Jaime Wong.

You just passed the four year mark here in NYC, yes?

Yeah it’s 4 years in March – but LA hit a bigger milestone this year; we’re turning 18 in June! I’m not doing any anniversary parties soon. I’ll throw one for special years like 5, 10, 15, 20… hopefully. [laughs]

Can you tell us a bit about the history of the space?

Well, it was a Polish bakery over 20 years ago. My landlord and her husband sold bagels but the husband passed away, so they shut it down. It was empty for a while until my friend Neil took it; he had a vintage shop a block down called Mello. Neil completely gutted the space to make it functional. There was a huge rat problem when he first moved in and it took months for him to get them out; he did a really great job. To carry on their legacy, he renamed his shop to “Grand Street Bakery.” The dressing room used to be her office, and the ovens are still in the back with the baking racks. Anyways, Neil had the space for 5 years and then passed the torch down to me. We had met through a mutual friend in the vintage network and were planning on doing something together before, but it didn’t work out. Eventually, he wanted to move and asked me to take a look at Grand Street Bakery to see if I wanted to take it over. I walked in and was like fuck yes.

You’ve mentioned before that you felt like eBay ruined the vintage market. Can you tell us why?

A lot of people are unknowledgeable. Say a picker in the Midwest countryside finds a pair of denim or something and they don’t know what the deal is. Before, they would sell it for cheap but still make a nice profit on it; everyone wins. With eBay now, tons of listings and prices are available to browse through online, which gives people this false idea that everything that is old is worth a lot – which is not always the case. Why am I paying $400 for a piece in Kentucky now? It just doesn’t make sense.  Pickers now see a pair of vintage Levi’s and automatically assume “Oh, it must be worth a lot of money.”  eBay just drives the prices up on a lot of things that just aren’t worth that much.

So does that mean you have to pass on a lot of stuff?

I have to pass on things that I like because they want more than I would sell them for at retail. It’s more than anyone would sell it for. Let me give you an example: I had a lady message me from the Midwest. She was like, “Hey, I came across an early pair of overalls from the 40’s – check out my eBay listing.” I went to take a look and they were nothing special. They were completely destroyed with holes everywhere and no good patchwork. I get that they are an old pair, but she had them listed for $1,100. Now tell me: no brand, no nothing on the overalls. Where did that number come from? The worst part is, if she does sell them, now she’ll think that she can get that much for anything and everything. It really ruins it for everyone else trying to find and sell vintage.

How do you source your stock for the shops nowadays?

I am thankful to have consistent people who I’ve been dealing with for decades. They’re a network of pickers who hit thrift stores, estate sales, flea markets, everywhere. They do a lot of the hard work for me and put it together, and I’ll meet with them to sort through their hauls. I just don’t have the time or energy to do what they do anymore. When I was younger, I could hit every thrift store and every estate sale – but that’s changed.

You said it was hard to balance the two shops – is it because you want to be at both all the time?

Yeah, I’m at that phase in my life where I’m not constantly on the road 6 months out of the year anymore. I really enjoy actually being in the stores; I like talking to my customers and seeing them put things on. My goal this year, though, is to turn the focus back to buying since I’m having a hard time balancing the inventory between the two shops and running out of. Selling out of stuff isn’t a bad problem, but it is a problem.

How did you get your start in vintage?

There was a couple that used to own a thrift store in my neighborhood. The wife was Indian and the husband was Pakistani. They treated me like a daughter; I would eat with them and fast with them. They were so great. Every time they would come back from estate sales, they’d let me cherry-pick from the bags. So for a few months, I was taking their stuff to Rose Bowl to sell and I got a percentage.

So when you started picking from them and then on your own…

I just bought what I liked. I feel like my tastes have matured, though. When I started, I was doing a lot of 60s and 70s stuff: flares and band tees. 646s and 684s, lots of orange tabs, Members Only jackets, some old Nikes. Always vintage tees though. I didn’t know what I was doing so I was pricing stuff low and people got great deals. It was pre-internet.

That’s crazy not having a general point of reference – people take that for granted today.

They do for sure. I still do it old school; I’ll go ask someone instead of just looking it up online. Say I find a military piece that I can’t identify: I’m gonna take the pieces to one of the guys I know who specializes in it. I trust what they tell me over the internet. And that’s just the way I started my business – I learned everything by asking. I was selling amongst people who had been doing it for decades when I started; if I need information today, I still go back to some of those same people.

You mentioned that your family has always been super supportive, which I think is unusual for many immigrant parents.

They’ve been really supportive of whatever I’ve wanted to do. I was still working the corporate job, which I’d grown to hate; I loved the work but did not like the company. I was 21 and female, surrounded by a lot of older domineering men. I loved the job and made crazy good money for a 21-year-old, but was coming home crying every day. I went to my mom and told her “I can’t do this anymore.” She told me to quit my job, work for her for a bit, and pursue the flea market stuff – so I did. I helped her out with the printing business and that gave me more time to focus on the flea market.

Then I woke up one day and told my mom that I really wanted to open up a store and she said “Great – well why don’t you take half of one of my storefronts?  Try it out, and give me half the rent” – which, at the time, was $500 or less. She taught me how to budget my money, use QuickBooks, and really do all of the accounting that I had no idea about. I know how to do my taxes really well because of her. She taught me where to go to get permits in the city, where to apply for a sales tax license. She learned all that herself and I was lucky that she could pass that along to me. That was amazing for me. Where else was I supposed to look for all that? Online? Where online? The internet was young at that point. I didn’t know anyone else who had gone through that before. She gave me the space and I got a bunch of friends and we painted and put racks up. I just did it my own way – word of mouth. I told all my friends to come to the opening. And then every day, I kept the doors open and worked by myself and people just started to come in.

There was no thought to whether this was a good location or not?

No – zero thought. I wasn’t trying to figure out my demographic or anything. People these days have business plans and research, but I was like nope I’ll try this out. I never honestly thought I would get this far. After being in Covina for a year I was like this city sucks, I’m not making any money – I was barely making $100 a day. That’s when I got the opportunity to move to the Arts District, into an epic huge space. And that’s where my business actually flourished. My friend had the space and he was already wholesaling vintage, so I took the storefront space and I built it on a little of both of our existing customers and just went from there. A few years in, he asked if I wanted to do this show Rin Tanaka was putting on called “Inspiration” – and even though I didn’t really know what it was, I agreed to do it. We shared a booth together; he had a lot of his collections in Rin’s early books so he’s been in that scene for a while. That show ended up being where I met everyone. At that point no one really saw each her, because there wasn’t social media. Unless you lived in the same city, you didn’t meet those people. I was able to meet New York vintage dealers, and I met the RRL team too. I met so many people from that very first show. My neighbor at the show was John Gluckow. I met all the big dogs.

Would you say that if there was one thing you want people to know Raggedy Threads for, it would be old workwear?

I do, yeah. I love that stuff. It’s the way it’s made, and all the weird sub-companies that don’t exist anymore. There are so many old weird workwear companies but it kinda reminds me of how there are so many small clothing labels now in fashion – because eventually that will be crazy once that stuff is vintage. I often think about what a vintage shop might look like in 50 years. There might be vintage 3sixteen stuff that people are looking for. Or people might be trying to research what this denim is, or what that shirt is. That’s how I see the 30’s or 40’s denim brands like Steerhead or Big Buck or Rabbit. They aren’t companies we know now like Carhartt or Levi’s. We gotta thank the Japanese for compiling magazines with archives of all this stuff.

I like to think that some stuff produced today will last as long as that stuff did, specifically smaller brands who pay a lot of attention to what material they’re using and the details they incorporate into their garments. Those garments might last another 50 years, who knows.  The majority of clothing will not: fast fashion and made in China stuff probably not.

Can you tell us about the van and your other cars?

I have a love for old Fords. If I could have every single one I would, but I can’t; I just don’t have space. My first Ford is my 1940’s V8 half-ton pickup, which basically has a hot rod engine in it. It’s fast and loud, more like a shop car that I have for fun. This van is a ‘65 Ford Econoline 150.  I found it actually – don’t laugh – on eBay. I won the auction and then flew to Colorado and met the owner, he was so incredibly sweet. He cried because he spent a lot of time taking care of the van. It runs so well. We hugged and cried together. He didn’t want to let it go but he had to because his health was going and he just couldn’t keep up with it anymore. Which goes back to – you’ll get the good stuff when people start dying. It’s morbid but true. But yeah, I flew to Denver and picked it up and drove back to New York with no problems at all. I was picking vintage all the way back so it was a long trip. It was in the body shop for 4 months because the brakes went out twice. In New York City.  Scary. So I had to fix the brake lines and patch all the rust that was on it because it was getting really bad. Especially having a car out east with the snow and salt; I never have those issues with my one in LA. Just paint damage from the sun. Someone grafitti’ed the van though thinking it was a box truck so I had to fix that. I was so angry.  But now it’s patched up, painted, and it looks so beautiful. I’ve since sent it out to LA, but I don’t drive it much. I have a Subaru Outback to get me around town.

Almost 18 years in, are there some lessons you’ve learned along the way?

Staff is the hardest thing for any business. Either you do it all by yourself or you hire people, and finding good people is the hardest thing for me. And I treat my people very well, like family. But that’s my biggest continual challenge.

The recession was the lowest point of my life; everything was just going wrong.  Like great – what do I do now? Imagine you work so hard and then it’s all gone. My plan B was to just start over again. One thing I know is that I’ll never stop selling vintage. Once you start, you can’t stop. Even if I’m 80 years old and can barely walk, I’ll still find a way to deal from my home in bed. But yeah, if I didn’t have the store anymore, I might pivot towards teaching. Next week I’m guest speaking at my friend Alex’s class at Parsons and I am excited to see how it goes.

What are you most proud of?  

This. Like now, where I’m at right now. I still can’t even believe it sometimes. People on the outside could see it as “Oh you have a store here, you’ve got a store there, you’re living bi-coastal, you’re living the dream” but I don’t really see it like that. It just feels like I’m working and commuting. I guess I’m humble in that sense. Traveling across the country might seem glamorous but I have to find stock for the stores. It’s work for me, but it’s also passion. Sometimes I don’t step back and look at the whole picture because I’m too busy focusing on the function of making things work. It’s routine in a way; my own routine, which is nice. I guess having routine is something to be proud of.