After five years of selling year-round at Soda City Market, Pannerpete Vintage has opened a physical store in Five Points.
Owner Katie Roberts founded Pannerpete Vintage as an online clothing shop sparked by her lifelong love of thrifting.
“My mom would take me thrifting when I was a kid, so (I’ve) been thrifting for a long time," Roberts said. "I would find a bunch of stuff that wouldn’t fit me or wasn’t my style but (that) I thought was cool, so I started selling some on Etsy.”
What started as a side project turned into a full-fledged business when Roberts started selling vintage clothing and accessories at Soda City Market. Working there every Saturday morning allowed Roberts to support herself and her husband full-time.
For five years, Roberts gradually built a customer base until her inventory grew and she wanted customers to be able to browse on their own time. With this in mind, she opened Pannerpete Vintage’s brick and mortar store at 738 Harden St. in Five Points.
The store opened its doors to the public on March 12 and is filled with more of the colorful racks of quirky vintage clothing that made Pannerpete Vintage a popular vendor at Soda City for the past five years.
Roberts said that opening the store has enabled her to organize her stock and enhance shoppers' thrifting experience in several ways, such as arranging items by size instead of color or category so customers can easily find what fits them.
Having a physical location has also allowed Roberts to hire in-store employees. Eden Prime, one of the employees at Pannerpete Vintage, first found out about the store as a customer at Soda City Market.
Prime said that one aspect of the vintage industry that was of interest to them was its sustainability, specifically in the process of finding secondhand clothes to sell in-store. According to Roberts, the store’s sourcing process helps to recycle clothing that would have been discarded at other thrift stores.
"I wanted to contribute to that idea of sustainability here in Columbia," Prime said. "I feel like we don’t have enough of that, so I wanted to help Katie get that off the ground.”
First-year international business management consulting and operations supply management student and frequent vintage shopper Jacqueline Bultman said that the sustainable aspect of shopping vintage also helps to contribute to the timelessness of vintage pieces.
“I think vintage fashion will always bring back things from the past that are timeless,” Bultman said. “I always appreciate having the opportunity, when things come back in style, (for) them to be vintage and us to have a sustainable resource.”
Roberts said witnessing the evolution of fashion is one aspect of the vintage industry that she finds most interesting, as she tracks shopping trends.
“I remember, whenever I first started, I had a bunch of funky patterned sweater vests because I loved finding them, and I was just like, 'These are cool,' but no one was buying them," Roberts said. "And then, two years ago, people started buying them. It was like, all of a sudden, they were cool.”
Bultman credits vintage clothing with significantly influencing her style, allowing her to be bolder and more expressive in her fashion sense.
“Things that I wasn’t normally comfortable with wearing before, I’m now comfortable with wearing because I’m like, 'It’s vintage, people will think it’s cool,”’ Bultman said. “It’s funky (and) it’s something that I never would’ve imagined myself wearing.”
According to Prime, incorporating vintage clothing into their wardrobe has helped add a sense of creativity to their personal style. Prime also said that interacting with customers and being able to “share the joy with them when they find something that really works” are highlights of working in vintage fashion.
For Roberts, one of her favorite parts of being in the vintage industry is witnessing the happiness that vintage fashion can bring people.
“Someone came in … and was like, ‘I bought a dress from you at Soda City and I still love it,'” Roberts said. “It just makes me really happy that people actually still like the stuff they buy and they’re getting good use out of it.”
Pannerpete Vintage’s physical store is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and customers can continue to shop their inventory from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday at Soda City Market.