Today we’d like to introduce you to Ally Dahlberg.
Hi Ally, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We are Ally Dahlberg & Jacob Huelster. We are partners in both business and life! When we first started dating, we would accidentally match outfits almost everyday without planning. Ally has been selling vintage since 2013 and Jacob has been collecting vintage for over 20 years, so it only made sense to find a way to turn our passions into a living. We initially started doing pop-up markets in the Twin Cities area in the spring of 2022 while we both worked full time. In 2023, Ally’s day job came to an end and it just made sense to pursue Back Pocket Vintage on a full time basis. We secured our 370 square foot office suite that we transformed into a retail store. We were open for regular hours to start but realized within the year that we were better off being open by appointment. We still do pop-up markets to stay visible in the community to market our space for private shopping appointments.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It’s funny you ask. Is any road actually smooth? Since we’ve moved into our brick & mortar in 2023, we have definitely seen our fair share of highs and lows. In 2024, we had an incredible year of opportunities that fell into our lap which really made it a special year for us. We connected with so many people in our community and figured out exactly what to do with our tiny space. But it certainly has taken some time to figure it out and we are still doing just that.
Marketing our business is one of the hardest things we’ve ever done—and Ally has marketing & sales experience! Our culture is very dependent on social media and that includes small business owners. Social media is a full time job just by itself. It’s hard enough to run a business without having to be content creators! We are finding a balance as we grow and begin our second year as full time business owners. We very much started this thing from the ground up and consider ourselves a DIY business through and through. We’ve had to diversify the way we do business to stand out in an every saturating market and of course, many businesses just starting out operate at a loss in the first few years. We are doing our best with what we’ve got!
Jacob and I are both plus size, so owning a business that carries an ample amount of bigger sizes has always been our goal! We source in all size ranges, but we’ve definitely noticed how difficult it is to find larger clothes in true vintage. A lot of plus size clothes before the 80’s were handmade and/or custom created due to the lack of large sizes found in department stores and boutiques. There was a lack of priority for plus sizes due to blatant fat phobia in the world of fashion.
It also took a lot of time to figure out what works in our space and what doesn’t because we do not have a lot of natural foot traffic in our building. We tried being open for regular weekly hours but found that a private appointment model allows us to plan for our customers on their schedule. It’s very much like scheduling a haircut! Being open for private shopping still has its challenges but as it grows we are finding that we enjoy the quality of service we are able to give the individual and their friends and family who join them.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Back Pocket Vintage?
Our shop is located in South Saint Paul in a mid-century office building that used to be the Cenex gas station headquarters! Our space is an office suite with two different shopping rooms. When you walk in, the front room of our shop is filled with items that we source weekly. The things we source vary from week to week, based on our customer’s needs, trends, classic staples and things that we just find pleasing. We focus on clothing, accessories and niche home decor from the 1960s-Y2K. Sometimes we find things that are older!
Our smaller shopping room is designated for “Pay What You Can” items. This room consists of items we’ve received for donation and things we’ve been holding on to for too long. This model helps keep our inventory accessible to everyone in our community and helps us continue to restock our front room on a regular basis! We receive donated clothing from all eras that help keep the lights on and provide our high quality vintage selection for reasonable prices! Our mission is to make sure that we have clothing for everyone no matter the cost. We also have a free bin!
We are only open by appointment. It only costs $20 to book! And this $20 is credit towards your purchase(s)! The customer who books can also bring as many people as they’d like and it’s still just $20. We always accept cash, so we ask our customers to reach out to us directly if they’d like to pay at the time of their appointment. We are also looking to host more private appointment parties like bachelorettes, birthdays and other celebrations and group outings!
When customers make an appointment with us, we are able to prepare for their visit by sourcing and curating by size, style, era(s) and specific requests. During their visit, we offer free personal styling services. Finding clothes that make people feel good about themselves is truly special. Being fashionable and plus size can be a challenge, so we hand source garments intentionally with size inclusion in mind. Our customers come in all sizes and we like to help them find styles that are unique to them. We love to help people find gender affirming clothes, outfits for the stage, new looks and also garments that complement their existing wardrobe. We gather details from our customers via Google form after they sign up for an appointment. We want to create a unique experience for every single person that walks in the door. We care about accessibility so we always can help anyone fill out the form over the phone.
We also throw community swap parties at our shop! These parties are a great way for people to pick up new clothes and household items without spending money while getting rid of things they’ve been meaning to donate. Our shop is open to the public during these events! But there’s no obligation to buy anything. We heavily advertise these events on our social media platforms.
And if weren’t busy enough, we also create custom merch on secondhand clothing. Our merch services are something we are growing and our goal for 2025 is to find more opportunities for it. It’s been quite the year working out the kinks of it all, and we are happy to share that we feel more confident than ever in our craft and have learned a lot this past year about fabrics, transfers and logistics for taking our operation on the go.
In 2024, we popped up at many different music venues, worked with several different artists & musicians, designed several special occasion graphics and have done bulk orders for other local businesses. We first got the idea to design an 80’s bar style graphic tee for our favorite local music venue, The White Squirrel Bar. We kept finding these incredible blank vintage t-shirts and sweatshirts and decided to make a fanboy design on them. We had the idea to bring a rack of blanks to different venues and have our customers select their own shirt for us to apply a decal using our commercial grade heat press. People love watching the process of their shirt being printed on. We even give back 20% of our custom merch sales to the artists and bands, because it makes sense? There has been a lot of positive feedback for our mission! People love the “choose your own adventure” vibe.
We most certainly are very busy but we enjoy the work we do!
What makes you happy?
We genuinely enjoy connecting people to the garments they are clearly meant to be with. It feels awesome when a customer gasps and says to a friend, “Look at this amazing dress!” or when a niche graphic tee makes someone laugh. We do our fair share of studying trends and researching what types of vintage clothing are having their moment again. We love “the hunt” in sourcing. We’ve both been avid thrifters for years and running this business has broadened our horizons on where to find unique vintage pieces. The best perk is that we always find cool clothing for ourselves. We have first dibs at the best pieces we find, so that rules! Luckily we find so many great pieces that there is plenty in stock at our home and our shop.
We love working together, even though we make each other crazy sometimes. At the end of the day, we have a lot of love for each other and agree fundamentally on how we want our business to thrive. We take a lot of risks and have each other to talk it through when things get hard and celebrate when milestones are reached! We’ve reached a lot of milestones since going into business and look forward to where the future will take us.
Pricing:
- $20 to book an appointment at our shop
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.vintagebyappointment.com
- Instagram: backpocket_MN
- Facebook: backpocketstp
