Der Anfang
It’s 2019 and we are starting our blog. Very visionary.
This post is about how we started our little venture. We – that’s Simon and I (Niklas) – the founders of Double Double Vintage. If you want to read some general info about us, check out our about-page. But this is the story with a few more details and behind-the-scenes insights.
Plotting in my kitchen
Back in early 2018, we didn’t have much going on. Simon was working as a photographer in Stuttgart and I as a marketing freelancer in Berlin. One day we stumbled upon a Youtube show called “The Round Two Show”. Three guys from Virginia selling the dopest vintage stuff we have ever seen. We couldn’t stop watching them making their daily deals and finding the most incredible stuff. The hype/supreme part of their business didn’t really interest us, but Sean’s knowledge and curation of vintage and Nike stuff just blew our minds, damn. We both had always been interested in vintage and browsed thrift stores now and then, but other than collecting stuff for ourselves, we hadn’t done much. Seeing Round Two made us realize that all of that was lacking in Germany. There were a few cool vintage stores here and there, but most were just crammed with thousands of jeans, 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 you if you weren’t wearing Polo Sport back in 1998. Sorry, I was 3 back then. Despite all that, there was no good vintage online shop at all.
Simon and I became friends when we worked together for an online shop for sneakers and streetwear back in 2014. At that time we were both into sneakers, but didn’t really like where all that was heading. New drops every week, expensive resell prices, hype, and the sheer meaninglessness of it all. Vintage was different. Every piece had a story to research. What year is it from? Where was it made? What’s behind this brand? Even though it’s still “just” clothing, we felt it had more relevance and substance for us. At least it was much more environmentally friendly than the fast fashion industry as well.
In early 2018, we came up with the idea of founding Double Double Vintage. We both were and still are heavily fixated on basketball, so that’s how we came up with the name (If you need an explanation, click here). Also the clothes we sell are "double-used" and we are a duo or double as founders. Yes, we put a lot of thought into the name. When we started going to thrift stores and flea markets more often – when I say often, I mean everyday, including getting up at 6 am on weekends to scour several flea markets a day – we enjoyed finally getting what we liked, no matter if it was our size or not. After a few weeks, we had already collected a nice selection of stuff for our store, so we decided to launch our Instagram.
One of our first flea markets: Bape x Undefeated x adidas Superstar
Not the craziest find, but nice to see some good stuff out there
We took photos of some pieces and uploaded them with our cloud background (if you know, you know). You could only buy from us via DM. Then you paid via Paypal and we marked the item as sold. I remember our first DM was the German beat producer S.Fidelity, who I had been a fan of for a long time. He bought a pair of vintage Nike Air Ceres. (Shoutout!). In the following weeks, we kept hustling, uploading new products every day, and our Instagram page started to grow. Sooner rather than later, we realized that our ordering process wasn’t really comfortable. For us (to be ahead of all the DMs) and for the customer. We needed a proper online shop.
The first item we sold - Vintage Nike Air Ceres
In July 2018, we launched doubledoublevintage.com and started to establish our weekly Sundaydrops. Every Sunday at 8 pm, we uploaded (and still do) about 60-70 new vintage items to the webshop.
Securing the bags in Berlin & Thrift Finds from Paris
At this time, Simon was still living in Stuttgart and I in Berlin. This was a problem. He had his stock in his small shared flat room, I had mine in the one-room apartment I shared with my girlfriend. Whenever someone ordered multiple items, there was a good chance that one of us had an item. It felt like that was the case 90% of the time. We were threatened with additional shipping costs and longer waiting times for our customers. This had to stop. At the end of 2018, we decided to move back to our hometown Mannheim and fully concentrate on 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 about 10sqm, and the ceiling was not much higher than 2m. It was packed from the start, and we had just started the actual business and were already making plans for our growth and expansion. Our drops became bigger and we increased our stock and the quality of the items. By summer 2019, the whole room was filled to the ceiling with transparent boxes. Additionally, we had already taken over the room next to the bar and half of the garage. It was time to move...
