HUGE NEWS!!!
It is no secret that here at VNTG we dream of furnishings, art, and tech of historical significance, and paradoxically these are also the things that keep us awake at night. We spend many sleepless nights every week, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, machinating and strategizing the proverbial tomorrow, and beyond.
But, why? Well, simply put, because we can’t stop thinking about the future of the past! At VNTG, we see ourselves as a groundbreaking initiative sitting at the nexus of past, present, and future, and as purists and admitted nostalgists dialed up to 11, we constantly worry about how to make sure that the past does not get forgotten in the future. How do we conserve, preserve, save, and document EVERYTHING?
If you spent any time on our website at all, you may have glimpsed right on our home page a small commentary on how we see ourselves and our purpose. We have said from the beginning that “VNTG, Inc. is a tech start-up disguised as a furniture store." Well, well, well my friends, as some of you might be asking (and have asked), where, when, and how does the tech portion come into play?
We are so very glad you asked! This has been under wraps for several months, part of our secretive VNTG Labs division, but after almost half a year, we feel that the prototype is ready to come out of its Beta phase and become a Release Candidate. But before we get into that, a little bit of background on how we arrived at this point.
The founders of VNTG honestly never wanted nor ever envisioned themselves starting a retail effort, much less entering into the high-end Mid-century Modern business. However, with limited legitimate options for selling our bountiful collection, and the discovery that many others were interested in trading in these treasured goods, we wondered if coming out of retirement was an option. If so, how to enter this industry with a bang and employ best practices in advanced technologies to bring about a paradigm shift?
After much brainstorming, tons of research, several trips around the world, even during the height of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, intense problem-solving, dead-ends, thousands of man-hours, and an almost two-year-long incubation period, this arduous journey has morphed into a potentially transformative entity, and so VNTG was born.
The question then was do we go to Wall Street and seek Venture Capital? Approach Hedge Funds? Obtain Angel Investors? Go on Shark Tank? No! Instead, we decided to adopt a more prosaic approach and self-fund this initiative and resulting enterprise, to put skin in the game, to learn from our own mistakes, and to put our money where our mouth is, even at the high risk of failure! Why, you may ask? Well, because at VNTG we are doers, we are problem solvers, and we understand that there is no better way to learn the many facets and accompanying challenges and unknowns of the furniture world than to see it up close and personal, on an intimate basis, daily, and invest tremendous sweat equity into the business, even if it meant we were destined to fail.
With all that in mind, we began! At the very inception of VNTG, we knew we needed to establish a brick-and-mortar store, and having an eye for design, we longed for the option to start in a historic and architecturally significant space, in line with the aspirations of the business. In our home of Hawaii, one icon of the Modern Design Movement outshines all others: Vladimir Ossipoff! But how do we land an Ossipoff masterpiece? We hunted around, looking to find a vacancy in one of the few and elusive Ossipoff buildings on Oahu and a landlord who would be willing to lease us a space, to identify the one that would become the birthplace of VNTG. Month after month, no after no, we must admit we were losing hope and were perhaps ready to give up and settle for less.
But then by chance, one evening the stars aligned and one of VNTG’s founders happened to be attending a presentation from an illustrious, and well-regarded local architect who disclosed having just acquired an authentic Ossipoff building and that he was actively looking for potential tenants. Could this be happening? Had that transformative succession of events led to this taking place?
After touring the building, months of negotiations, and then renovations to the space, on October 1st, 2023, VNTG, in its physical form opened its doors. It was born in Honolulu’s historic Chinatown, on a busy street with over 40 thousand vehicles passing by each day, putting us at the center of this bustling city in the middle of the Pacific.
We knew that starting a brand new business from the ground up, in an industry that, while we had done our best to learn about it (mostly by osmosis), was relatively new to us, was a daring and risky undertaking. Due to the overwhelming support of a wonderful landlord, dozens of extremely talented and creative artists and artisans, hundreds of phenomenal consignors, and an even greater number of customers, we are thrilled to announce that we have on just our 3rd month in business become cashflow positive and we have everything from personalities, influencers, celebrities, writers and magazines to even the tv and film industries supporting our business day after day, with collaborations, partnerships and events announced or planned in the near and medium terms!
All that success has thus allowed us to focus our efforts on Phase II of our Master Plan, Part One! It is with tremendous excitement that we, the founders of VNTG, would like to announce and take the wraps off of our super secret Project X, what we call VNTG Wiki.
What is VNTG Wiki you may ask? Well, VNTG Wiki is a community-based, user-driven initiative to catalog all furniture, art, design, architecture, machinery, and electronics, ever made. How so you may ask? Quite simple actually! If you own anything, a coffee table you suspect may be Danish in provenance, a gorgeous sculptural lamp with a hefty marble base and chrome arm, a 1960s British convertible automobile, an intricately made mahogany Venetian motor boat, or an ashtray made by Pablo Picasso himself (and everything in between), then we would love for you to write about it, upload pictures, add audio, post links to articles or publications, or whatever your take on it may be. This is your chance to make a public record of something that has meaning to you so that it may live on in perpetuity. If unrecorded, that knowledge you hold, and the significance of these items, may perish from memory.
While we believe in treasuring people and experiences in our lives above all else, for many of us our belongings are a pivotal part of that story. For some, the designs we choose to surround ourselves with are an expression of who and where we are at each stage of life. In other cases, an object that was passed down through generations is an embodiment of the history and stories that are also passed down. Whatever the importance and the reason for your attachment or admiration for an item, we want to capture it and share it through VNTG Wiki. We cannot wait to learn with you and watch as connections are formed through the stories that accompany each object.
We at VNTG are expending significant funds, resources, and efforts to make this opportunity available and to disseminate this as a public and easily accessed tool.
We hope you all enjoy, use, and learn from this resource. May it be a journal of your experiences with every item you treasure as a prized possession, and may others be able to benefit from it for generations to come.
We would like to close with a huge shout out to a little prodigy, we shall refer to him as I.E., who is a charming 15-year-old extraordinaire who spent time between his hectic class, sports, and travel schedule to expertly design and troubleshoot a brand new Wiki that will emulate a user experience and interface we all know and love, the amazing free resource that is Wikipedia.
We have terabytes of hosting available and sincerely hope to run out of space soon, so we can then go and buy more!
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