How to Market Your Vintage Brand Without Burning Out This Summer

Pre-Loved is back with the second installment of the Resale Report, our monthly segment dedicated to the business of vintage and secondhand — made specifically for the small shop owners, solo sellers, and independent dealers.

Joining me again is Sloane Middleton-Mann, founder of Business of Vintage, the world's only marketing agency specialized for vintage sellers. Sloane brings a rare combination of industry experience and formal business school training — she went back to get her MBA specifically to translate retail and marketing best practices to the one-of-a-kind space of secondhand, and has been helping vintage sellers build smarter businesses ever since.

We start with a debrief on Vintage Store Day, which we covered in our first Resale Report — including the press wins, the local crawls, and the shop owner whose entrepreneurial story landed a full profile in her local paper.

Then we get into the real topic of the day: summer social media strategy. It's flea market and outdoor pop-up season, which means dealers are busier and more exhausted than ever, even as the season hands them some of the richest content of the year. We talk about how to turn that contradiction into your advantage — a repeatable "minimum viable content strategy," what to actually capture at a market without losing your mind, what happens to your account if you go quiet for a real vacation, and how to turn a sourcing trip into a sold-out drop.

Whether you're trying to survive your busiest selling season or just trying to build a more sustainable relationship with your phone, this one's for you.

Let's talk shop!

DISCUSSED IN THE EPISODE:

• [01:24] A debrief on Vintage Store Day — what happened when shops used the press and social templates from our Vintage Store Day webinar.
• [05:00] Setting the scene for summer: pop-up season is the most content-rich time of year, and also the most exhausting
• [06:22] Is the "summer slowdown" a self-fulfilling prophecy? Here's a reframe to consider from Holy Thrift.
• [09:06] The "minimum viable content strategy": ditching perfectionism for three repeatable post types
• [17:37] What actually happens to your account when you take a real break (it's less scary than you think)
• [21:28] How much of yourself to share in personal content
• [23:47] A hands-full strategy for capturing content at markets
• [28:01] Turning a one-time market shopper into a regular customer
• [31:42] The latest content trend Sloane's watching
• [34:08] Storyboarding a sourcing trip like a movie — more on this in our Pre-Loved episode with handbag seller Fashionica on her Japan sourcing trip
• [37:25] Pre-Loved's second annual Secondhand Sellers Income Survey — and what we'll dig into next time

LET'S CONNECT: 

• 📸Instagram: @emilymstochl
• 🐦Threads: @emilymstochl
• 🎥TikTok: @emilymstochl
• 📧 Substack: https://prelovedpod.substack.com/ 
• 🎧Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/prelovedpod