At Work With Rhymes With Orange

Our friends, Stef and Erin, are here today to share their vintage shop Rhymes With Orange.

"Hello! We are Stefanie Hiebert and Erin Thiessen of the blog Oh So Lovely Vintage. We are also the proud owners of a mobile vintage shop in a 1956 camper trailer as well as a brick-and-mortar vintage boutique here in Winnipeg called Rhymes With Orange. We have been in this location for the past year and a half. And we share the space with our partner Doug Shand who does the mens' section, while we do the women's clothing, shoes, accessories, as well as housewares from the 50s and 60s! In the next year we will be taking over the space completely. And although things have been great with our partner, we are looking forward to having the space to ourselves. We recently added on a section for kiddos in a tiny room off the back half of the store which used to be a safe, but turns out it's actually the perfect size for kids! Our shop is located inside of the most beautiful old character building that was built in the late 1800s and back then was actually used as a pharmacy! The building even has the original tin ceilings, which instantly sold the space to us. The more history and character a building has, the better."

"An average work day begins at 11:00am when our doors open. The fact that you have the flexibility to set our own is hours is one of the most fantastic parts about owning your own business, so we decided to make the hours of our shop 11:00am - 6:00pm from Monday - Saturday. That schedule works well for both our personal and our business lives. So, the first thing we do when we walk in the door is turn on our computers and respond to all emails and then work on any blog posts we have planned for the coming days. Then we usually do some tidying up around the store and freshen up any displays and replenish any product that sold from the previous day. We don't have a set day or time to change displays. We are just always adding to and changing them around whenever the mood strikes or if we get some fantastic new pieces that need to be featured! In the afternoon we usually work on updating our inventory or tagging new product, which we enter all by hand into our computer. Of course all of this is done while helping customers pick out the perfect 60s cocktail dress or helping them find a new piece of Pyrex to bring home with them! There is always a lot to be done and some days can be a bit challenging when owning your own business, but when it's all said and done it's totally worth it and there is nothing else we would rather be doing. Also, getting to work with your best friend every day isn't too bad either! ;)"

"Our favorite part about our store is that we have plenty of shelving and cubbies that were all custom built thanks to our lovely husbands! We absolutely love making fun new displays, so having all of this shelving to create anything we want is a bit of a merchandising dream come true. We are pretty lucky, in that we have two large storage rooms for extra stock as well as lots of drawers behind our counter to keep paperwork and supplies organized. We are both neat freaks, so we have come up with a system that works for us. But we're always finding ways of improving things around the shop."

Thanks so much, Erin and Stef, for sharing your shop with us! You can visit Erin and Stef online at their blog Oh So Lovely, or if you are in Winnipeg you can visit their local shop Rhymes With Orange! xo.