Quitting Tech to Open a Vintage Store - Sunset Club Vintage

Alan Li (00:01) Welcome to opening soon, a podcast where we interview retail founders about how they started and run their brick and mortar businesses. I'm your host, Alan Li, I run Signs and Mirrors where we make beautiful signs and furniture for retail stores. I also help run FotoLab a self-portrait studio with locations in New York city and Houston.

Alan Li (00:20) Darbe Canady is the founder of Sunset Club Vintage, a full-service vintage showroom in the heart of San Diego. Darbe previously ran a swimsuit brand that was worn by Lizzo, but left that all behind to start her brick and mortar business. We dive into how Darbe knew when to quit her full-time tech job, how she sources her vintage pieces, and the importance of trusting your gut.

Alan Li (00:42) Darby, thanks so much for joining us on the Opening Soon podcast.

Darbe Canady (00:44) Thanks for having me, so excited to be here today.

Alan Li (00:48) Great. So where I'd like to get started would be if we could go back to when you were still working your tech job ⁓ when you thought of branching out and doing your own thing, and then sort of what steps you took before you started your businesses.

Darbe Canady (01:02) Yeah, so when I was working my tech job, I, well, that span or that stint of time was eight years in total. And so when I first had the entrepreneurship bug was probably year two or three into my tech journey. It was right around COVID and leading up to that, I had been really wanting

something different, something more creative. My role at the time was business development and that sort of led to like strategic partnerships and sort of that whole world, but not the most creative role I would say. So I was really craving something different and.

I've always loved fashion. I've always loved design. I used to take a ton of courses in high school, just through my school, that were really fashion forward, if you will. A lot of sewing courses and sketching and art. And when I went to college, it just sort of fell away out of my frame of mind as something that I could actually make money from. ⁓ I was pre-law.

Alan Li (02:07) What did you study in college?

interesting.

Darbe Canady (02:10) Yeah,

so very like different world. I was just craving creativity, like transparently at that time. So I started sketching, started drawing again, kind of just going back to all those things I loved as a child. during COVID, I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I had nothing but time. So was like, maybe I could like design a couple of pieces, you know.

for myself and whatever. And the company I had before Sunset Club was a resort wear company called Malibu Darby. So I started out with just designing some bikinis and swimsuits. I was doing a lot of travel at the time, so I was kind of blending the traveling and modeling and doing photo shoots for fun with the swimwear and the designs. I just started posting about those and promoting that. And yeah, that sort of snowballed.

into Malibu Derby. And, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it, but that was like my dipping my toe into the world of like fashion entrepreneurship from my tech roots.

Alan Li (03:09) Yeah.

And I think I read somewhere that you had some pretty big name celebrities also wear some of your pieces. Is that right?

Darbe Canady (03:17) Yeah, yeah, I feel very fortunate Lizzo wore one of my bikinis and that was definitely like a huge career moment. remember it honestly was crazy. I remember the day too. I was like getting my nails done at a nail salon in Chicago and then my phone just starts like blowing up and I was like, what is happening? Like is the world melting? And it's just all these screenshots of Lizzo. I think she was on

Alan Li (03:26) That's wild.

Yeah.

Darbe Canady (03:43) Hollywood Unlocked, like on vacation. It's a beautiful home, like getting out of the pool and she was wearing my swimsuit and my friends and family like blew me up with the article and I was like freaking out in the nail salon and everybody was like, what is wrong with this girl? I'm like, no, you don't get it. There's like huge moment.

Alan Li (04:00) I must have been a

That must have been a surreal moment.

Darbe Canady (04:03) It was, it was really, really surreal. I mean, as a designer, you work so hard and it's so hard to get like your vision out there and like your product. And sometimes the design process is like a year or years for one piece. And so like by the time it's ready to go out into the world, you've kind of seen it and experienced it a million different ways for a year leading up to that point. And you're like, all right, I'm releasing it

Hopefully people like it. So to have it actually resonate and be something that people want to wear and think is cool is really awesome, especially because there's this really long period of time where you're working on this thing and you have no idea if anyone is even going to care. You could work on a design for a year and release it and no one cares. So yeah, it was very special.

Alan Li (04:54) It feels like nowadays attention is the most important currency and how do you get in front of people and how do you get attention? And I imagine that's similar with designer brands and swimwear and resort wear. How did you think about that? How did you think about getting it out there and how did Lizzo even stumble upon your pieces to wear?

Darbe Canady (04:59) Yeah.

Yeah, so a pro tip I think that any fashion brand should consider is just networking with stylists. think stylists, they're connected to a lot of different clients and people and they're a little bit easier to network with than a celebrity. The odds of you just being in a room with someone like that are maybe a little bit smaller than...

Alan Li (05:28) Hmm.

Ha

Darbe Canady (05:33) you know, running into a stylist, a cool stylist in a shop in LA. But at the time, I was doing a lot of creative photo shoots, a lot of like content creation and promotion, just putting the new design out there. And I was doing those shoots in LA. So everything I was doing was like tagged in LA and the locations were in LA. And so it was just kind of the snowball effect of people in LA seeing my stuff. And

Alan Li (05:59) Mm.

Darbe Canady (06:00) I still don't exactly know how it happened, but I think a stylist might have purchased one of my pieces to curate her vacation wardrobe with. that's sort of my, if I could like connect the dots, I think that's probably how it happened is like through a stylist. And yeah, I think that that's a really good way for starting designers to like,

get their name out there is connect with the people who are actually dressing these celebrities.

Alan Li (06:28) I see. And from what I know about designing pieces, there's oftentimes, you know, like minimum order quantities and, you know, getting the pieces correct and the sizes and the skews. And there's so much to manage. Talk to me about how you navigated that. How did you fund it? ⁓ Yeah, give me the details.

Darbe Canady (06:38) Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

I'm like getting PTSD all over again. So I had that company. I mean, I still have it technically. But when it was like fully in operation was a five year period, sort of ending last year. And the minimum order quantities, the samples, you know, testing out different manufacturers, that is like a beast that

Alan Li (06:50) Hahaha

Darbe Canady (07:11) no one talks about when you're like, I'm going to be a designer and like, these are my designer dreams. It's like, okay, girl, if you say so, I hope you have a lot of money to like make that happen. Some people are super talented and can like, so the samples themselves. So if I could break down the process, you kind of like have the idea, then maybe you're, you do a sketch, you get the sketch to a point that you like. And then you need like a technical,

Alan Li (07:17) You

Darbe Canady (07:36) a tech pack, like a technical design mock up that you would actually like take to a sewing machine and with all the parts and pieces of that sketch that you made to make it like a working, living breathing garment. So you need that technical design and then you have to source the fabric and the trims and all the things that you need to like make it come to life. And then after that, you're going to go into the sample making process.

So you could go with someone as like small scale as a seamstress, or you could do a sample room, or you could literally do a manufacturer that makes samples. All of those have different price points, they all have their pros and cons. And then maybe after a couple iterations of a sample, then you go into like production. And depending on how many you want to make, that'll probably determine whether you make it in the US, overseas.

Maybe the fabric you found is overseas, so you also want to find a manufacturer overseas. There are literally so many ways you can do it. During my five years, I made my clothing both domestically and internationally. Never really found that sweet spot because all of these are a test. Every single time you're testing with your money.

You're testing with your intellectual property. You're testing with the fabrics that you found. I think something to know about manufacturing, anything that's custom in general, is that it's very risky. It's like, okay, here's everything I need to make this garment that I designed. I'm going to hand it off to you and I'm going to pay you like...

half up front and hopefully you deliver it back to me on time and correctly and all the things. So really long-winded way of answering that question. feel like how did I navigate it? A lot of trial and error, honestly, a lot of money spent on trying out people. I think that the best way to

try to protect yourself as much as possible is having samples made at different manufacturers or with different sample rooms or seamstresses or whatever. Test out a few different people with the same exact product and garment and see which one kind of comes out the best. I have been bamboozled a couple times though where they excel on the sample.

Alan Li (09:36) Mm-hmm.

⁓ no.

Darbe Canady (09:57) of like a sales thing, like they do a great job and then like they kind of drop the ball with the production order. So I don't know, it's an expensive trial and error process.

Alan Li (10:04) Safe distance.

That seems like a lot of work and also stress ⁓ that you probably had to go through with your first brand, Malibu Darby. going from that to now with Sunset Club Vintage, talk me through that process of what made you want to start a physical location business in San Diego.

Darbe Canady (10:11) Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

think that there are few differences between ready to wear and vintage. I feel like with anything that's your custom label or your custom clothing brand, there's a level of competition with other designers. Because it's your design that you're putting out there. People could copy that.

steal it and like there's just all of these kind of things that make it a much more tense environment. And I found it really hard to create community and also just to make genuine connections with people on top of all of the stressors of actually designing. It just never felt super

like aligned with my personal values. I love the creative side of designing and like putting collections together, but it's still, I don't think the lifestyle piece was quite clicking. And I've always loved vintage clothing. lot of my wardrobe is vintage. last year, I moved to San Diego three years ago with Malibu Derby thinking like, it's gonna blow up here.

it's beachy, like who's not gonna love it. And San Diego beach culture is just like super casual. It's very like surfer vibes. People are wearing flip-flops. The stuff that I was designing was like for a beach club in Mykonos. Like it's not San Diego at all. And I was just very naive and didn't realize that. ⁓

Alan Li (11:35) Yeah.

I see.

Where were

you moving from? Was it from LA or Malibu, I assume?

Darbe Canady (11:56) I was moving from

Chicago actually, but I was spending time in Miami and I'd spent time in LA. So it was kind of bouncing between the three, but Chicago was the hub. And yeah, I moved to San Diego and I actually rented out a small room in the same building that this shop is in now just for e-commerce fulfillment for Malibu Darby. was a really tiny room, like maybe

seven feet by like 10 feet, really small, just enough for like racks of, you know, some of my product. And yeah, when I moved here and like, it wasn't really resonating with the community. did like San Diego swim week and all these big financial investments to try and like, you know, integrate it. And it just like wasn't sticking simultaneously because I had just moved. was like searching for places to shop for my personal wardrobe.

I love vintage shops and Chicago has so many beautiful curated vintage shops. So does New York and LA. And there just really like weren't any shops like that here. And we had some consignment shops in like areas like Del Mar. But the crowd is a little older there. And so is the the curation of the clothing is a little bit older, even though it's still vintage, it's just not quite.

on trend, if you will. And so, yeah, I don't know where I'm going to shop. And then it kind of became this little idea like, okay, well, Malibu Derby is not really resonating and I already have this space. I could kind of just do vintage, but do I want to do it yet? No, I don't want to do it. This is back and forth discussion in my mind for a solid year. And then last, last February,

Alan Li (13:25) Ha

Darbe Canady (13:37) My last collection from Malibu Darby was a lot of ivory tones, a lot of white and cream colored pieces, not intentionally, but that did resonate with the bridal market here in San Diego. I started getting girls who wanted to buy my stuff for their bachelorettes and their honeymoons and a bridal blog called Little White Looks picked up a picture of a bride on a yacht in a dress that I designed.

and it sold out the rest of my collection within two weeks. And so I was sitting there in my empty studio space and I was like, okay, now I'm to have this conversation one more time with myself. do I want to invest in another collection of resort wear, which never really felt like the flow was right with that business or do I want to

see what I could do in vintage and I already had some trips lined up that year, some to Mexico, some to Japan and Europe where I knew these are really big locations for vintage shopping and buying. So I could kind of just buy on these trips with the intention of maybe selling a couple things and see what happens. And so that's kind of how that happened. I just was sitting in my empty

office space.

Alan Li (14:47) I'm curious with, you know, selling out your collection at the time. I guess some people saw it possibly like, my gosh, it's doing so well that it sold out because, you know, we got to cover in this magazine. But from your perspective, it was, it seems like it was more of a relief ⁓ man, it didn't seem to resonate as much here, but thankfully it resonates with some people. Did you think about maybe I should just double down on sort of the wedding where space or?

Darbe Canady (14:57) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I definitely thought about it. But I think you put it really well. Like the feeling that came over me was like genuine relief. And to me, that was sort of the thing that I needed. Like if I'm feeling relief after not having this stuff, like maybe that's not the right business. And honestly, for those five years of just like going through the trials and

tribulations of manufacturing. I never felt like I hit a really good flow and system with any manufacturer. And so it just felt more like a sign than anything and it felt felt very low risk. Another thing that I want to mention is the cost, the upfront cost of custom anything clothing wise is really high because you're investing all of this money.

Alan Li (15:41) Totally fair.

Darbe Canady (15:57) before you even have a product that you don't know is going to sell or not versus vintage, which you can buy for, you know, a fraction of that price. And you can sell for whatever you want to sell it for based off of like how you're marketing those pieces. So to me, it was kind of a no brainer because the cost was...

to invest in a vintage business was significantly lower than investing in more resort wear. So it felt low risk and I already, I think I had like another three months on my commercial lease for the space.

Alan Li (16:31) Hmm, got it. So that makes sense. And then you decided, okay, now I'm going on a few trips to really cool places where I can find some vintage pieces. And I already have three months left of this commercial space. Let me bring some pieces back and see if I can sell them through my current space. that the process?

Darbe Canady (16:47) Yeah.

Yeah, that was the process. It was easily the least thought out thing I've ever done. I've made this choice within a matter of weeks, but I think that's why it worked because it wasn't really overly planned. It was just enough of an idea that I could test out what might have worked without feeling too married to any outcome or any robust vision for the company. I just knew

Alan Li (17:14) It felt natural.

Darbe Canady (17:15) Yeah, it felt very natural in the fact that San Diego just did not have a single curated vintage shopping experience that catered toward women who were 21 to 35. Felt like, okay, well, there's got to be at least a few girls that want this. think San Diego too, we have like a really high influencer culture. A lot of girls were in like wellness and

fitness and like a ton of just like really cute girls who are super social, very active online but like they're all shopping at Zara Aritzia or they're going up to LA where they have cooler shops than we do so yeah.

Alan Li (17:57) Okay, so where did you go and how many pieces did you bring back? And then once you did that, how did you start Sunset Club Vintage?

Darbe Canady (18:04) So with the first space, my original smaller space, I probably had about 50 pieces. I also sourced in San Diego, which is really hard. We have a few vintage thrift stores, but the quality is just kind of low. So I probably had about 50 pieces. In the first space, no designer. It was all just secondhand clothing.

vintage clothing, nothing designer. I felt like that was an interesting place to start because I had no idea whether or not, you the girls would even be interested in vintage. So I didn't want to like over invest in designer clothing at the time. But yeah, I probably started with about 50, 50 pieces that I collected.

Alan Li (18:48) And this was before your,

this was before your trips or this was after your trips.

Darbe Canady (18:53) Kind of during. I had a few pieces of my own wardrobe that I pulled from maybe like 15 and then I sourced probably another 15 to 20 locally and then a few more on my trips throughout that year and I launched with about 50 pieces at my first pop-up. Yeah.

Alan Li (19:09) Gotcha. And what

did you learn from that first pop-up?

Darbe Canady (19:13) Well, the first pop-up, I was like praying to God that I made $300 and I made way more than that and I sold out of most of the stuff and I was like, okay, this actually feels like it's gonna work. it was that, that click that I literally never felt I got with Malibu Darby. It was just like, okay, so this is, this is something at least like I know at the very least.

Alan Li (19:26) Whoa.

Hmm.

Darbe Canady (19:38) there isn't anything like this. And if I throw more pop-up events, girls are gonna come and they're gonna show up. So it started out, even though I had my like little office space, I really didn't use it that much as a shop. I was doing pop-up events every four to six weeks or so with little curated vintage collections.

Alan Li (19:55) these pop-up events are at

other people's places.

Darbe Canady (19:59) Yeah, there is a space here that I rented out, I think twice and just did a pop-up there. I would have wine, very budget-friendly. would go to Trader Joe's and get cute wine and aesthetic wine coolers and doing all the things to make it really cute and experiential. I think that was always at the top of my mind is yes, I'm selling vintage.

But I don't want it to feel like you're at a market and you're just visiting my tent and you're going to bargain with me for this t-shirt. I wanted it to still feel very like a shop almost. Before I had enough space for a shop, I wanted it to feel curated in that way.

Alan Li (20:40) I see. So the first pop-up goes well. You almost sell out of all your pieces and you feel that click. So now you're like, I need to get probably get more pieces. I need to do more pop-ups. I need to do more events. ⁓ What happens after?

Darbe Canady (20:53) Yeah.

So at that time I was still working my tech job. I was balancing my tech job with entrepreneurship, which was crazy. Probably did it for far too long.

Alan Li (21:03) So

Malibu Derby was also that entire time you were still working a full-time tech job. my gosh, I love that hustle.

Darbe Canady (21:10) Yes, I

was working my full-time tech job until March of this year. So it was quite a long time. So for the first full year of Sunset Club, I was doing pop-ups, I was working my tech job, and I was just refilling inventory. And every six to eight weeks, I would do a pop-up and that was kind of...

Alan Li (21:17) Wow.

Darbe Canady (21:32) the amount of time that I needed because I was still doing my tech job to be able to source and find things. I was searching a lot online, going into a lot of Goodwills, and then every time I had a trip, I would try and buy as much as possible. I even had a work trip, and I stayed an extra couple hours so could hit the thrift store in that city. But literally, any chance that I could...

Alan Li (21:52) Ha

Darbe Canady (21:55) squeeze in thrifting, I would do it for our first year.

Alan Li (21:59) Yeah.

Um, and I really liked that because I think on the internet all the time, you see people saying, oh, you have to quit your job to go all in on entrepreneurship. But in reality, that's a really scary and, uh, sometimes it might not be the best decision for everyone because when you still have a full-time job, you have a comfortable salary and you have your nights and weekends which is plenty of time to start working on a business.

Darbe Canady (22:17) Yeah.

Totally. And I think too, like lot of people ask themselves, when is the right time to quit? Some people say you never, there's never the right time to quit. Or, you know, some people say that you have this feeling and you just know. I think for me, I never quit with Malibu Darby, even though I desperately wanted to. I never quit because there wasn't that click. And then when I...

had that first pop up and things were selling out. I had a gut feeling that I knew I would be able to quit my job with the vintage route. And so, for about a year, I was balancing all those things. And then it hit a point where it was just so apparent that the two could not exist anymore. I feel there's a point of managing maybe your...

You're nine to five and then you're like five to nine. You're passion, your side hustle or whatever. That it's only gonna grow with more time that you dedicate to it. And that's like the point that I was hitting where it could just not go any further if I was not going to give 100 % of my time. So that to me was the moment I knew, okay, I cannot do both of these things anymore. And the same was true for my corporate job, right?

you are only going to grow in advance as much as you put energy into something. So it just felt like I was half-assing both of these things, giving it my best shot, but you can only do so much. So I think the were competing with each other until they just couldn't anymore. Then you have to choose.

Alan Li (23:41) Totally.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. And now, now you're full time on Sunset Club Vintage. Tell me what your day to day looks like. What are you doing and where are you taking the business?

Darbe Canady (24:02) every day is a little different, but I would say generally. So Sunset Club, now that we are in, we moved into our bigger space January of this year. So almost a year after doing my first pop-up, we expanded. And now I have one employee. She is really great. But her and I are constantly

planning the next drop. We still operate off of a drop model. So every six weeks we drop a new curated vintage collection. It could be based off of the season or you know, maybe it's very specific to a certain theme like bridal. But every six-ish weeks there's a new batch of things that are released both in shop and online. Which is just enough time to plan a little event and

source enough for there to be a meaningful and substantial drop. So I usually wake up in the morning, not a morning person. ⁓ So the shop opens at 12. But I think it's kind of perfect because I get girls who will come in who work remotely on their lunch break and they'll come in around noon if they want to shop a little bit. But generally Mondays and Tuesdays we reserve for

Alan Li (24:56) Ha

Darbe Canady (25:11) planning content for planning events for sourcing I now 50 % 50 to 70 % of the inventory is designer, which is different than it was a year ago and so a lot of my inventory comes from overseas so Usually I'm starting my day a little later because I'm up in the evenings having conversations with people overseas about

Alan Li (25:24) Gotcha.

Darbe Canady (25:38) the inventory that's coming in. And so yeah, starts, I would say late mornings. I take my morning meetings and stuff from home, come into the shop maybe around 11. Alex and I will be in here just working and planning, organizing, steaming clothes. We redesign the shop quite a bit. I think that's also something interesting about vintage is every time something sells, you have to

replenish it or redesign the space so that it still feels good when customers come in here. So a lot of our time is spent reimagining the space and moving things around and then managing appointments because we're appointment based. And then the weekends are the busy periods in terms of appointments. I would say there's very little planning that gets done for like events and drops. It's just mostly managing.

shopping appointments that come in, but those are super fun because they're all private and sometimes girls are coming in for their birthdays. Sometimes they're bringing their boyfriends in here to buy them stuff. But it's just really fun and every day is a little different.

Alan Li (26:35) Ha ha.

Yeah, and how big is the new space now? And I know that before you were doing around like 50 or so pieces, how many pieces do you want to keep in stock at a time nowadays?

Darbe Canady (26:53) Yeah.

So the last room was, yeah, maybe like five or six feet by 10 feet, something like that. Now we have two rooms, two, it's one shop with two rooms in it. Each room is probably 15 by 15. So a lot bigger than our last space. Yeah. And I would say each drop,

Alan Li (27:03) Mm-hmm.

⁓ a lot bigger.

Darbe Canady (27:17) Accessories, shoes, and bag-wise, probably in the 30-piece range. And then clothing could be anywhere from 30 to 60 pieces. So it's still a number that's I don't want people to come into the shop and feel overwhelmed. I think I hear that a lot from my customers. They don't want to go thrifting because there's just too much stuff to look through. So all of it is

Alan Li (27:36) Mm-hmm.

Darbe Canady (27:44) very highly curated. So when you come in here, you can focus on like the 30 things I'm putting out on this rack for you or like the 30 bags we have. It's not meant to be overstimulating in that way. the shop, the capacity for the shop is probably like a max of 150 pieces every drop in a minimum of 75.

Alan Li (28:07) Gotcha. And for curating the pieces, I know that you've had to travel a lot to find really cool pieces, but how do people generally find vintage pieces? Is it, you you have to go visit other countries or other places to find it, or is there an online wholesaler of vintage pieces, or how does someone go about even getting these pieces?

Darbe Canady (28:08) Yeah.

It depends on where you live. Some people are fortunate enough to live in cities that just have great sense of style and like great inventory in their thrift stores like a Goodwill or Salvation Army or you know stores like that. ⁓ There are some cities that are great for that. New York, you know, is great for that. Even Arizona is great for that. L.A. has a lot. But in a city like San Diego, our inventory in our thrift stores is not that great.

Alan Li (28:38) Mm-hmm.

Darbe Canady (28:50) Which is why I travel a lot and I was traveling for my own passion before Before this but yeah, I find that it's a cool storytelling moment I think that's been something that people are really drawn to about Sunset Club is the bags and the shoes in the shop each one has a tag that says where I got it from so it'll say sourced in Japan or you know sourced in Chicago, so

It's cool because you're almost bringing your customer on this like trip with you. And then we also make content about these trips that we're going on. But yeah, it's a mix. you can, some people have connections. I know a girl in LA or I'm sorry, in New York who has a private, she buys privately from someone with their own private collection of designer. And they're older. They just want to

kind of offload it. And yeah, she buys privately from them. So there's so many ways to buy vintage because you could literally find it anywhere at an estate sale at someone's private home, at a thrift store, at a wholesaler. There really is no end to where you could source from. It's just kind of your own personal connections.

Alan Li (29:59) I see. And for the curation, it purely just based on what you like and what you don't like? Or is it, what is the calculus behind it? Is it, think my customers will like this, or I think this is in season, or this is on trend, or is it combining that with your taste? How do you approach it?

Darbe Canady (30:12) Yeah.

Yeah,

I would definitely say Sunset Club is a reflection of my taste. I think a lot of founders of vintage shops tend to curate based around their taste because it's just kind of what's natural to them. So a lot of the, I would say my taste is a little bit more timeless. Like I lean into more like staple pieces, investment pieces that aren't really going to go out of style in the next couple of years.

and things that work well with a variety of outfits and a variety of things that you're doing throughout the day. Actually, that bag right there is one of our best sellers. It's a Gucci Jackie bag. I have sold so many of those bags and I've had girls blow up my DMs asking if I have more. That bag is based off of...

Jackie O's style, who she's known for being like a very timeless, iconic, like fashion, fashion inspiration throughout history. And so I feel the style of Sunset Club is very timeless, very feminine, but still very cool and not trying too hard. So yeah, that's how I describe it.

Alan Li (31:12) Mm-hmm.

Got it.

That's cool. And how have you been getting the word out to people in San Diego about Sunset Club Vintage?

Darbe Canady (31:31) literally just Instagram. I wish I could say I'm good at TikTok and that I had a moment on TikTok and now everyone's found me, but I'm really bad at TikTok and I'm trying to be better. But Instagram and I, you know, people, I hear a lot about Instagram not being that great of a business tool anymore, but I think it depends on the market you're in and how you're using it. I have found Instagram to be great in San Diego.

and I, we also do a lot of events. So I think that's a great way to get people out and in front of your business and the things that you're selling and like connecting with you. I'm physically here like 90 % of the time. And so a lot of the girls that come in are meeting me and like I've handpicked all these pieces. So we're talking about where I got it from and all this stuff. And I think Instagram.

Alan Li (32:18) Mmm.

Darbe Canady (32:21) mixed with a very well designed retail experience and then when you add really cool products on top of that and then someone that you're actually connecting with face to face, it all just kind of works really well. So Instagram has been yeah, yeah, that's kind of been our best way of finding people.

Alan Li (32:35) It's a good recipe.

What?

Yeah, and we-

And when you say Instagram, are you talking about just organically posting or is it like Instagram ads or? ⁓

Darbe Canady (32:46) Yeah. No,

just posting. Yeah, just posting. I'm trying to think if there was a specific moment where we just had significant growth. I will say when I moved into this space, I was really, really nervous because it was triple my rent previously in my smaller studio.

Alan Li (32:51) wow.

Darbe Canady (33:10) It was another one of those moments where I'm sitting there with all this vintage product, but I have no idea if anyone is going to want to buy it. And then it's okay, well, it's not going to fit in my old space. I need to go into the new space, but what the heck? I'm tripling my rent and I have no idea how this is going to work. But I will say that taking the risk of moving into this space allowed me to showcase more of my personal style.

Alan Li (33:10) Yeah.

Darbe Canady (33:38) of my interior design taste. It just allowed people to see more of me and in a way where they could have never seen that in the first space that was designed really just to be like an office. And so the more I poured into making this space beautiful, when people would come in, even if it was just one appointment, they would take a picture and post about it and then it would look really pretty.

Alan Li (33:44) Hmm.

Darbe Canady (34:02) people would be like, where are you? where are you shopping? You know, that can't be in San Diego. So yeah, investing in a space that allowed me to showcase like more of my style was huge in terms of growth and organic growth because it just makes people wanna take pictures and post about it and share it with their friends. And I think that's important.

Alan Li (34:22) Word of mouth is definitely the best marketing channel that you can possibly have.

Darbe Canady (34:27) Yeah, definitely.

Alan Li (34:28) For people that are maybe in other cities that don't have great vintage, who are interested in starting a vintage store as well, what would you say to them or what advice would you give? Because I think liking to wear vintage clothing and starting a vintage clothing business is two different things. ⁓ Yeah, what advice would you have?

Darbe Canady (34:47) Yeah.

I would definitely say start saving. none of these things are possible without money of some kind. And I saved a lot to be able to move into this bigger space. even the money like Malibu Derby was always self-funded. And so the tech job was like the vehicle to be able to do those things. So if you're in a city that doesn't have good vintage, that's okay.

But then you need to have enough money so that you can either buy online or like take time to travel to cities that do have better vintage. And then when you're in these cities, maybe you make connections with someone who you can now buy from and on a recurring basis. Maybe you find a private client or, you know, something like that or a wholesaler or whatever. But I would say just it's definitely possible. Vintage is like such a great

business to be in because there's a never ending supply of secondhand clothing and stuff is cycling through every day. But you do need to have like some money set aside to be able to invest in that because a lot of the inventory that I've sold is stuff that I've traveled to get. And I feel that would be misleading to say, you know, you don't need, you don't need money to start.

vintage business. Everyone's journey is a little different, but I found money was important in my journey.

Alan Li (36:14) Yeah, no, that's totally fair. Where are you hoping to take Sunset Club Vintage over the next year, couple years, or looking further out?

Darbe Canady (36:23) That's a great question. I would love to have just a couple of other really small shops. think I always want Sunset Club, at least the physical store experience to be very intimate. And I love private appointment based shopping. My customers love it too. It's just so different than regular retail where you're feeling very pushy and rushed you know, you don't have time to look at.

the things that you're buying. So I want to continue to keep that at the core of the brand, but I would love to branch out into a couple of other smaller cities where the girls love vintage, not in LA or New York, but yeah, some other really beautiful coastal cities, I think would be really cool. I have a couple on my radar, but not saying too much yet, but a few other.

a other locations that share this same energy and also just expanding our online presence. think that's a huge area of opportunity for us. We just launched our online shop with our last drop and it was phenomenal. And so continuing to pour into our content and just making connections with girls and other markets, doing pop-ups. There are some incredible vintage markets.

that are like on a larger scale in New York and LA to where if we were attending those, like we would be in front of a whole new clientele. So yeah, that would allow us to make more face-to-face connections in new markets, but also would expand our online, our website presence as well. So those are kind of my two long-term goals.

Alan Li (37:40) Mm-hmm.

I'm

super excited for you. And hopefully we can get you some more beautiful signs when you expand to the new locations.

Darbe Canady (38:00) More signs!

Yes, I'm definitely going to need more signs. My sign is literally right here, actually. It's like, it's right there.

Alan Li (38:09) I love it. my gosh, so good.

So I know we're running up on time, but the final question I have is, given your journey so far over the last few years, starting in Malibu Derby and then Sunset Club Vintage, if you could go back and do anything over again, what would you do?

Darbe Canady (38:27) It would have been to listen to my gut a little bit sooner because I had that gut feeling of not wanting to do custom resort wear anymore for probably the last two years of the business. just was not feeling good and you try to push through it because maybe you're just going through the motions of entrepreneurship. looking back, it was like it was something way bigger than that.

that wasn't the right lane for me. And vintage was always on my mind, but I don't know why I just didn't want to admit it to myself for a while. So I would just say to listen, listen to my gut a little bit sooner. really think a lot of times, you know, what is the right thing to do or what, what you really want to do deep down.

Alan Li (39:10) Yeah, I can really relate to that because yeah, starting a business and figuring out it's not right for you, it's still hard to close it down because it's your baby. But sometimes that's the best decision for both parties. ⁓

Darbe Canady (39:22) Totally.

And then it frees up your mental capacity, your finances, all these other things to then let what is for you come through. Because as long as I was holding on to that first business, I couldn't get to the second one. There had to be a little bit of a period of time of resetting.

Alan Li (39:41) Yeah. Darby, this is so much fun. If people are interested in reaching out and asking you further questions, what's the best way to get in contact with you?

Darbe Canady (39:50) Yeah, so my email is info at sunsetclubvintage.com. My personal Instagram is Malibu Darby. My name is Darbe. And our business Instagram is Sunset Club Vintage across all platforms. So you can always reach out to me there, email me, DM me with questions. I'm open.

Alan Li (40:15) Well, we'll include those in the show notes and thanks again for taking the time. This is lot of fun.

Darbe Canady (40:19) Thank you. It's so fun being on the podcast. Thanks for having me.

Alan Li (40:23) Of course.

Darbe Canady (40:24) Thanks.

Alan Li (40:24) Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, feel free to visit openingsoonpodcast.com for all of our episodes online. If you run a retail store and need updated furniture or signage, please feel free to visit www.signsandmirrors.com. Lastly, if you have any feedback or would to be a guest on the show, email me at alan, A-L-A-N, at signsandmirrors.com. I promise I'll respond. Thanks for listening.