Found: One of the Most Radical Stores in Ithaca Doesn’t Look Radical at All

Capitalism just it cannot sustain itself. It is it will scientifically, inevitably, crash in and of itself. Our economies have to be local and regenerative and insular Welcome to the Ithaca Local Economy Lab podcast, where we examine new and innovative businesses, organizations, and programs that are functioning as part of a new economy in Ithaca, New York. I'm your host and neighbor, Dea, and together we're exploring some of the ways, both unusual and common, that everyday people are moving towards a more inclusive, balanced, and functional community-based economy, while leaving the oligarchs to fend for themselves.

Today we have with us Vanessa Weber and Jeremiah Cigno, co-owners of Found in Ithaca. Welcome, Vanessa and Jeremiah. Thank you. So Found in Ithaca has been operating for a number of years here in town, but you just recently bought it in a really interesting way, which we're definitely going to get into uh a little bit later on in the show. But I wanted to start with just a little on your background. So Can you tell us about yourself and why a antique shop? Well, we bought found two years ago to the day, almost one week from now will be our two-year anniversary.

And I've always been interested in vintage and antique as a younger gal living in New York City. I did a lot of antique shopping. I had a tiny little apartment, but couldn't buy that much furniture. But used clothing, decor. It was totally my vibe. It's my family's vibe. I've wanted to leave the city for a while. Um and I moved up to Ithaca Five years ago at that point. You know, I I moved out of the city to leave the city, work with like a rat race kind of life. But ended up working as if I was still in New York City. I worked a lot um until I met this gorgeous fella and he said, Why are you working so much?

This is Ithaca. Of course, the joke is now that we work nonstop as small business owners, but it was really Jeremiah who inspired me to think. to say, you know, I don't really want to work for anybody else. I have a vision in mind of what life could look like. And kind of circumstantially, we were at a flea market in Trumansburg and overheard one of the former owners have found saying that they wanted to sell the business. And we both kind of turned around and were like, Excuse me? And then six months later we had a deal. Wow, that's really serendipitous.

Yes. Yes, yes. So they had been had they had been trying to sell it for a while, I guess? Or were they there looking for buyers or they they hadn't started really putting it in the paper or any of this kind of public things. There was a few other people who knew about it at the time, but we were like second in line and the first person come and find out wasn't really that interested in it in the first place. So So it's pretty easy for us. I think we were the only ones really working on negotiating a buyout or how we can make this work. So Yeah.

So I wanna get into a little bit about the structure of the business itself because Even though antique malls have been around forever, there may be some people who don't know exactly how they work. It's almost like a sublease model. So I rent a location and I manage the retail store. And in return, vendors rent specific booth spaces from us. And I also get a small commission for every sale. And it's helpful for people who are resellers. And by resellers I mean people who source And usually end up like fixing up, cleaning up really cool vintage items and antique items.

And then they resell them. So they're in these objects are in our lives very briefly. Um and you know, oh my god, some of the stuff that our vendors are finding are just f fabulous. It's such curated, beautiful stuff. But it's great because if Jeremiah and I don't sell anything one month, we could still make our rent because we have a room full of vendors renting space from us. We also sell furniture. It's sort of the only way we've really made any money actually at this Because even though I'm getting rent from our vendors, we're charging pretty much what we're being charged in rent.

So we're not really making too much of a markup there. And the the commission that we get essentially pays for me to be there every day selling on their behalf. Which is i you know, I I love retail. I think it's tailor meet for it. Uh but it's an extensive kind of intensive combat sport in many ways. You're like um I'm sort of the queen of chit chat, so I'm designed for this, but it's your like up and happy and helpful, you know, nine to ten hours a day, five days a week, no vacations, no holidays. It's a lot. Um I do we do have some vendors who help us, but that's essentially it.

I'm the store owner. I have tenants in the store renting space for me, and they just don't show up. Unless they need to refresh their booth. Right. Yeah. And then Jeremiah is there. I mean, managing the the cash register as well occasionally, but really like helping all of our vendors move furniture. He'll repair furniture for our vendors. Um he is super technical. I am not. So V has basically set up the entire store, the music, the tech, all of the operations. It's we it's a two-person team at the very least But yeah, quite a beast. It's very much a like a up, I'm not even sure what the word is.

Like you're you're constantly like on display and in performance mode. Uh yeah. And it's lovely. Yeah, being being up in front of the public every single day like that is is tiring, I imagine, but also kind of invigorating too at the same time. Gives me a lot of energy to hang out with customers all day. It's it's quick, it's transactional. The objects that they're buying are wonderful high quality curated objects that are avoiding the dump and it it's great for us because we just feel so excited and special to be part of an economy that's like super super local most of my vendors live very close by they're buying from people in the community Like quite literally, that we're going into people's houses and making offers on furniture.

And we buy from the local re stores, for instance, and we're just like all about buying used Um and then most of our customers are local. We have a lot of customers for the summer who are like on the tourist belt. And we do have a lot of students, but for the most part, everybody else is, you know, locals who live here. Yeah. It's great. That's a really nice example of uh uh of a lot of the with the different kinds of economies people talk about like a circular economy, we know, or a or a regenerative economy, perhaps. Um along those sorts of lines.

But now you also have there's just so many aspects of this. I I want to make sure that we touch on all of them so we can talk as much or as little about each one as you want, but you just had a move. So you bought found and And then you had to move. You lost your building, I guess. And that was kind of Yeah. That was a big deal, finding the right space again. Right. And when we knew when we were buying the business, we knew that the lease was up. So not saying that's something to maybe look for for other people that want to buy a turnkey business, but it does mean that you can't get bank financing, you can't So that basically the valuation of the business will drop down substantially.

It's somewhat of a benefit that we bought it knowing it had to move because we got it for a lot less price. The original building wasn't stunning by any means. It was an old metal factory. So we the hunt for a new s location was was hard. There was a lot of Oh my god. I think we took like fifty spaces. It was crazy. There's not a lot of spaces like that available in this. I mean it was this pretty small town, so No, I I think well, fifteen years ago it would have been different, but we're living in different times. Well I think I think we factored in after COVID commercial retail took a big hit.

So it's actually a great time to go look for these types of buildings. There was a fair amount of, I would say, relatively cheap square footage available, but we need extra cheap because our square footage is gonna be put upon vendors or other people. So, you know, it's not that we have skyrocketing commercial real estate in Ithaca. I think for square footage prices, it's not. too crazy. We need something a little extra. And that's where Southworks came into play because it was unbuilt. It's like a vision that we had along with the Southworks crew.

And we made it happen over six months. So we had kind of not signed a lease, but uh what was it called? A letter of intent. We had a letter of intent with Southworks to see how this was gonna work in the in that time period. We were also looking at other spaces, trying to to weigh the pros and cons. And we really just kind of pulled the trigger on Southworks because it's a Pretty amazing space. I'm a architect by trade. So I had a vision. I could see it. I've done things like this before. I knew it was an out of the realm. But it but it was nerve wracking because you also are fighting a deadline of getting out of the old space.

This new space needed to be built to a certain level where you get occupancy and all the things. But it but it worked out perfectly, to be honest. Like I mean there was a little delay in getting in, but I will I will add to um that, you know, being able to purchase found at a relatively affordable price point. because we didn't have a steady lease, which is it's a huge risk. It's a huge risk to take on. Thank goodness we're still kind of youngish. Not as young as you would think, but But we were like, whatever, this is a big adventure. That's what's important.

Exactly. But it was a big adventure and it was super exciting to tour all of these spaces and sort of envision, God, what could life really look like? Because the old store w was a little bit problematic. The leasing manager for Southworks is a friend of ours and when she asked us to take a tour, we're like, I don't know if this abandoned factory really works for us And the minute we went on the site, we were like, this is magical. We totally see it. Um it took a minute for our vendors to see it. They toured the site when the windows are being replaced.

So it was dark and cold and I think they were like, what are you thinking? But you know, and I really like the way we bought found, uh, which we'll talk about, the buyout model. But the moving factor was I I will be honest a little bit more expensive and overwhelming than I than I realized. Like we we had to tap into other resources to make that move happen. So as as helpful as it was, as knowing that we had to move was purchasing found, the actual move was painful. I think I think everything went perfectly to plan. And there wasn't really any I mean, I still physically I'm still recovering a little bit, but I know.

It so there was just a lot of physical work that was involved with moving all of the things. It was basically we had to get out at the end of October and we had kind of planned one month November to do the build out or to make it ready for December That didn't quite work out the way we wanted to. But so it's so there was a rush. There's like we had five days to basically clear out the store. But um It's multi-vendor. So a lot of our vendors took care of their own spot. We had to take care of cases, some wall partitions. And we went a little above and beyond for the new tenants in the Cherry Street spot or old spot.

Because they're code blue so they're trying to you know build this warming shelter for um unhoused people. Attendants are Tomkitz County. Yeah. Yeah. So we we did a lot of I'd call it almost demo to make the space ready for them to come in and really like build. So So a lot of that stuff wasn't ours, it wasn't what we bought, but we did it anyways because we got the truck. Like the walls. That were like built into the space. Jeremiah. I'm getting there. But man, like man handling these walls. I guess lifting walls helps you get stronger. Totally.

Totally. But then you know, we had to rent U-Halls and I mean there were some substantial movement costs. The business wasn't functioning for more than a month, so we weren't bringing any income in. I mean it was it was a struggle. I still think we did it probably as affordably and efficiently as anybody could. It was a really great learning experience. And I feel I feel super proud that not only did we make the move and then open up quicker than we even anticipated we would. But the minute we opened, the new spot has been an immediate success.

I think it has to be said too that being in a small local town helps. I've been here sixteen years with architecture. So I know developers, I know b she knows builders. And we did lean on these relationships. You know, it's not like we're we were we don't have people on our backs telling us like, oh you gotta do this and this and Um it's really easy going, I think, in in my opinion, because they're just not I I'm from DC, so they're not like these like entities that you never ta see or whatever. And when they mean you gotta get out, you gotta get out, these are like real people, you talk to him, you'd be like, it's gonna take me two more days longer than I thought.

Okay, we'll make it work around. You know, no fees, nothing to it. It's funny too, because every time the county would come into the old location to assess their build out that they would go shopping. Yeah. It was like such a great community. We love the county. I love that. And that's, you know, that's such a that's such a good thing to to point out. I'm so glad that you pointed that out, Jeremiah, because A lot of people don't recognize that aspect of of small town life. And I mean Ithaca is not a terribly small town. It's thirty thousand or sixty thousand people, depending on how you count it.

I guess. You know, I mean it's a good sized town, but it's still small enough to, like you said, know who's there and actually know the people who are behind what's going on, you know, uh both at the at the government level and then at the the code levels and and then the shoppers themselves, you know, which is always great. It's like I'd say more thirty thousand for us because we're townies. So whether we engage too much with like the schools or know how that works or anything about that. Uh isn't true, but if you spend any time here in sort of the building trades or architecture, you there's just a trickle of people you meet, they remember you.

You're you've got you've got relationships that you can bring back up that are two years three years I haven't talked to these people but like you know no one's trying to step on anyone's toes like it's it's small enough where like you don't want to burn bridges And you I don't want to burn bridges anyways, but e so so everyone acts with a certain level of kindness because they know then like these people were like, you know Whatever it is, you're gonna bump into them again. It was like no one I haven't seen in Ithaca unless they're new when this one came in.

Well, we we met before we started dating through a mutual friend. We were friends first. And I was working for a builder and I needed an architect and I called him and that was essentially our first date. But it's funny because so many of my former clients when I was working for a builder in town are customers. My old bosses are customers. I feel like I could run for mayor. And something that we just find so like heartening and touching is that like all of our customers are are living here for the most part. So the when we open during the holidays and just had I got like non-stop lines.

It was such a party. And it was it was the holidays. So there might have been some family members visiting. From out of town, but quite frankly, the students were gone. It was cold, so it was not tourist season. It was all local people. Yeah. And it felt great. It was just I felt so supported by the by the community. I also think people were really curious to see the Southwark site because it's been for so long. Yeah, yeah. And they all looked in, they were like, this is crazy. It was so fun. It is such a great location really with the the view that gets out there and you've got that those murals out there now.

So You know, I know that as they continue to to build it out, I think it's gonna be really even better than it is now. It's really made I was there for your opening. I s I popped in and saw it. So Yeah, it was great because You saw us run around like chickens without heads. Yes, I did. Oh yeah. Nice. You looked very happy. I know. I joke all the time like I didn't pee once where I was just like constantly at the register. But What I liked what I liked about it and what was really what was really neat about it too is it's it is such a welcoming space And you have something that's pretty unusual.

I mean, I have I I'm not, by any stretch, I have not been to a ton of antique malls, but I've been to a few and none of the malls that I've been to have had a little coffee shop area and you have a little a little kind of hangout area which I think is just It's it's really cool and it's right by the windows and it it's just very you know. Fostwick does. Fostwick's On Your Way to A Wigo is another wonderful multi-vendor antique small. We actually have some of the similar vendors. And they've got a little more than a coffee shop. It's like a little sandwich deli.

It smells delicious every time I go in there. But I helpful. I mean I think we recognize that we're a destination. When we were in the old location, we were close to the wagmans, so a lot of people would just swing by us after Wegmans. Um so this is like added incentive for people to come visit us. But if you're like me, shopping is exhausting. And so you need to take a break and relax, maybe the next month or two, or potentially a little bit longer. Ideally that little venue, that little lounge area where we have our coffee, we'll have some programming.

And we want to do music, like on the weekends, definitely do some music. I'd love to do some focused groups. We want to try to do some mutual aid centered focused groups. So it's it's a great place to just hang out, but I think for us having programming in that space is the next step. Yeah, might might be some kind of expansion. And I want to say that our vendor, Stephanie, owns Erendipity Catering, which is another small business. I mean she's Like big business and the sense of Ithaca, like in catering, you go to Serendipity. But because she's a vendor, we really have her kind of running, organizing the tea and the coffee and the cookies and things, which is a big relief for us because we are we wanted to have it, but then I'm like, do I want to wash coffee cups?

Every single day. No. So they take over that and like all the money or proceeds that that makes just goes to Stephanie. We don't take any because like our mission for that space was just to have a little relief from the shopping um and and a place to think. I'm glad that we again like kind of relationships you make with people lead to like executing the ideas that you have with minimal effort from our side, which is Yeah. Uh Stephanie was without Stephanie we could not have had that last year. I think we would have tried. We would have tried, but it was so helpful to have her just say, I can take over and I could just do this.

Right. We would have just had coffee, maybe tea. It wouldn't have looked that pretty. She made it look really pretty. But actually, other than the fact that she put together such a wonderful space, so many of my vendors did the same with their booths. We have some vendors who just kind of recognized, oh my gosh, this is my opportunity to have a boutique, my own boutique that I don't have to manage really. And I mean some of the spaces are just out of control. We have one vendor who did a little Jackson Pollock moment and she splattered like black paint all over.

It's just so funky. So cool. And it was good to see that kind of energy from our vendors too. So how many vendors do you have right now? Seventy? Seventy or seventy-four? We I I have to look it up because I I just got some new case vendors. Yeah, we're including case vendors with that as well. Yeah, you could rent either a physical booth space or just like a glass case if you just do jewelry, for instance. So I have far more vendors Um because of the cases. I think I have seventy. Yeah. Yeah. And are you still accepting new vendors or do you have a waiting list or no, I have the wait list heavy crazy long 110 per weight list.

I don't think it's all legitimate. I think some people have said like, ah, put me on the list, you know, but Um but we have some people who I I'd love to work with on that list. It's just a matter of maybe finding the time. Uh oddly enough, we don't have the space. I mean we we just got this giant space. But we had thought do we want a managers and independent? But it turns out it's not as hard as we're thinking. So we may be looking for a bit of an expansion next year. Most of the building or the way that you would expand that is neat new roofs, new drywall, new light, the same thing that happened to us.

So it's not something that's gonna happen immediately, but we are definitely interested in getting a few more vendors, a few more nooks and cranings that can be discovered by the customers. But right now we're happy with the way it looks and we like the openness of it and we're not trying to jam everything in there. So we're uh we're pretty good. It's just hard to disappoint potential vendors and like be like, ah, we want to get involved in this as well. But I think too there were um and Jeremiah was more familiar with this as an architect, but like we have to worry about egress Um, and emergency exits being clear.

And not that we didn't have to worry about that in the old location, but there were a lot more liberties taken. So in some ways we have fewer booths than we anticipated we would because of Vgress, and that's a great thing. It really allows for breath and air in the space. Um Uh feed a lot of feedback that I get from customers. I was gonna say critique, but it's not a critique. The opposite of a critique is that people say. It's so nice that it's like area great and you could see what you're buying. Um I think that's kind of what sets us apart from some of the other antique malls.

It's not packed For hip. Yeah, yeah, it has it does feel very welcoming and very much like a a high-end boutique Thank you. So how did you it's amazing to me that you've you just kind of landed in this and it's just taken off and you're already talking about expansion and you've done all these different things. But how let's get back a little bit to how you actually did the purchase because this was this was very unusual. Oh do you want to talk to that Yeah, I mean it was cute. Secret meetings. Because I think, you know, who we were buying it from too aren't like business experts.

I mean they started this and found actually was derived from this other multi-vendor, anti small, that was a little out of town called uh I think it was called the Ithaca Antiques. On your way to the hospital. It's a storage unit now. But it was a big farm. It was cool. I I would go there. But there was kind of a mutiny and uh ten ten vendors went and started their own thing, which was found there. They they set up a decent, you know I nothing is reinventing the wheel here. Antique malls are a thing. We use a proprietary go antiquing software, which is nice.

All that stuff was set up for us, how we deposit and things. You could choose whether you want to like follow their direction or not. So we we got a a quick education when we're buying it about how this works, performance. looking at what the business made like throughout the years, like, you know, and neither one of us are we don't do business and we didn't go to school for that. Um so it was like kind of like a bit of hand holding from the previous owners. So we had multiple meetings trying to figure out going back and forth Vanessa and I would lean on a couple of people that we knew that knew business, a few other developers.

They gave us like thoughts and insights that we want. you know, even acknowledge. So there's a certain so one uh one example is there's a certain uh price that the business is worth and like, you know, oh look, it makes this amount of money every year. But as a purchaser or if you were just to buy the business, is that lump sum of money enough to pay two employees at the register all day or every day? No, it's not And then bringing that to the previous owners, because we also want to be fair to them and what they built and all this, but bringing that to them also lowers the price for us and what we can you know, what we feel comfortable affording because if Vanessa and I I mean we run it, but if we wanted to, we could have bought it and then like had a couple of people run the registers and, you know, do you make any money that way?

Not really Do you then have to make sure that you sell it from a booth all the time? Kinda? So we we discover all this through the process of buying it We didn't come in cash rich or anything like that. And uh people were buying it from our vendors there. So they want to continue being vendors because that's how they make a living themselves. So it was really like kind of buying a job in in convincing them, or at least a few of them, like, oh, you don't want to be on the register anymore. That's your main that's the main reason they want to sell it.

It was like, oh my God, I cannot sit here running a register for the next 10, 15 years or something like that. We can kind of I mean a lot of big I don't like the register, but Some people have been at the rest of it than others. So basically I'm saying multiple negotiations. We had certain clauses in the contract that say, like, oh my god, if we can't find a place. You know, to move that's gonna work, the contract is null, we get our money back, like both parties We're definitely trying to make it work. And I think that's kind of what I want to hammer home is that when you're talking to real people, locals people who are interested in the same thing you are, you really can have like solid conversations and then you get to feel that no one's trying to do the other party wrong or insult them or back and forth.

Everyone's trying to get the most they can as well what they're doing. We um I should mention we chatted with a woman named Patricia Brown Patty Patty Brown, who has a business in town mostly focused on mergers and acquisitions. I think her main focus is on like the trades. if like a plumber wants to buy another plumber, that kind of thing. But she's lovely. And I worked with her when I was working with a builder and I reached out to her saying like, hey, I want to buy this business. And he thought And she was the one to really kind of help convince us that a buyout was appropriate for us personally and more importantly helped communicate to the former owners of found a buyout is worth your time.

And for multiple reasons. So when I say a buyout, we basically said, hey, former found owners or current found owners at the time. We can't get a bank loan because there's no lease after the next year. And we hate banks. And we hate banks. So you're gonna be our bank We're gonna agree to a certain buy price and every month the business is gonna pay you back. In this case, it worked really well for them because one, they didn't have to pay capital gains taxes on a huge lump sum if we were just to just buy it outright. Um I did give them a a little bit of cash up front, um, just to be clear.

To show we're serious. Yeah, to show yeah, to show that we're serious and that we're invested. And what was helpful for them is that they make their money as vendors. So it was great for them to stay on as vendors. Wayne, me, they didn't have to be at the register anymore. And we had the benefit of training and people right there we could just turn to and say, Help, what's going on? Okay. Yeah, and also well, I guess it's over But like they didn't end as we the partners we were buying it from, they didn't pay rent for their space. Which is kind of a cool way to like you know, uh whatever that turned out to be twenty-four thousand dollars in the last couple of years of rent that would have been paid.

It's just money that doesn't go either hand either. Right. And it's just like takes off the slump sum. A win for both people. You know. Right. That was that was the negotiation. We said, okay, we're gonna s pay you a certain amount and that's gonna be divided by cash checks that the company writes to them and by uh comp rent. Right. Right. So they get to do everything that they wanted to do, the all the stuff that they liked, right? They get to keep doing it and none of the stuff they don't like and it's a lot more. And they're right there, so they can tell that you're yeah.

Yeah. I'm sorry. So they can they they can tell right there that they're not You know, that you're doing it right too, that you're not gonna run it into the ground. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the way this this buyout made a lot of sense for all of us. Our vendor, the former owners wanted to continue to be vendors and we wanted a turnkey solution that we could afford. So, you know, it's lovely that as of next week we're going to be done paying back this loan and now we can start charging them rent. Sounds nice. You know, and and get that extra income But, you know, I think the reality is that it was not that much money exchanged.

It was a it was a a small chunk of change that we wrote Or that we gave them every month, but not enough to really cripple us or make us unable to pay our personal rents or go out to dinner occasionally. It was totally viable. And then they got this lovely little check every month. I think what we're kind of really um grappling with now, or at least I should say I am, is that I love the industry. I love antiques I love customer service. Retail all day, every day. I mean, it's called retail therapy for a reason. My mother's a therapist. I'm so good at it.

It's if I may say so. But there's a lot of vendor management that I didn't really anticipate, which takes an enormous amount of time. For us to really make a lot of money, we have to sell our own furniture, which means we have to go out and buy and source. Um, I'm getting people are asking me to or trying to sell furniture to me all day every day, and that's like something else to manage. So I think as wonderful as found is the two of us are trying to figure out how do we manage this crazy beast. I mean I I find it totally fascinating and not overwhelming.

You know that's to each their own. Um no, I mean I would rather do this than, you know, work at my crappy recruiting job that I had in New York City before I left. You know, it's You know, every day and twice on Sunday. I'm so glad that we made this this choice. But when you become a small business owner, you really have to manage your time well, or else you could work all day, every day. And that is not sustainable. Yeah. I think something that sets us apart from other antique stores too is that I run the register. Most other owners of antique smalls in the upstate New York region are not managing the register.

They have employees. Um, I don't really know how they afford to have employees. Although we we have some vendors who are absolutely wonderful and were we're having them help us at the register in exchange for some rent relief. So that's a wonderful way to have your vendors, if you do have a vendor-based business really take ownership of their the mall and it kind of feels like their own they're getting a little bit of rent relief. No real money is being exchanged. It's great. It's good. And I we love We love these girls who who help us out. But um what are your hours so people know?

Wednesday through Sunday, 10 to 6 Mondays, Tuesdays, but the site is actually open, not our store, but I do believe that the folks who who own South Forks um are open to people walking around the site. Yeah. Uh Monday through Friday. Um so we're not there Monday and Tuesday. But there is a mural walk and there's certain we had local muralists come and paint it. Ithaca murals just to throw Yeah, there's some really great mu murals there. Oh, and I did want to put in a little bit of a a pitch because You actually have a second site, which we didn't even talk about.

We have a um a store called Art and Found. We're collaborating with a woman named Rachel Fearman who has a business called Creative Reuse and she gets used art supplies, so do we, and resells them for almost nothing. It's basically like It's like a another sort of mutual a adjacent business. We also sell vintage art. We have local Ithacan artists on the walls. And and some furniture and lamps, and things that maybe would be conducive to art or creativity. Some vintage stereo systems, but that's just me and kids to know. Stereo systems. If he brings another radio into this apartment, there's gonna be an issue.

But we the reason why we like that store is it's actually a former vendor of ours who moved down down south and said, Oh, I'm leaving the store, but the rent is super affordable and it's a historic building and it's nice to be downtown and um We're probably not making any money. I don't know what's cheap, but But again, somewhat mission based. I paint, I do art, you know, I miss the art stores. I I don't wanna go to Michaels. Like Michael's does nothing for me. It's really sad. I did Michael's for the full ref sense. Not great. So we're hoping that this works out and that we can put some more time into it uh coming closer to spring.

Spring nuts with the opening of the mainfound. But I'm excited about the potential that we can have there. They're you know, learning last times. We have like kids come and Just use the materials and make some pretty painting pictures. Yeah. is how collaborative it is, you know, how much you've relied on community and, you know, you're doing all of these things. It's not it's not just about the money, which is of course what we're, you know, what we're focusing on here is we we kind of move away from the completely profit centered economy model towards something that's that's more balanced, right?

That includes all these other kinds of wealth like Community wealth and and art and mutual aid and just friendship really profit. Profits in our language. Right. I mean there's profit. You d you know, you you have to make a little bit of money because everybody has expenses. That's one thing. But there's the idea of enough profit, right? Right. There's surplus for us. But it's like kind of those things where we're we're not which might sound bad as gotta be someone who majoring a business is about to be like, what? We're not really paying attention to the money.

Like, it's one of these things that if the store is open, it works. We can live, we can more than live. And we're not necessarily materialistic or any of these things. So our expenses are pretty low in living. I make somewhat of a joke that Soon or you know, we're paying about twenty thousand a month in rent. I mean that's with our our apartments and the art store and the found, which is crazy to me because I never thought I'd be at a level But we pay it and we still live and and things like that. So it's more about like you're saying, like community of support, we gotta be open, we wanna be open, or we wanna be a a a place for gathering for like full thoughts and stuff in the future.

Like, you know, and the more you can get away from profit and and how well are we doing, what can we do to optimize and just have it be a functioning working. That's why we're so happy that it's been a success. You know, there's you never know with the move whether it's gonna work or not. And it has totally seemed to be working on even a level that we didn't expect. We crunched the numbers and all that We're gonna be eating soup a lot this month. Uh soup. Right. Soup is great. But it wasn't like that. It's been game busted since we opened and uh leads to these ideas of expansion because one thing we're very inspired by is that we have younger people and they're much much more engaged with the used clothes and vintage clothes things But these are people that don't have to go get a nine to five and start valuing their own creativity in finding things, what they appreciate, what they know they can find.

And you know they're they're pulling in like five a month, you know. six three to five thousand a month or something like that where like people just where wages are set, you know, good luck making that at a nine to five. even in the middling realm of college educated thing right now. Like like it doesn't pay that uh in the in the working field, I suppose. So I want more people to get engaged in this. Like we'll provide you a space to make money to get out of like the sort of system that we have because we don't have an um an industrial base here.

It's all serviced. You might as well service yourself and the community. Yeah. And that I will say, um, you know, sometimes it hits me, it's like, oh my God, found doesn't really sell anything that anybody needs. It's more like just like fun shopping On one hand. On the other hand, you know, we are selling a lot of clothes. We all need to wear clothes. Lighting, desk. We we sell a lot of kitchenware. Like really good vintage dance pots and pans and you know I think people are especially in Ithaca so hip to the fact that buying new often means buying from sweatshop labor and supporting an owner class that I think we always knew was a little bit suspect and now that the Epstein files are coming out, it's like nobody wants to support the limited anymore.

All right Yeah, like I think I think people are just so over supporting such a toxic global economy and they're craving local They're craving high quality. They're craving beautiful design. It's still often more affordable than the junk that you get in like a Target or a Walmart, even, which falls apart in two seconds. So, you know, as maybe frivolous as some of the items are that we sell, nobody really needs porcelain dolls. They're wonderful. And it is it is more of our day-to-day life and culture and I think your file is convenienced because I'm not sure people are buying the stuff on Wafair thinking they're getting great quality But there's something to saying a dresser will show up in two days right in front of your house or your apartment.

So we we try to do that with kindness. I mean if I can in the middle of the day I will take someone stressor to their house because they're right down the street. It'll be like ten minutes for me to just in the hey, that's better than Amazon. I'll deliver it ten minutes. He's actually driven people home. Right. Sometimes we've had people like walk to us and then it starts to rain, but their Ubers can't find them. And then he's like, oh, that's a Subaru. So so there's a personal personal relationship we try to build with the customers that that in my mind is somewhat defeating the convenience of Amazon or how other people get their furniture.

Basically Amazon on Wayfair or in the college kids, I I'm trying to convince them or or have a message to say You know, if you buy this and you say it's like it's a little I mean, I don't even think it's that pricey, but like, you know, $370 might be allowed for a desk for someone when you can get it for $99 on Wayfair cuts. After three, four years when you're about to move out of here, come back to Phone. I'll buy it back from you. Maybe not at retail, but enough where like you rented this desk for fifty cents a day. It comes out fairly cheap.

And they kind of like and I want that. I want that desk back that I sold to them. And I want them to get their money and I want this like economy to stay in here. Like it's it's very important for me to like stress to people that this is not a waste thing. These things lasted a hundred years, they'll last another hundred years. I will take them back from you. Will I give you a fair market rate for them? Like So so convenience is basically what I'm saying. It's like how do you fight convenience? How do you fight these things? Well, you you know, I I think something that we really like too is that um you know, maybe it is convenient to buy a something at Wayfair, but then it comes and you see the quality and you're like, oh, I wish I saw this in person.

We are in person. I mean ideally I'd love to be able to work up a website where we could maybe sell online, but but I I like having people come to the shop. Physically feel something and say, oh my gosh, this is high quality, it's well made, it's still affordable, or on par if not cheaper than the junk that you can get at Wayfair. And that's kind of the fight on convenience too, is I don't want people to throw things away. Because that's a very convenient way to get rid of something. It's put it on the side of the tree or I just smash awayfair thing you just probably smash with a kitchen knife to nothing and throw it away.

So I want people to have value in their things and not throw it out because I'll give you 150 bucks for it or I'll give you 120 dollars. Like I'll go pick it up You know, I I will do what I need to do to get the thing to last another whatever, go to another student. Like I just think that kind of like you're saying, like s cyclical economy is like just how it works and like what what a cool way to just provide these things to people that aren't and I'm more talking about the necessities. The porcelain doll, if you buy it you might have to keep it.

Uh try to make an offer for that. Not sure if you're gonna buy the porcelain doll back. Right, right. They don't sell that well. No, there's some things that aren't. How about the clowns, the porcelain clowns? Do those sell pretty well? My mother would buy them. Yes, my mother is into the clown. His mother isn't a folk art like you would believe. The weird gosh. See there's something for everyone. There's something for everyone. Yeah. Well what's also great is, you know, we were talking about the physical things, you know, a desk or a or a porcelain doll or clown staying staying, you know, being passed down maybe from generation to generation, even if it's not in the same family, it's in the same town or in the same area, you know, which is kinda cool to know that, you know, you've got something that that has lived in upstate New York or has lived in the Ithaca area for a hundred years or something.

And the dollars that are exchanged when you are in a local shop like yours stay very local. Obviously. If you purchase something from Wayfair, like instantly that money is going outside of our local economy. And I think I I think it's fair to say virtually none of it is is actually gonna be in our local economy except for perhaps some sales tax, right? Yeah. But there's a funny story about the line bikes that used to be here. Like line bikes are like we know that. They came here. Yeah, they came here and the locals threw 'em all on the river, which or the lake, which isn't great But also it was like a statement that we don't want we don't need this like in here because if most of the money is gonna go to Uber or whoever the parent company is, what's the point?

And now we have if the You know, yeah, the Ithaca bike. I mean I own a bike, so I actually don't know what it's called. But uh but I I like that small thing where we're trying to keep it. I wanna to be the meters as well. Like the parking meters right now kind of drive me crazy because I'm like, I don't know who this company is that's thinking sixty percent because parking meters used to pay for things in the city. Like, you know, you've got to be careful about what you you know, divvy out to private sectors that aren't around here. Like you know, a parking meter to me is a very public municipal type of thing that we could use to buy better plows for the winter or something like that.

So I was very disappointed with that. But this again leads to the idea of like why we're sort of trying to be creative and how to yeah, like almost like a game. Like how do we keep every dollar around here Well y it's it's interesting. Uh Jeremiah mentioned earlier that he's a Marxist. I guess I am too. I need to remind myself what Marxism really is. But um but I think It's not aspirational to say that we want to really be as local as possible. In fact, it's a far easy economy market to manage because people call me all the time saying I have stuff to sell.

They're in my neighborhood. It's I don't have to travel overseas to get that stuff. It's just it's it's how we need to function in order to make our business work. I I almost find it surprising that the term convenience is given to an industry that ships crazy amount of heavy weight from abroad that goes into foreign cultures that aren't necessarily interested in or the people aren't necessarily interested. in being subjugated and treated as slave. I mean, it just the the whole thing of a global economy seems crazy inconvenient and not sustainable.

And it really relies on things being as cheap as possible in order to extract as much much of that wealth to the few people who own those industries and it I just don't see it lasting And that's the marxist the mark critique that capitalism just it cannot sustain itself. It is it will scientifically, inevitably, crash in and of itself. Our economies have to be local and regenerative. And insular. We joke all the time. We own our business, but it's the it's a communist style business We work it. And you could have large corporations that are that are owned by the people who work There.

Um there's just not one owner extracting all that wealth. It's all distributed. Right. And that's essentially found. We do charge a small percentage of commission or uh yeah, commission for each sale. I almost said the word consignment. That's another interesting business model. But but most of the money that our vendors make in sales, they get back at the end of the day. Or how about with uh convenience and the cheap prices. What you're really talking about is cheap labor. I'm not interested in cheap labor because with that convenience and cheap labor, you have low, low wages.

And low wages affect us because now we have to make sure our h our prices adjust to the labor around Ithaca, New York, which is like one of the lowest paid college towns in the entire country. Surprising. some of the politics around here. But uh we are the lowest page, which means, you know, again, it's not for us because I'm not trying to make crazy amounts of money, but people don't understand that like If you keep it local, wages will rise, higher wages, everyone will be able to afford more or nicer, or like maybe not. Maybe the consum consumption doesn't go up.

It just means that those mom and pops, headwake bakery, these people that, you know, are trying to make their bread prices like affordable. Is not really what we should be trying to do. We should be trying to w raise wages. It's why I'm interested in these 25-year-old vendors we have Can I get them to $10,000 a month? Like that's what I want. Can I get them to have not even disposable income, but enough income to support other businesses around here? and not feel like guilty for going to like more of a boutique spot. Like, you know, the boutiques are the ones that really need your help because they have higher prices, because they have, you know, low margins on wages to profit.

So it's a Yeah. I think there's this misconception that a lot of people have, especially maybe some small business owners that say, Oh my gosh, adjusting for inflation, um our minimum wage should be like forty dollars an hour, I can't afford that. Well you could afford it if everybody around you was making more money because you would be making more money. It's it's ridiculous that wages are the only thing out of ever out of our economy that hasn't risen with with inflation. And it should. There's no reason why wages should be any different than eggs or milk Yeah.

Yeah. Some people's wages. Some people I know. Well, you know, a very small percentage of folks. I I don't know what who I was talking to about this the other day, but in I think in 2012, Herbs um started their billionaire list, their top billionaire list. And Carlos Slim was on that list for like twelve billion dollars and what does Elon Musk have now? Something like five hundred five hundred billion dollars. That's not because he worked hard. No. That's called he's not the hard worker. Yeah, yeah, that is absolutely theft. It's it's I think the uh mystique that these billionaires are really smart and they work hard is gone.

Nobody believes that labor surplus. Because you can't work you cannot work so hard that you're worth five hundred so you just that you can't do it. Yeah, it's kinda silly. But and it makes you ask Is that money even real? So is that a really good point. Is it really real? It's just numbers on a screen. You know, um money is so much about it's just so much it it's such a an an imaginary I I'm I'm slowly working on a concept around that. And people think I'm crazy, but I'm like, yo, did you realize money's not real? I mean, fiat currency. So I I understand that money really isn't real.

But it's interesting other people are like kind of coming to the conclusion because like cost of living is so high that it's like, oh but you make it work anyways. Like whether you gotta take Well, I don't know, people take loans or like borrow like made up money. So it's really not real anymore. It's great opportunity to sort of have a revolutionary community group driven, like what are the needs of our community? How do you do it? Like, you know, what's the Yeah. What do we actually need? Like, because since money's not real, there are real things like housing, food, like those those are real.

Right our natural resources, our community, our attention, you know, things like that that are that are tangible and real to us. And Yeah, one of the things that we're gonna explore here in some future episodes is the concept of money and specifically local money, because Ithaca has had in the past a local currency. And so we're gonna bucks. Ithaca hours, yeah. It's went on for a long time. And there's there's another local local currency in the Berkshire, it's called Berkshire Bucks. And that's that's actually still running. And so Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna look into that a little bit because I think there's some really interesting things around that that we'll talk about.

Alternatives, B Bank with alternatives, which is a credit union. But I was here when Ithaca hours was a thing and and did some teach a older individual how to use Spotify or whatever, what like email or something like that. And then you could go to alternatives and they would give you credit for that, like dollar in money and like towards something that you might have borrowed again. I didn't have a mortgage, but one of the big things was like, oh, you could like start paying your mortgage with that, like or whatever borrowed money you got. I don't borrow money, so I didn't you know, I was doing it for the crazy conceptual like idea behind it.

Plus it's good to meet people and like, you know, who knows? The value of that kind of stuff like really changes. You know, you go teach someone how to do a do an email And they've got four old iPods or something that like is value to you or something like that. Oh, I'll give you those instead where it would have cost you eighty dollars to buy those things. They had one available for you. You just needed to make the connection. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there's no ahead. Well, I think, you know, the barter system thing is kind of interesting for us because we do that in in our business.

Often it looks a little bit like a trade for labor. Like we'll we'll move everything out of your house for you. Lesson learned it's probably too much labor. But in exchange for a lower price for buying all of the furniture that we want to put in the store or something. Right. So yeah, I'm I don't know if barter is even the right word, but I love the instances where just no no money is exchanged, right? Yeah. It's like a free cycle, which I'm not even sure if that's still around, but it was basically a message board for items that people have for free.

Or you could just check it and go get it if they want it if you wanted it. No money, no nothing. But You know, a lot of these things have been somewhat destroyed in the last 12 years. I don't I don't know what happened. And COVID did no one any good, like as far as local I think Ithaca's changing quite a bit. And I say I think because I've only been here for five years, but what I understand from Jack Maya's experience and what I just sort of see visually it's a little disheartening to see like really poorly multifamily housing that's going up with cheap panels, it's not even architecturally.

Workforce housing. Like I love that term workforce housing. Like what does that mean? Yeah. And then each apartment has its own nice egg meter. What's sustainable about that but it yeah it just it's a little bit disheartening to see because I maybe it was a a COVID thing but Ithaca Ithaca's ethic of being super crunchy and granola Um well there was a time I mean there was a time when like they got together and got off of Bolton Point and made their own water municipal without fluoride because whatever it was in the nineties and they were like, Oh fluoride is mind control for the Soviets.

But anyway, that that's a cool thing to see. I want to see that kind of like initiative taken by the city for internet for energy. Like, you know, there's just so many, you know, they they picked water, which is is fine, like, cause water is super important. But I'm surprised it stopped there. And it seems like that kind of um there was a reaction to that. Like people were like, oh no, we gotta get Ithaca under control. They got some like radical thoughts going on, like owning their municipal. Any kind of has been on a slippery slope ever since.

I you know, it's sad to see. I think one of the things we want to do is kind of build this back up and just like I say have the be the space for conversations for this because I can't keep seeing it devolving Until like just a regular you know Well I think this moment in history right now that we're living through in the United States in particular, you know, we're watching in the collapse of our big D democracy around us. I mean, it's just very clear to anyone who's paying attention that that's it's not functioning anymore, unfortunately. You know, the people who were who were elected to represent us, the people, are not really representing us the people.

Mm-hmm. But I think that small D democracy, which is, you know, basically local democracy, which is what we're talking about here, is the way that we can reassert control over our lives and it's probably the only really way that we can make it work. Yeah, and it's almost like democracy, I suppose, like what you're saying, but like it's uh like local organization. Exactly. Yes. Is is what we need to do, like community organization. I mean part of my Marxist education or whatever is that I I'm actually not really for government. Like I think Especially under capitalism, like government is controlled by the above.

So you will not vote your way out of like rich people getting poor or losing it. Like th it's just not gonna happen here. the the like if you look at Lenin or you look at certain Soviet ways, their form of communism was because they needed to educate the proletariat. So they they they thought they needed some kind of higher organization in order to educate the workers from what the capitalists had like sort of put in their head that this this is what you do, this is what you pick. Like so so there's that. But capital and Marxism is that the workers own the means of production and that the government and the organizing on that all stays local and that the federalization of things or like making grand statements of of somewhat large government will ultimately lead to imperialism or where we are now on on a stranger state.

So so Marxism about government or or big government or small government. He's like, no, you gotta be careful with like authority in general because, you know, kind of even mentioning democracy and the assaults on democracy now can be used in the way that like the right in power now are like, oh my God, we gotta take over elections. It's not working. And I'm like, that's nasty. Like you don't you don't want them to take over the election, but the He had the same argument about attacks on democracy as say the left have as Trump taking over democracy and then this and that.

Democracy is a term to me that like is like if you direct democracy I think is is an interesting concept, but whether or not you have fifty-one percent of people saying like, oh actually let's get rid of this race in our country. I mean direct la Democracy has its own problems. But I do do think it's a organized thing. Maybe you need some sort of organization to control the resources, like our resources, but really all workers unite. You know, whether there's borders or boundaries, like those things will seemingly dissolve over time. You know, you don't really want borders and things like this and say, no, you can't come here or this or that.

We're all workers. I think with globalization, we all realize we're all workers now that there isn't really a difference between the people working in Taiwan. And the people working in meatpacking farms and you know, like those are workers and that's all they are. They're not brown or they're not this or this or that. They're just workers. We're all workers. And I I'm for that kind of solidarity when we start thinking about grander ideas of of creating change. And the way that you start with solidarity is your neighbor, the person next to you, the the baker, the the people that provide the goods for you to consume and eat and live.

And it's never gonna be someone that's six states away. I mean it will like ultimately when you grow solidarity But in the meantime, you really have to like focus locally. It's why I I moved here. I love the culture. Like, you know, I yeah, I I potlucks all day. Like, you know, this there was a certain local vibe. I think it's still here I think so too. I mean I I've had this conversation with people who say like, well, you know, if you get rid of the federal government, like how is anything gonna be organized? But the federal government doesn't call me every morning saying, get out of bed and go to work like we know how to take care of ourselves should the one percent or point one percent of everyone who owns the means of production now just go away.

Nothing would really change. We could just go to work and keep going. Because we know how it all works. They don't they don't right. So we wouldn't be able to buy as much from Wayfair Pro I think I think the the people who work at Wayfair might say, you know what, we really love our business, but we don't love the fact that we're exploiting other workers, our brothers and our sisters, abroad. Let's keep doing what we're doing but change the business model. That's a democra it you know, incompany democratic decision to say, let's do something else here.

Right now those people at Wayfair have no say. They're doing what their boss says. I make that joke. It's like most people spend forty forty hours a week in fascism and come out talking about democracy. But like when you go to work, you don't really have a vote. I mean, maybe you got a nice boss who says who wants pizza today or or tacos Which one? Right, but you don't really vote. We're not instructed to vote. When we go to school in primary school, we're not instructed to have a a consciousness about voting and majority to minority like these things.

We're not. And we're America unfortunately over the last seventy, eighty years, like since labor has been crushed so much, we have very like confusing ideology on on the way that we've been trained. Like even me, like, you know, I I I have had an awakening. It's been great. I've had I've enjoyed my leisure. I used to work I don't know, eight hours a month was a tough month for me. I was like, oh, I'm okay. Like I got I got my meat provider. You know, I knew people. Like it was it was all good for like Oh wow. And I don't even think found is overwhelming.

But I I wish more people would know like you don't have to work yourselves to death. Like that's a we don't even make things anymore. Like you know, you're like servicing yourself to death. Yeah. And that's the beat. Like that we've gone that far down the red hole. So so I mean probably a different conversation we're leading into now. But I do find it I think it's beautiful. I I think it's beautiful that you have this philosophy that you obviously feel really, really strongly about, which is and that's important. And you've got this business and you're able to share it with other people.

You're able to bring other people into it. You're helping those vendors to build the lives that are going to be fulfilling to them and that's going to be satisfying to them and they're not scraping by and doing a lot more than they need to do because there are so many people who are working out there three different jobs and they're on buses trying to get to places when they're I think it's something like Seventy percent of people are one paycheck away from homelessness or something. I mean that's it's an insane amount of people. And the rents are so high everywhere.

And that's kind of where I feel personally it starts is all around the rents where which are just constantly going up higher but and then it it just trickles through to everything, you know. But you found this this amazing model in an amazing space and you're able to use the ripple effect to grow it and to to spread it throughout. It's Um it's sustainable. We're saving items from landfill, but it's also it's like exquisite history and the product of the coolest shit. It's so fun. Oh, I hope it's okay. You guys said that. But we had a a little kid, young, young boy, the son of a friend of ours play with an old radio.

It was like a 1950s Morance radio or something like that. And it was made in America. Beautiful milled aluminum buttons that when you like Turn it, it clicks, and he you should have seen his face like just playing with his buttons. Like, oh, like this feels good. The tactile. Yeah, wait. I think we're missing some of that. It is another example, a lot of new glass Like glassware feels greasy. It's kind of a way you can tell if glass is new or vintage. Vintage glass was made better, I would say. I mean I don't I don't know if that's the universe.

I mean I think so much of what we use now is made it's really thin if it's made with good materials or because the earth doesn't produce high quality silica materials anymore. You know, the linen shirts that we're wearing are not quite the same linen shorts that were made. eighty years ago. Um and it's just such a pleasure to wear a hundred percent linen shirt. It's it it feels better, vibrates with a slower frequency or higher I don't even know what it is. The frequency is more tuned with our bodies. Yeah. And the history I find fascinating. 'Cause the you're right, the rent is too high.

But again, I like to like push back a little and say we're not paid enough. That's the key. It's always gotta fall back to labor. Chicken is not too expensive, you're not paid enough. It people would just nail that in. They're not waiting for someone to lower prices. They're taking it upon themselves to raise their wage. Correct And that's the that's the thing I just I will wanna hammer home is that like it is expensive out here and it's crazy we have a thirty-two trillion dollar economy. Things shouldn't be a hundred thousand dollars for a house.

That's not what anyone wants. You want your l your worth ethic with a laborer's To reflect that money, but it's not. It's all given away, or like stolen, basically, from the few at the top And you know, I don't know how you do it. Is it used to be general strikes, it used to be this and that. I don't I don't know, like 'cause money isn't real now. So now we really just have to convince people that oh maybe the stock market's not real Yeah, I I don't have the answers, but I think that at least part of the answer is exactly what we're doing here and exactly why I started this podcast, which is To get people to simply notice, first of all, like you're saying that, oh well, maybe I should be paid more for this And secondly, maybe the dollars that I spend should try to stay in town as much as possible.

Even if it is slightly more expensive because it actually all works together to cut, you know, to raise is all the boats as as they say, right? Yeah. When when we keep the dollars here You know, when we have a good sense of what our true wealth is worth, which is not just about the profit, you know, or or not just about what the wages are that we're earning. But it's about how much free time we have. It's about how much we can breathe in our own town. You know, it's about how much time we can spend with our friends and learning to play music or teaching our elderly neighbor how to do email or whatever it is.

You know. And I I think that whether or not that's the whole answer, it's definitely a huge part of it. And so you're doing it, I'm doing my part, and I hope everybody listening is has their eyes open a little bit and and thinks a little bit more about where they spend their dollars and what what those dollars actually mean. Yeah, we love the idea of your podcast. It's just, it's so healthy. It's so what we need. It's I'm so glad that you're doing this. And thank you so much for having us. Thanks for listening to the Ithaca Local Economy Lab. If you liked us and want to hear more, please be sure to share, rate, review, and subscribe so you don't miss a single episode.

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