My One Kings Lane Tastemaker Sale starts tonight. AHHHH. In case you don’t know what it is, its a 3 day flash sale of vintage pieces curated by a designer, and this time that designer is me. If you aren’t on One Kings Lane yet, you can sign up HERE.
I’ve always wondered how these One Kings Lane sales work. Who buys all this stuff? How is it shot? WHERE IS IT STORED? Etc.
So One Kings Lane and I have been in contact and finally i told them ‘i think i’m ready to purge my hoard.’ They said, ‘Great you need at least 120 items to make a proper tastemaker sale.’ And since i have the patience of a hungry two year old i said, no problem, let’s schedule the shoot for in a month from now, which means the sale goes live in 3 months. So this thing has been in the works for over 3 months. So crazy.
For the next few weeks i ravaged the desert thrift stores, pillaged the valley Goodwills and trolled on Craigslist for secret steals. Sure, i bought a decent amount at the flea market, but you really have to find great pieces for really cheap in order to mark them up so OKL gets their cut and you actually make money, let alone cut even.
The shoot day fast arrived and i had 126 pieces of vintage furniture and accessories to shoot. One Kings Lane makes it very easy. They send a great photographer, assistant, and big white roll of paper to shoot everything on.
The day of the shoot:
OH. It was like Christmas. Orlando came with the truck that carried 19 major pieces of furniture from the upholsterer and refinisher. I had purchased all the pieces and bought all the fabric, but otherwise it was in the hands of my dudes who were great, but there was a language barrier so i was praying that everything was right and there wasn’t much confusion. These guys live far away so i couldn’t really check on them (although i did once). And for the most part it was pretty great. I can’t tell you where they are out of respect for other designers that work with them, but if you see me on the street i will tell individuals. Sorry. 🙁
Then we started shooting each piece, one by one.
We had to measure the HELL out of everything and document all the flaws, cracks, etc. The photographers went crazy fast, and it was super hard to catch up, let alone stay on top of it.
I had 3 assistants – Orlando, naturally, Bonnie (who is my new amazing full-timer who has made my life so much easier) and her sister, Mary, who was crazy adorable and so helpful.
We had pieces ‘on deck’ and then stations where we put things we just shot but needed measuring. It was a crazy amount of work, and insane amount of organization and manual labor, but totally fun.
Then we had to store every piece for 6 weeks which is an additional cost, obviously – trucking and storage fees. So as the ‘tastemaker’ you cover all your costs (purchasing, assistants, storage, delivery, packing supplies and packing labor) so you really have to make sure that you are charging enough for each item not to not lose money. One Kings Lane makes everything very simple and easy, they’ve been a total joy to work with, but no matter what the work has to get done and things just cost money. I have such a new respect for vintage store owners and unless things are wildly overpriced, i’ll really try to never ask for discounts again. So much work goes into each piece – creative brain time as well as physical time and energy, so i now really empathize with them and want them to get properly paid.
Needless to say, i’m crazy excited for 6pm today to see how it goes. The sale stays live til Sunday at 6pm.
The crazy hoarder inside me already wants to buy some stuff back, but that’s ridiculous. I’m relinquishing it, opening it to the universe, letting it be loved and cherished by some other crazy person.
But i would seriously love if you guys took photos of the stuff in your space and sent them to me emily-at-stylebyemilyhenderson.com
Oh and if you have any questions that seem unanswered in all the descriptions feel free to email me and i’ll do my best to answer. Click here for the sale, and you can even click a ‘remind me’ where they’ll email you the second it starts.
To see all the sneak peeks of furniture pieces go HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE
Click here to sign yourself up….I think you get $15 of credit by doing so.