A Goodbye to Online Shopping
On closing down my vintage web shop and moving on, IRL
This week, I’ll officially launch my new website. There’s nothing for sale there.
My original website served me well. I spent months building it out before I announced the launch of my vintage brand, St. Evens. Countless hours were dedicated to switching between YouTube and Reddit and the Shopify Help tab as I figured out how to navigate the (new to me) platform. My business flourished in its first home on the internet, but a lot has changed in five years.
When I opened up shop in February of 2020, nobody had any idea what was about to happen. Those first few months of business would have been challenging no matter what, but the pandemic forced an acceleration that felt very scary yet very serendipitous. With my hospitality job on an indefinite hold, I dove in to my online venture head first and was met with a warm community of people who were doing the same. The internet of 2020 was like an unexpected block party, the only place most of us could really be together.
I released weekly online drops for over two years, each time getting closer and closer to selling out. I’d post previews on Instagram and receive dozens of messages from friends and strangers alike about all of the alarms they had set to catch that one special piece they were eyeing. 11:59 AM each Thursday was like a weekly microdose of Christmas, pacing around my apartment, watching the clock roll over, my heart racing as the orders come in. My phone is almost always on silent mode except on those stretches of Thursday afternoons, where I’d turn up the volume loud enough to hear the Cha-Ching! of Shopify from the other room. My sales increased, my DMs were busy, my follower count steadily ticked upward.
Things were going really well.
And then, things were going really okay.
And before I knew it, they weren’t going at all.
I had preached (and been preached to) the vital importance of owning something. I had chosen to launch an independent website, instead of solely relying on existing platforms like Etsy or Depop, because it felt essential to have creative ownership and the security of my own domain. But despite my sense of independence, the reality was I was still funneling almost all of my traffic through Instagram. People (including myself) were fed up with the app and its fickle algorithms and endless advertisements, and were spending less time scrolling and more time seeking out places to shop in person. I was among the many that wanted to go out and try things on, to touch fabrics and talk to people and twirl in a fitting room mirror.
I slowed down my online drops, shifting from weekly to bi-weekly. For the last year, my online collections came out once a month, if even. I knew my inconsistency was partly to blame for the lackluster sales, but it was impossible to keep up my momentum when each release seemed to garner less interest than the last. I would often spend the painstaking hours to wash, mend, steam, photograph, list, caption, and promote over 30 pieces just to sell two. Selling online didn’t make sense for the last year I was doing it, and yet I kept going long after I should have.
I quietly shuttered my web store earlier this year. I ran a huge sale to move some of the remaining inventory, and even at half price, most of the pieces still sat. My audience had moved on. My website was now a graveyard of things nobody really wanted, and I realized that leaving it up was actually hurting me more than helping. In my hopes that I could still sell the pieces I had already worked so hard on, I was actually just showcasing a website full of second-rate vintage that didn’t really represent what I was doing. I was entangled in the sunk cost, long unable to accept that the website and the momentum I had worked so hard on had gone from a bustling market to a ghost town. The tumbleweeds had been blowing through for a while, I was just ignoring them.
While my online shop collected cobwebs, my brand continued to blossom elsewhere. I was now a familiar face in the NYC vintage circuit from repeat appearances at some of the biggest markets and events in the city. I joined the Seven Wonders Collective, thrilled (and relieved) to finally be stocked in a brick and mortar. My Substack grew, my TikTok following now doubled that on Instagram, I got my very first paid content gig. So why was I still so attached to my (now failed) online store?
I had to face the fact that part of me was chasing the bygone days of my nearly-sold-out web drops, hoping for just a teeny bit of the dopamine hit that is online engagement. Sure, it’s nice to hear a compliment about a piece from a shopper in person. But it’s a different kind of high when that same piece gets hundreds of likes and dozens of comments laden with exclamation points and colorful emojis. Crazier still, that same engagement I so sorely missed didn’t even translate to sales. Often the pieces with the most likes and the most fawning comments sat unpurchased for months, or even years.
I eventually realized that the one thing that I was really holding on to was a desire for documentation. It was a lot of work to photograph (and model) all of the pieces I was selling, but there was something about that process that felt vital.
If the items I was so painstakingly collecting and restoring went straight from my hands into someone’s closet without the photos and the posts, who would know? How could I share proof of all of the magical things I had found? How would anyone know what I was capable of curating without the pictures and videos? And if I was spending the time and energy to document, why wouldn’t I just take the extra little step of listing?
As it turns out, that extra step was far beyond little. Maintaining my web store was taking so much out of me that the documentation itself had become a dreaded chore, a once exciting part of my process that I had grown to resent.
The work went well beyond simply time spent and energy expended. Until I slowed down, I didn’t realize just how taxing it had been on me to get ready and stand in front of the camera so often. I was never making enough money to hire a model, not to mention everything was happening in my apartment. After I shot each collection, I’d spend hours pouring over hundreds of photos of myself. I was usually wearing things that didn’t really fit. I dissected my body from every angle, cropped into elbows and knees and a neck. Sometimes I liked what I saw. More often, I didn’t.
The photo backdrop in my office has been hanging off the wall on one side for months, and it feels good. I’ve realized that it’s okay to document certain items solely for the sake of documentation. I take pictures of my favorites. I post some of them, others just stay in my camera roll. They don’t need to live online to be real.
I’ve worked so hard on my brand and my business that I truly believe St. Evens now has a life of its own. I no longer feel burdened to prove myself. I’m growing and I’m learning and I’m selling, sometimes, and it doesn’t need to happen with an audience. Ironic, I know, as I write all of this down for you to read. But for the first time since launching over five years ago, I’m pretty confident in where I am and where I’m going.
My new website is not an online store. There is no shopping tab, there’s no cart, there’s nothing to buy. What I’m offering instead is just a little bit of myself. My site is a space for others to see a visualization all of my creative skills and talents, including but not limited to selling vintage.
To keep alive the spirit of documentation, I’ve created The Archive, an entire page of my website dedicated to showcasing some of the most special pieces I’ve already sold. Even if nobody else looks at it, I at least have it for myself. The proof of my work is out there, alive, in a tiny sparkling corner of the internet I can call my own.
I’ve created a landing page for Vintage, where you can find the stores I’m stocked in along with information about upcoming events. There’s a Styling section that includes a portfolio of my work and an inquiry form for both editorial and personal styling. My Writing page mostly just links you here, to Substack, but I’m hoping for many more future bylines to add there. The Socials page details my work in content creation and brand collaborations. People often ask me what I do, and now it’s all finally in one place. The link will officially be released to the public later this week.
Some of the photos included in this piece, like the one directly above, come from a photoshoot I put together to launch my new site. I worked with a truly incredible team that brought my vision to life and then some. Check out their work and consider hiring them for your own creative projects!
Photographer: Bao Ngô
Makeup: Tommy Tafoya
Hair: Kayla Miranda
Styling & Wardrobe (and modeling) by me
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