.

Blogs: 

Trish Hunter Finds - A girl in Victoria who has an extensive vintage collection from clothes to books to kitsch porcelain figurines. Also an online store. Has 163 followers to date and media coverage including front page of Heidelberg & Diamond Valley Weekly, Melbourne Weekly Eastern and Emerald Hill Weekly.

Vintage ephemera in the digital realm

How has the Internet has impacted on vintage collecting? Here is a relevant excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Collecting

"The Internet offers many resources to any collector: personal sites presenting one's collection, online collectible catalogs, dealer/shops websites displaying their merchandise, Internet trading platforms, collector clubs, autograph club, collector forums and collector mailing lists.

Finding retired editions has become much more convenient with the advent of Internet auctions and trading. It has never been easier to track down a retired piece, and to reach out to dozens of dealers using e-mail or their websites. Most retailers tend to focus on one or two specific lines. Their activity in acquiring inventory adds liquidity to the market, and their sales of retired pieces are important to establishing a trend in value that is more consistent than random sales between individuals that may not be meaningfully documented.

The public and dealers alike use Internet auction websites to buy and sell collectibles. The thrill of "winning" an auction, and the convenience of shopping from home have contributed to a shift in volume from in-store sales of retired pieces to auction/mail order sales through such auction sites.

When buying expensive retired pieces, an escrow account for funds transfer may decrease the buyer's chance of losing their money. A form of fraud on the buy side involves swapping a defective piece for a good one bought via auction. In this case, the buyer, who may have a repaired piece, or a slightly defective one, buys a mint condition piece from the edition via auction and ships the defective one to the seller, demanding a refund on the auction. Sellers should record item numbers and other details about the piece before shipping so the seller has the facts they need to avoid this scam."

Vintage Posters

I found this great poster site for a vintage poster collector and currator in Bondi: Antonio Ruggerino Galleria
Possibly conduct an interview with the collector and create a page for vintage posters.

However, this site also got me thinking about the use of vintage posters as thumbnails. It could be cute to have an old fashion or food poster as the thumbnail link for that page on the site. Although we will need to look into issues of copyright.
Some examples i found through a google search: