Today we’d like to introduce you to Troy and Taysha Harris
Troy and Taysha, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Of course! With my introduction to thrifting in 2008, my fashion creativity was unlocked. I became the guy that could put a dope outfit together with items that people typically wouldn’t. I began styling friends for different pageants, photoshoots, and daily life. I let them know that dope, different or fancy attire did not always go hand in hand with expensive big brands. I gave them a personal shopping experience, where I would ask what ideas they had if any, and go to thrift stores to send them pictures and videos of budget-friendly pieces.
My knack for putting pieces together when they had no idea what they wanted to wear opened their mind to a different type of fashion. Empty Vintage was created to help people that aren’t our direct friends or in our network reach thrifted, vintage items without the exhausting and unexpected journey that is the thrift store. In 2015 I was the Production Manager of a thrift store for three years. Working here, I discovered that the clothing that is not purchased during the sales week is transported to foreign landfills. So in an effort to keep the landfills “Empty,” we donate our unsold inventory to shelters. We also occasionally go to thrift stores to purchase bags of clothing in multiple sizes and donate them to shelters as well. With Empty Vintage, we noticed that there was a desire for Black Empowerment clothing that was scarce when thrifting. This inspired us to create our Black AF Collection, which gives people the opportunity to share our voice through our unique pieces. This collection is a series of clothing from socks to hats and everything in between. Every article, in itself, is a great representation of the person wearing it. Buying anything from our collection, you’d be saying A LOT with or without our masks (we sell those as well).
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Haha. We definitely wouldn’t say that it’s been much of a smooth ride, especially with the introduction of the pandemic. But we can say that it has helped us grow and helped us to be more creative & innovative with our approach to our business. For example, when the pandemic started, more people began to sell and resell vintage, so we decided to stand out by creating a website. Now, most of our inventory can be accessed online. Our inventory being accessible online has also set us up to better service our customers that like to rent items from our shop locally for photoshoots, video shoots, and small performances. This was a service that we started towards the beginning of the pandemic as well. It grants people the opportunity to get that one-of-a-kind item and take the pictures they desire without breaking the bank or filling their closets with items they may or may not wear again. (You know, for those people that wear things once for social media, and will drop dead before they’re ever seen wearing that item again) lol.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Empty Vintage?
At Empty Vintage, we sell vintage clothing, and we have also curated a black empowered clothing line. We offer a large array of services. Due to a large number of items in our inventory and the nature of our business, we offer a virtual shopping experience. The customer will go through our website to choose a date and time to book their virtual shopping experience. During the booking, they tell us their size, their teams, colors, or the types of things that they are looking for. We then grab these items and have them on a rack to personally walk the customer through the items we’ve selected for them. We then gather addresses, payment, and ship the same day. We also do pop-ups all around Atlanta. At each pop up our ultimate goal is to give patrons the feeling and experience of actually stepping into a store. Because we don’t have a physical store, we like to give the traveling store feel and experience. We make sure that our setup is ALWAYS better than the last setup we did. Bloggers, YouTubers, and just people in general oftentimes come to our booth to record, take pictures, or buy clothing. It is very rare that someone enters or leaves our booth without complimenting our setup or informing us that we have one of (if not) the best one in the convention.
Due to our large experience with setting up at conventions, we also provide vintage set designs or music video designs. For example, we’ve set up a 90s feel for a music video and photoshoot. We intend to create more 90s kids’ rooms or 90s teenager rooms in the future as well. Since we’re in the realm and on the conversation of music videos and photoshoots, as mentioned earlier. We also provide renting as an option for local consumers. These are the direct services that we provide. But with Empty Vintage, we intend to do more than just provide direct physical services. We intend to help the landfills locally and globally remain empty. We intend to help prevent the Christmas trees of the less fortunate children from being empty and furthermore helping the streets of Atlanta get back to being empty of the homeless. We believe that helping all the other companies and organizations that provide clothing to the less fortunate and the homeless that we will be ameliorating one concern of there’s (being cold or not having adequate clothing) and this will, in turn, help them to focus on other things that they may need that can help better their situations. As we continue to do more clothing of these individuals and growing, we intend to be able to donate money and other services to help. We are also currently working on a toy drive for the end of the year. So if you have toys or would like to be involved, please feel free to contact us as we’ve already begun collecting toys. If you have or know of a shelter or children’s program that would benefit from us dropping toys off there, please also let us know.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What we like most about Atlanta is the culture. The culture down here is very different than that anywhere else we’ve visited or lived. Atlanta influences encourages and motivate everyone that enters it to take risks while betting on themselves. It produces some of the best music, designers, influencers, and all-around content creators every single day. Atlanta is one of the places that we tend to meet more entrepreneurs, and that environment is a continuous driver for us on a daily.
Contact Info:
- Email: EmptyVintage@gmail.com
- Website: www.emptyvintage.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/emptyvintage
- Facebook: Facebook.com/emptyvintage
- Other: Black AF Collection Direct Link: www.emptyvintage.com/blackaf Black AF Collection IG: instagram.com/blackafcollection TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@emptyvintage
Image Credits
Pop Up Setup Pictures: @Karmatology NBA Shoot: @ChuckRare Bike Photo: MarvelousMarcos1
