Junior Achievement’s Young Entrepreneur of the Month (July) – Deadstock Vintage

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) - Caitlin Dostol and Isaac Sparks are co-owners of Deadstock Vintage on Broadway in Fort Wayne.

Caitlin tells us that her starting this business all happened so suddenly. She had always considered herself a leader but never specifically thought about being a business owner. Caitlyn says, “I guess everyone kind of dreams about being their own boss and having their own business, but I don’t know if that ever really started for me until a couple months before we even started our Instagram page which was before we open the shop.” She tell us that it was when she met Isaac, her now boyfriend of five years, that she fell in love with vintage clothing and decided to join the path of entrepreneurship.

Here’s how Issac told us they got started, “Last summer we were in the house a lot and got real bored and I said “I think I want to start another vintage page, I think we should really try and get out it”. Then we went to a few different thrift and conventions and bought a bunch of stuff there and sold a bunch of stuff there.” He added, “We got our inventory up and that’s all we started selling on our Instagram and Morrison came to us about starting the shop and we have some money saved up for the house and we’d rather have the shop in the house so we went and did that.”

As everyone starts their businesses at different ages and stages, both Isaac and Caitlin gave some advice for anyone entrepreneurial journey. “We both loss some friends through this process and you just have to realize that the biggest piece is that the people around you have to help you and lift you up. Try not to procrastinate when starting a business and have a clear step in your head because baby steps are so much easier for big.”

Isaac also shared his two big factors when it comes to the importance of shopping vintage clothing and why he does it. “One is the stainability. There’s dumps in the deserts that have hundreds of thousands of pounds of fast action clothing that’s being made now, when we have tons of clothing, used, that we could just buy and not have to create more waste for the plant. The other reason is that on any given day, if you put on a vintage T-shirt. Nine times out of 10 you’re not going to see someone else with that same Tee. A lot of these shirts are rare so you’re not going to see someone else wearing it. I think that’s a large part of the appeal.”

You can find and shop more of Deadstock Vintage on their Instagram page. Instagram Page @deadstockvintagefw)

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