Tiny shop with big dreams: New vintage clothing store open on Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue
Madyson Willoughby is living proof it’s never too early to strike out on your own.
Through years of planning and an early interest in vintage shopping, Willoughby, who turned 22 in September, has opened her first storefront on Sixth Avenue: Good Vibes Vintage & Resale.
“I started working on this in senior year of high school,” she told The News Tribune in a recent interview at her store.
Willoughby, a Wilson High and University of Puget Sound graduate, recalled she didn’t have a lot of ready cash for her wardrobe growing up.
“So for most of my clothes, I thrifted or I went to consignment stores or rummage sales or estate sales. That became just so much fun. It was the thing I did with my mom and my little sister, and it was a better way to buy clothes,” she recalled.
“I find all these cool clothes that maybe I can’t wear. And they’re going to end up being wasted, or I don’t know where they’re going to end up. So I started compulsively buying them.”
She soon started an online shop and ran it during her college years, mostly in the summer.
“And then in the last year or so it really picked up online and went really well,” Willoughby said.
She also worked two wait-staff restaurant jobs and as a desk assistant for School of Business & Leadership at UPS.
“I got to meet all the business professors and talk to them and kind of shape my idea of how to start a business in Tacoma,” she said. “I had been working for other people since high school and I really lost passion for it.
“So I had saved a lot of money on my own. And I wanted to do something with it. I’m like, what’s the point of saving if I just go to work and save more money and don’t do anything fun. So I started this.”
She’s renting the 800-square-foot storefront that previously served as office space for Beefy’s Burgers next door, two doors down from Mary Mart.
Her store is just across and down the street from Restyle Clothing, another vintage shop that opened last year.
For now she’s a staff of one, with some help occasionally from her mom, whom she added was great with marketing.
“She’s more of an extrovert than I am,” she said, recalling her mother describing the business to a Starbuck’s barista. “I’m like, ‘Mom, people are waiting behind us.’”
She smiled at the memory.
“Both of my parents are really wonderful,” adding that her dad also helped with setting up the interior fixtures and more.
If the store does well enough, she hopes to expand with at least one hire.
She said that essentially the store is her baby, and it recently got a fresh coat of pink paint for the exterior.
“I love it so much, I call her Ingrid sometimes,” she said. “It’s really a store for everybody at any age and any gender at whatever point in your life.”
Not only is Willoughby repurposing the clothing she sells, she has salvaged most all of the display cases and racks from other stores.
As a result, there’s a mystery seller to whom she still is appreciative of at a time when she was just starting to launch her store.
“I reached out to this person on Craigslist who was selling four or five garment racks. And they were really good and the price was really good,” she said. “So I called her up and she directed me to her husband because he had a truck to move them ... and take the money and all that.”
She met him, made the transaction, and that was that. Except for one detail.
“Because I didn’t have a ton of money to spend on them, he moved them for me, he made sure they all worked for me. He dropped them off at my house, and he leaves and I realized I never learned his name.”
“I always felt bad about that!” she exclaimed. “He was so nice.”
Good Vibes Vintage & Resale
Address: 3014 Sixth Ave.
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. closed Mondays.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodVibesTacoma/
This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 6:10 AM.
