Meet Leslie Hernandez & Julian Vazquez | Vintage Reseller

We had the good fortune of connecting with Leslie Hernandez & Julian Vazquez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Leslie + Julian, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
Not everyone can do this full-time and not everyone who does this full-time is even close to being rich.

It takes an incredible amount of labor and love for sustainable fashion to be able to “make it” in the vintage game. Many people think that finding things at a thrift store is easy if you “know” what time to look… but in reality, the best pieces come out at the randomest of times, and sometimes not at all. Sometimes we spend 3 hours at the bins and leave empty handed because we feel the items we found were not things people were looking for in that specific time of year. You must do your research and study trends in order to move as many items as possible.

Hoarding and debt can become a huge issue and fast for those who pick up anything and everything without paying attention to what your clientele needs at this moment. Knowing how to be strict with your spending habits is crucial in order to turn a profit that is worth your time.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Slow fashion has always been our passion. In a perfect world, humanity would stop consumerism as a whole as soon as scientists warned us about climate change. However, that is simply not possible, people use clothes to express themselves and since we are ever-changing, our tastes will also be ever-changing. Since we cannot prevent people from buying new clothes, our second best option is to shop second hand, use what’s already on this planet until it’s no longer usable. This helps aid the water waste that comes with the mass production of clothing.

Consistency is key when starting any business from scratch. Find a schedule that works for you and stick with it. Find a weekly/monthly market you can trust and stick with it, you’ll begin to develop a reoccurring customer base. It will not be. easy. Somedays you’ll barely break even. Because ‘doing your own thing’ is never consistent, you must plan ahead and start saving for a rainy day (or market) because they will happen.

Advice for future vintage resellers: run your own ads, create your own marketing campaigns. Sometimes the best turnouts come from you directly. Show your style on social media and you’ll be surprised how many people begin to love your content.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We LOVE arcade games, specifically Cidercade after 8pm (when no kids are allowed). Or the Menil park on a breezy day. For food we’re really into Banana Thai Cuisine in the Cypress area.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Brandon, the event manager for the South Congress Market, gave us, and 100 other vendors an amazing and dependable monthly market in Austin. Last year was a rough year for a lot of us because of the lack of marketing coming from their event managers. A lot of markets nowadays are money grabs that don’t host these events for the prosperity of small businesses, just to fill their pockets.

We had to start from scratch and search for new dependable markets because we found out the event we used to frequent (every Sunday for 2 years) was misusing and pocketing 80% of the vendor fees without ever paying for advertising. Not only that but they demanded to raise the vendor fee for the second time that year, during the slowest month of the year.

Website: https://www.depop.com/stolengoodstx/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stolengoodstx/

Image Credits
All photos taken by Stolen Goods