The Beginning
It's 2019 and we're starting our blog. Very visionary.
This post is all about how we started our little endeavour. We - that's Simon and me (Niklas) - the founders of Double Double Vintage. If you want to read some general info about us, check out our About-Page. But this one is the story with some more details and behind the scenes.
Making plans in my kitchen
Back in early 2018 we didn't have much to do. Simon was working as a photographer in Stuttgart and I was a marketing freelancer in Berlin. One day we stumbled upon a Youtube Show called "The Round Two Show". Three guys from Virginia selling the most fire vintage stuff we've seen. We couldn't stop watching them, making their deals on the daily and finding the most unreal stuff. We weren't really into the Hype / Supreme part of their business, but Sean's Knowledge and curation of Vintage and Nike especially had us going, damn. We had both been interested in the vintage game already, diggin' trough second hand stores now and then, but hadn't really done much about it except collecting stuff for our own. Watching Round Two made us notice that there was a lack for all of this in Germany. There were some cool Vintage Stores here and there, but most of them we're just packed with thousands Denims, Crazy Shirts and Leather Jackets. The curation was missing. And if a store had a cool 90s selection, 9 out of 10 times there was a grumpy old OG store owner behind the counter who hated on you, if you didn't rock Polo Sport in 1998 already. Sorry I was 3 back then. Despite all of this, there wasn't any good vintage Onlineshop at all.
Simon and I became friends while working together for an Onlineshop for sneakers & streetwear in 2014. Back then we were both into sneakers but didn't really like where all of this was going. New Drops every week, expensive resell prices, hype and the sheer irrelevance of all of this. It was different with vintage. Every piece had a story to research. What year is it from? Where was it made? What's behind that brand? Even though it's still "just" clothes, it felt like it hat more relevance and actual substance to us. If nothing else, it was also a lot more eco friendly, than the fast fashion industry.
So in early 2018 we came up with the idea to create Double Double Vintage. We were and still are both heavy into Basketball, that's how we came up with the name (If you don't know, press here). Also the clothes we're selling are "double-used" and we are a Duo or Double as founders. Yes we put a lot of thought into that name. As we started going to Second Hand stores and flea markets more frequently - when I say frequently I mean every day incl. getting up on 6am at weekends to graze multiple flea markets a day - we enjoyed finally grabbing whatever we liked, no matter if it was our size or not. After a couple of weeks we had already gathered a nice selection of stuff for our store, so we decided to launch our Instagram.
One of our first flea flinds: Bape x Undefeated x adidas Superstar
Not the craziest find, but nice to see that there was some good stuff out there
We took photos of some items and uploaded them with our clouds background (if you know, you know). You could only buy if you DM'ed us. Then you would have to pay via Paypal and we'd mark the item as sold. I remember that our first DM was german beat producer S.Fidelity, whom I've been a fan of for a long time. He bought some Vintage Nike Air Ceres. (Shoutout!). In the next weeks we continued hustling to upload new products every day and our Instagram started growing. Sooner than later we recognized that our order process wasn't really comfortable. For us (staying ahead of all the DMs.) and for the costumer. We needed an actual Onlineshop.
The first item we sold - Vintage Nike Air Ceres
In July 2018 we launched doubledoublevintage.com and started establishing our weekly Sundaydrops. Every Sunday at 8PM we were (and still are) uploading around 60-70 new vintage items to the webshop.
Securing the bags in Berlin & Thrift Finds from Paris
During this time Simon was still living in Stuttgart and I was in Berlin. It was a problem. He had his stock in his small room in a shared flat , I had mine in the one-room apartment that I had been sharing with my girlfriend. Whenever someone ordered multiple items, chances were high that either of us had one item. To us it felt like 90% of the time this happened. We were facing extra shipping costs and longer waiting times for our customers. It needed to stop. At the end of 2018 we decided to move back to our hometown - Mannheim - and put all of our focus into our own business.
Late Nights in our one room apartment in Berlin
In January 2019 we set up our "office and warehouse" in my grandparents basement bar aka "The Cave". It was only around 10qm with a ceiling not much higher than 2m. It was packed from the start and we had only begun with the real business, already making plans for our growth and expansion. Our drops got bigger and we increased our stock and quality of items. By Summer 2019 the whole room was packed to ceiling with clear boxes. In addition we had already conquered the room next to the bar and half of the garage. It was time to move....
