When customers walk into The Storm Cellar, they’re not sure what they need until they see it — which is how owners Austin and Laura Storm intended it to be.
“We wanted to create an elevated thrift store experience where you still have that serendipity and the joy of discovery, but you don’t have to sort through things that you’re not interested in,” Austin Storm said. “In other words, a certain amount of curation has been done for you.”
Moscow’s residential makeup gives the store an exquisite “cultural fission,” with a mix of college students who bring in clothes they wouldn’t otherwise have, Storm said.
For curation of consigned pieces, he typically relies on what is selling best in their store.
Eimile Darney | Argonaut
A Storm Cellar employee looks through consignment items on Saturday, April 20.
“I wish that there was a grand, aesthetic master plan, but there really isn’t,” Storm said.
With the ebb and flow of fashion, he typically tells customers whose items are rejected to return in two or three years, when the fashion trends come full circle.
“We’re tending a garden. I’m always looking for things that have providence,” he said. “That’s what you get with used or vintage clothes.”
Storm estimates they reject roughly 80% of the items people bring in to consign, mainly due to heavy wear.
“The one thing we struggle the most with is figuring out how to communicate to people that it is not an aesthetic or personal judgement, that we are not passing judgement on them as a person or their aesthetic.” Storm said. “We are making largely pragmatic decisions about whether or not we think we can sell their stuff. We really try to keep it light and fun and not act like we are the arbiters of taste.”
The Storm Cellar will have been open 10 years come October. The store now features a range of other houseware items, such as area rugs and light fixtures.
“We want to create this space where people feel safe to push themselves aesthetically, to try things they haven’t tried before. And to that end we try to find those things,” Storm said. “There are a lot of safe clothes, and we want people to feel free to be adventurous.”
Part of the reason he’s suited for an entrepreneurial life is that it’s different each day.
“I get to go out and find things, like the rugs and stuff are things that I sort of search for, instead of things that people bring me,” Storm said. “But then we do a lot of looking through people’s clothes.”
The Storm Cellar has led to other business ventures for the couple, such as creating a children’s consignment shop, Hansel and Gretel, which they’ve since sold and a vintage furniture store, Bully for You Vintage, in Colfax, Washington.
Storm and his wife have also renovated the “dilapidated” building that now houses Lodgepole and Humble Burger before selling it to its current tenants.
As business goes well for The Storm Cellar in the coming spring and summer months, Storm said he loves the cycle of students who come to shop.
“We try to bring things that create a sense of wonder and things that are fun to look at even if you don’t buy them,” Storm said.
Kyle Pfannenstiel can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @pfannyyy