Caitlin Martella had never been a second hand shopper prior to starting her second hand business. In fact, She had a lot of pre-conceptions about what thrifting meant and decided long ago that it was not for her. Like me when I ran my store, she had never even heard of the circular economy and now…well, I’m going to let her describe how she ended up on this path.
So, who is Caitlin Martella and what is Curated Cubs?
In this episode we talk about the Circular Economy (click to get more info on what that looks like).
Curated Cubs donates their overstock to Jessie's Center, and you can too!
They also donate stained baby cashmere to Rapt and Held to be used as kids glove lining. ADORBS!!!
Join us as we shine the spotlight on Caitlin Martella, a remarkable sustainable clothing entrepreneur.
If you are curious about shopping preloved for your kids visit Curated Cubs! Your participation can greatly reduce the amount of textile waste that will ultimately be passed on to our children!!
Together we can DEgrow that waste :)
Enjoying the podcast? I am fiercely independent, and rely on listeners like you to help me stick around.
Can you share the episode on social media, or write a
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review in Apple podcasts?! I would be so grateful.
Caitlin Martella had never been a second hand shopper prior to starting her second hand business. In fact, She had a lot of pre-conceptions about what thrifting meant and decided long ago that it was not for her. Like me when I ran my store, she had never even heard of the circular economy and now…well, I’m going to let her describe how she ended up on this path.
So, who is Caitlin Martella and what is Curated Cubs?
In this episode we talk about the Circular Economy (click to get more info on what that looks like).
Curated Cubs donates their overstock to Jessie's Center, and you can too!
They also donate stained baby cashmere to Rapt and Held to be used as kids glove lining. ADORBS!!!
Join us as we shine the spotlight on Caitlin Martella, a remarkable sustainable clothing entrepreneur.
If you are curious about shopping preloved for your kids visit Curated Cubs! Your participation can greatly reduce the amount of textile waste that will ultimately be passed on to our children!!
Together we can DEgrow that waste :)
Enjoying the podcast? I am fiercely independent, and rely on listeners like you to help me stick around.
Can you share the episode on social media, or write a
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review in Apple podcasts?! I would be so grateful.
Hey all you de-growers. My name's Miranda Black and this is what's this Place Behind the Clicks and Mortar, and we talk about de-growth in fashion and retail. Now, if we're going to talk about cliques, we gotta talk about social media. I don't really like social media, which you may not believe, because there I am making posts and reels and it looks like I'm having fun, but the truth is it gives me a lot of anxiety and I kinda resent the time commitment it takes to create content. I bet you can relate. You just give your creativity away to Instagram, spending literal hours of unpaid labor to create content for these mega billionaires. So yeah, I'm a bit of a curmudgeon on the social's front, but something that intrigues me, something that stops me from deleting them all from my life, is this community 1990s mall vibe I've found Like remember when we used to go to the mall you could actually discover new independent stores run by like Mom and Pop or Mom and Mom.
Miranda Black:But I went to the Eaton Center recently because I have an Apple computer problem and that's my closest Apple store and it is almost unimaginable for an independent retailer to exist in the Eaton Center. Instead, it's all these predictable stores. I bet you could name five right off the top of your head, even if you've never heard of the Eaton Center, because there's stores you find in every single mall across the world, all selling the same stuff. There is zero discovery, nothing new. And this is where I give Instagram a second look, because there are thousands of small, independent accounts creating and selling fresh shit stuff you will never find in the mall. This sales transformation from street to socials was sort of blooming pre-COVID and then it exploded during the pandemic. The homeowner or apartment dweller was suddenly a store. They were merchandising and putting on live sales. If you curated your feed right, you were able to shop from hundreds of thousands of one-person shows, often thrift or vintage or homemade, right in your own city. It was good stuff.
Miranda Black:Well, today I have a story of someone who rode that whole crazy micro business pandemic wave and is now in the position to open a real-life bricks and mortar location. She's gonna give us the clicks and the bricks. Caitlin Martella opened a clothing business that creates almost zero waste. She supports families in need within her community by donating her overstock and she makes it super easy for parents to get into consignment through her white glove model. We're gonna get into that. But the part that really blows my mind is that Caitlin Martella had never been a secondhand shopper prior to starting her secondhand business. In fact, she had a lot of preconceptions about what thrifting meant and decided long ago it was not for her. And, like me when I ran my store, she had never even heard of the circular economy. And now, well, I'm gonna let her describe how she ended up on this path. So who is Caitlin Martella and what is curated cubs? Let's go inside and find out. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is just when I've heard. Did you start it in your garage Almost my garage.
Caitlin Martella:We don't have a garage. I started it in my basement. I took out a very large portion of my basement to start this business and actually just a week and a half ago finally moved into a studio just a few minutes from home. So my husband's really happy to have this face back.
Miranda Black:Okay, so take me back. Is this your first entrepreneurial endeavor? How did this all happen?
Caitlin Martella:Oh, good question. So I definitely think I'm an entrepreneur. It's not my first, although I would say it is the first sort of shift that I've done where I'm truly independent. I have a partner, but we're really doing this on our own, and what I mean by that is years ago I had my real estate license, so I was a bit of an entrepreneur there. But you're always sort of backed by a brokerage. You always have sort of people in your corner. You've got administrators to help you out. This is definitely my first all hands on deck.
Miranda Black:Nothing to fall back on. Yeah, nothing to fall back on.
Caitlin Martella:Initiative, I do also have a full-time job, so while it is my side hustle, it's definitely more than a side hustle. Now it's really taken off into something wonderful, which I'll tell you all about. When I first had my second child, which was a girl, when. I first found out I was having a girl, I was like complete girl mom, Like I went crazy with shopping.
Caitlin Martella:I went and bought new clothes and new toys and you know, navy blue pants weren't good enough. They need to have glitter on them. I will say that I've never been really into pink, so that was good.
Miranda Black:But I know I've never been really into pink yeah.
Caitlin Martella:I guess I shouldn't have said that to you, but it's okay, that's hilarious.
Caitlin Martella:I think it's really funny, but I was never into you know, as a kid, I remember being into Barbie and things like that, but even now, my favorite colors are red and green. Not the true, true girly girly mom, but certainly I got excited about dresses and accessories and hair clips and things like that. So my daughter was born at the end of 2019. And, of course, covid hit, and when I came back to work, I started to organize her room and I realized, wow, she's got a lot of clothes and things that she's never worn because we have been inside cooped up for over a year, right, and so I had things from family members. I had beautiful clothes from Europe with tags still on them, and I'm also the type of person, even with my own clothes, who doesn't wear the really good stuff unless I'm going somewhere because I'm afraid I'm going to ruin it.
Miranda Black:Oh yeah.
Caitlin Martella:Oh yeah. So that mindset is still a hard habit to break, but I'm getting better. So I realized that I had all of these beautiful items. So I started to think about selling them. And as I started to get into that, I've got three cousins my age or a ninth, a little cousin group together and they all have kids our age. And they all said, yeah, we need to sell our stuff too, like we haven't worn any of it. Think about school uniforms and think about you know, all of these gifts that we're still getting, because people still buy you clothes in COVID as a gift if you have a new baby. So so started to kind of think to myself okay, well, I've got a group of people who doesn't want to sell their own things. They want me to do it for them. So started to build a bit of a platform on Instagram. We slapped an aim on it, called it curated Cubs, and decided to try this sort of Instagram second hand shop that seemed to kind of pop up around that same time when, when COVID was just beginning.
Miranda Black:You saw it out there already, like you saw people doing that kind of thing A little bit, yeah, a little bit Like it was.
Caitlin Martella:I think it was just starting to become popular.
Caitlin Martella:I noticed probably just as I built the Instagram page and as we started to ramp up I noticed, oh wait, there's other people doing this like as close as the street behind me.
Caitlin Martella:But I've made some really great connections from those companies and I have a really strong sort of community over competition mindset. Because I feel like in this space, particularly If we as a community support each other's small business, especially when it comes to secondhand, and if we're giving customers a really good customer experience and we're giving them really good quality items, then that sort of mindset begins to shift for the customer and they start to think oh well, I had really great experience at Curated Cubs and I found exactly what I needed with them. Maybe this other secondhand shop has what I need as well and maybe I should follow them and see what they can offer me, because with secondhand, you really are living in this space where there's really only one of everything. So I gravitate towards working with some other small secondhand shops to really offer customers more than what I can offer them alone. So I think, while there's a bit of saturation in this market right now, I do think that it has its advantages to all of us as preloved business owners.
Miranda Black:Yeah, well, they say that if you have one store of one thing on a strip and it's only one thing, then it's not as attractive for a shopper to go there, because it's only one store. But if there's three wedding dress stores or I'm thinking of something really specific if there's three wedding dress stores, then you can actually have a shopping experience and they feed each other. So yeah, competition breeds. I can't remember. There's a saying in there somewhere.
Caitlin Martella:No, I love that analogy. I think it's perfect. I think of many things that I do in different as a shopper right, like with groceries and things like that, where I go specifically to the smaller places because there are more of them grouped together. So yeah, you hit the nail on the head the better we are at offering that experience to our customers, the more likely they're going to shop secondhand. Like take out the word competition right the more likely they're going to shop secondhand, and that's a big motivator for us is to get more people To shop that way.
Miranda Black:So question were you into secondhand before this?
Caitlin Martella:No, not at all. Were you a secondhand shopper? Not at all.
Miranda Black:Not at all. And sidebar are you personally a secondhand shopper? Is it something you do?
Caitlin Martella:just for your kids. So oh, that's a really good question. So I've never been. I never was a secondhand shopper, I think.
Miranda Black:Not, even not for your kids, not for anything. No, you didn't go as a teen?
Caitlin Martella:No, not as a teen, for sure. And the reason I know that so quickly is I was thinking about my cousin the other day who's 14 and she lives for the threat Like she loves, loves it. Oh, I want a teacher that says lives for the threat.
Caitlin Martella:Yes, I live for the threat, Like she's all about that life and I think it's awesome, right, like especially now coming from where I'm coming from, but no, when I. One of the things I joke about when people ask me where I started is I had a boy in 2015, and then I had a girl in 2019 and I had this you know, quote, unquote million dollar family, and then it wasn't until I started realizing that I was actually spending a million dollars and that's what the million?
Caitlin Martella:dollar family meant because you're buying a pink version or a purple version or a glitter version of something that you already have. Like why can't, why can't Julia just buy a million dollar family? Why can't Julia just wear the shark pajamas? Why does she have to wear princess pajamas? Like it doesn't? I don't understand. It doesn't mean anything, right?
Caitlin Martella:Yeah, and so really quickly I started to realize number one, that my daughter could absolutely wear all of the beautiful little things that I've saved from my son, but number two, that if I kept going, I was going to bankrupt buying all these fancy new dresses, and so I definitely, when my daughter was born, had a bit of a shift and started shopping at some of the second hand shops that I knew of, and I think, because of the experience I had with some of them, I realized, well, wait a minute, I can provide this to some, to someone as well, and be successful, just like, just like, so and so is doing.
Caitlin Martella:But it really took me probably making three, four, five purchases from some of those stores, to realize that I was actually getting, in many cases, better quality than what I would get from some of the big box stores that shipped to your door in a couple of days, yeah. So, yeah, I feel like I definitely wasn't a second hand shopper before for my kids, but I am, I would say now. It's 95% of their wardrobe is second hand and the 5% is gifts and sometimes little things that I don't have in stock or that I simply can't find that I really need, especially when your school decides that every day of the week is going to be a different color t-shirt day. Oh God, yeah, but we've gotten way better now and we have t-shirts in every color. And then for myself it's funny, I also was never a second hand shopper, I will say I really loved a good clothing swap.
Miranda Black:I loved yeah.
Caitlin Martella:I always loved the idea of bringing your girlfriends together seeing what they've got, swapping it out. But no, definitely never hit up the thrift stores or consignment stores for myself. Now I find I would say maybe closer to 40 or 50% for myself, but I'm also not buying myself as much as I buy the kids.
Caitlin Martella:So it's a lot slower, to kind of replace what I've got in my wardrobe. If I see something I like secondhand, then I will absolutely buy it for myself. Or, as I probably wouldn't have considered it about four or five years ago Wow interesting Because a lot of people I talk to they're already converts or thrifters.
Miranda Black:often are people who they started thrifting when they're teenagers. It's great to hear someone who's only just sort of found it through their children. You find that you can find great stuff for yourself, and did you have an idea that it was going to be like a dirty experience or like a gross experience?
Caitlin Martella:No, I think part of it was. Well, I'm not going to be able to find what I'm looking for, right? Yeah?
Miranda Black:I hear that a lot.
Caitlin Martella:And I think that was part of it, but I do think, not knowing where to go as well, like you always hear the, you know this store is better than this one and this one is better than this one, and I think really nobody has the best stuff. You have to, just you have to be in it for the find.
Miranda Black:It's random.
Caitlin Martella:So that's the truth, secrets out.
Miranda Black:But I think that's part of it.
Caitlin Martella:I've always been sort of a busy person and so do I have the time to kind of go through racks and racks of stuff looking for my size or looking for my style? Not really. There's obviously tons of growth in that market now, so I can look on Instagram. I can see people who look like me, who are trying things on in my body, shape and size. I can buy things off of other apps and things like that. So there's a lot of opportunity now and I do find it a lot easier. I know my size now. Maybe 10 years ago I would have been sort of unsure, but I'm pretty confident in my size. I know what I'm buying, I know what styles suit me. So it's a lot easier now that I'm sort of grown up a bit.
Miranda Black:Right, yeah, yeah. So take me back to how you started, Like it was with your the cousins, and then how did you branch out and start getting customers?
Caitlin Martella:Yeah. So we grew pretty quickly on Instagram, just organically sharing through friends and family and for the first year, Instagram was our sales portal. Like all of our operations were through Instagram, 100%. It was messy but it was good and within the first couple of months we had about 10 consignors who we knew.
Miranda Black:Oh question, did they come to your location? Did you ship it out to them? How did how did it work?
Caitlin Martella:No, the fantastic thing with COVID was that everything was porch pickup and drop off. So I offered free porch pickup at my home. I also did deliveries myself. We were driving around the city once a week usually to drop off packages. At the beginning it was very much growing this business in our local community People a couple blocks away, people who knew me, who knew where I lived, and then I was happy to deliver within certain areas. I also have a wonderful aunt who lives in the East End who comes out this way once a week and she takes all my East End orders.
Caitlin Martella:So it was kind of like dividing and conquering and figuring out what people needed and what people wanted.
Caitlin Martella:But yeah, I started off with a handful of consignors and I honestly I blinked and we now have 102 consignors at last count.
Caitlin Martella:And so you know, at the beginning I was supplementing a little bit by thrifting, doing a little bit here and there of like, well, we need more this size in the shop or we need more shoes in the shop, but I have no room to thrift anymore, like it's all coming in through consignment because we have 102 people with at least 102 children who are selling us their items. So it's been really great to be able to say that this is really running off of itself in terms of you know, I don't have to go out and buy product because it's coming to me. People are more than happy to give me garbage bags and boxes and bins full of items and we sort everything and do our best to accept as much as we can. But yeah, we started off with a small bag of my own items that I was selling for my daughter and now have over 83,. We've had over 8,300 pieces of inventory flow through the shop.
Miranda Black:Yeah, wow, oh, my goodness, and that's just what we've accepted.
Caitlin Martella:That's not even including what we've had to donate, because we just had too much.
Miranda Black:Right. Where do you donate, by the way? So?
Caitlin Martella:we donate to a couple of places. So Jesse Center is one that we've donated to. During COVID. It was harder, although easier in a way, because they had set sort of porch drop off areas. I found Jesse Center and Birthmark were our two top places to donate. We've had to really sort now and come up with like different piles, like okay, this is for Jesse Center and this is for a local family, and we used to have a program called Play Packs where we put a bunch of stained items together into a pack and sold it for a very maybe five pieces for $4 or something, so that parents could outfit their kids when they're born to daycare and they're just gonna go make a mess in their clothes anyway.
Caitlin Martella:But, now what we found. Just with the number of families that there are to support in the area, we've actually converted that program and just made it so that we're doing capsules for people within our community who need it. And so we've got this person here who has a size five son and a size two to need daughter, and so we can make a package for them. We can make a package for the woman who has a kid who's 12 years old and she's a single mom and she needs some help with outfitting.
Miranda Black:So we can kind of divide it.
Caitlin Martella:It takes some time, but I think it's really valuable, really worth it, just for our own growth and our own development and just feeling good about the work that we do.
Miranda Black:Yeah, that's incredible. It's like you have a built-in philanthropy side of the business already baked into it. That's incredible. Not everybody starts their business with that in the business already. That's really amazing.
Caitlin Martella:Yeah, it's fun to be able to offer that and, to be honest, it makes our lives a lot easier. We still do our donation drop-offs to any of those organizations. We're always also open to new organizations that are accepting as well, because we do really get so many things. Another thing that we do that's super fun is I have a couple of consignors who have given me bags that have baby cashmere items in them and, like, baby cashmere is the softest, most beautiful fabric in the world.
Caitlin Martella:But, the problem with baby cashmere this is that you have to dry clean baby cashmere and so nobody ever wants to do that, and so I would get these cashmere pieces that are stained and I can't really do anything with, and the cost for me to dry clean them outweighs what I would ever make off of them usually. So what I've been doing with those pieces, that's super fun, as I reached out to a local maker. She's called Rapton Held, her name's Logan, and she takes those baby cashmere pieces and she'll line mittens with the baby cashmere. So she'll do these really beautiful mittens and hats and things like that and she'll use the cashmere. I think she's mainly used it for baby mitten lining.
Caitlin Martella:It's just really fun to like watch something, come in think, oh, I can't use this, what am I gonna do with it? Who's gonna take a stained baby cashmere sweater and she just cuts the stain right out and then uses the rest of the fabric to move on with her items. Yeah, it's awesome, it's really cool.
Miranda Black:So you really are participating in the circular economy for tech sales? I hope so. I hope so, and you are.
Caitlin Martella:It's amazing that that wasn't really on your radar before hand, right Like you were thinking like oh, I wanna participate in the circular economy and make sure all these textiles get used, it definitely wasn't on my radar and when we did start this organization and we thought, okay, we need to make sure that we're donating what we can't use to the right places, because we know that so many of these larger sort of donation centers don't always do the best things with these pieces right For sure, some of my stuff might end up for sale and somebody who needs it may be able to grab it, but a lot of the times it's not the case and what I found was a big struggle and love any tips and insight you have, because it's still something I'm trying to understand more about is textile recycling.
Caitlin Martella:Like, how can we recycle our textiles? You know I think the city of Toronto specifically doesn't have a lot of resources on that, doesn't have a lot of information. I've gone down all these rabbit holes. I found you know something you probably heard about this textile recycling bin in Markham, that you know what I mean?
Miranda Black:Yeah, you're going, I think that just get. I mean, I don't know for sure, but as far as I can tell, I just get shipped to like well, and that's the thing.
Caitlin Martella:So when we first discovered it we were like, oh my gosh, there's this bin. Can we make the drive to mark them once a month? Yeah, we can do, we can do this, we can, we can do it. And and my partner at the time she said you know, like I work out there, I'll drop it off. And she kind of came back one time and said they just only, it doesn't really seem like it's any different than any of the other bins on the corners of you know around here.
Caitlin Martella:And so we started to kind of dig a little bit deeper, ask around with some of the clothing manufacturers who we do know, and the and the designers who we do know, and nobody really has a definitive answer. So I do find that that is really difficult and I think that's what spurred this idea of Okay, if we can't recycle it in our city, there's got to be a different way to recycle it amongst families, right, there's got to be people who need clothes, there's got to be people who need Mitten linings, there's got to be people who need dish rags and and you know Well why.
Miranda Black:but why was that important to you? Why? Why were you not like what was in your mind that was so important? Why weren't you willing to just drop it off at a bin?
Caitlin Martella:I don't know, I don't, I don't know why.
Caitlin Martella:I guess I didn't think that I could get into this business to solve a problem in In mass production, only to then Throw out all of these clothes that I couldn't accept, because I'm only a one.
Caitlin Martella:Well, with two woman shop, you know, we can only do so much and and obviously there was a lot that we couldn't accept and I just couldn't stomach the idea of sending it somewhere where it's just gonna end up in a landfill, like. I think that was the whole reason I I started the business, so I sort of kept up with that momentum to think, you know, not only can we Make our own money as parents by selling our clothes, we can also make this an opportunity for people who might not be able to afford those clothes new or might not want to Buy those clothes new. But also, one of the underlying pieces was this idea that it is Helpful to the environment if we slow down fast fashion, but it's not helpful if we're just buying secondhand and then putting it in a landfill anyway, because it's all you know, we're slowing it down, maybe by one or two steps, but it's not really solving the ultimate issue or one of the ultimate issues.
Miranda Black:Yeah, it just blows my mind that it became part of your business model when that wasn't. It wasn't something that you were deciding to go into saving the world from. Yes, big choked on textile. So would you describe yourself as like, prior to this business, as a mom going about buying from, going about buying from Carters and Joe fresh and these places they have the least transparent Supply chain. Would you describe yourself as someone who is just on that path prior to? What was your come to?
Caitlin Martella:Jesus mode I, so I Definitely was on that path. I don't like the two brands that you mentioned, but there's plenty of other brands that I was a frequent shopper at, for sure. I think the moment, honestly, selfishly, came from. I could make money off of all these things that I've got with tags on them, right. But then I've always also really been into the European brands. There's a lot of European brands that I love and, again, they're not all necessarily ethical. Just because they say that they're from Europe Doesn't mean that they're ethical.
Miranda Black:I mean, oh, absolutely not. I was where you were buying from Europe, you know the most luxury, and they were very expensive and it was expensive to ship here. Yep, yeah, that's right.
Caitlin Martella:And so I think this really truly started because I knew that I had more than I needed and I thought I can sell this. But then I started to realize how many, how many people are out there like this, like how many people are sitting on bags and bags of clothes that their kids never wore, and what's gonna happen with those clothes if they don't go back to another family. And so that's what sparked it for me Was number one the opportunity to help parents get rid of their clutter, sort it out, organize it for them, like we have a full white glove service in terms of how we can sign, so you really don't have to do anything, you just have to give us a bag and we'll do all of that for you. So it started with the idea of giving friends and family an opportunity to sell, make some money, and then also giving people who might like to again buy some of those clothes an Opportunity to do that in a way that was a little bit more environmentally friendly, that was a little bit more ethical, knowing full well that those brands are not going to change their ethics Just because I'm selling their clothing secondhand. And you know it's funny because as much as we all know that those brands are Doing what they're doing. They're still the top sellers, even in the secondhand market, right? So they there is. It's interesting to watch. I do think people obviously feel a lot better buying those pieces secondhand and they should because They've been made, someone has purchased them and now let's do what we can to kind of keep them in Circulation rather than just throwing them away, mm-hmm.
Caitlin Martella:But I think all of those pieces really really brought me to this moment where I was going. There is clearly a demand for this, so it's not just me. There are tons of other parents who are buying too much and Not using enough of it and not burning holes through it, like we used to think when we were kids. You know, our jeans were patched and the knees were worn out. Now my son has a hole in his jeans and I'm like oh, just wear another pair, right? Right? You know my mom has made that comment a few times to say we never had this many clothes. You had one red jumper when you were a kid and you just changed the top underneath like it's just. You know, yes, it's, it's, it's different, yeah. So I think it was really this response to this mass production, mass purchasing, mass consumerism and Realizing that I could be a better shopper, I could be better off financially If I'm both selling and buying secondhand.
Miranda Black:Yeah, I think the average parents spends three thousand dollars a year on clothes. Yeah, I don't know if that's a family of, what that family is, but I was like, yeah, yeah, when you shop secondhand I spend like two hundred dollars. So and it's yeah.
Caitlin Martella:So I have a really interesting Story. I have a consigner who I don't know personally, but I believe has one or two children only definitely doesn't have more than two kids and one day I picked up her consignment lot from her and it was four humongous industrial clear garbage bags and I brought it back, got through it all, priced it out and the secondhand Price. So I put a cost, obviously on each item that we're gonna sell. Of what I could accept, the value was $8,000 secondhand and I I mean for, for as a small business owner, I'm like this is amazing.
Caitlin Martella:But as a as a mom, I was like I thought I had a lot of clothes like this was a second hand which is like 50% off the actual price. Yeah, and I'm pricing it out going. How much is this gonna be? And just out of curiosity, at the end I totaled it up and I thought there's $8,000 worth of clothes to tea and under. So their children haven't even gone into like the mud days and the daycare days and like the people of that. So there's a lot out there and there is no reason for anyone to buy new. Like you can, honestly, I'll challenge you to go and find anything that you need in my shop, because I'm sure you'll find it.
Miranda Black:Wow, that's like $16,000 or more, because that's the stuff that you accepted. So it's inching up to $20,000 worth of clothing and that could be invested in that child's future. You said you made the transition from being in your basement to now you're in a storefront. Can you just tell me a little bit about that, because that's kind of a magical moment, extremely magical.
Caitlin Martella:I was getting to that point where I was going to burst out of the space and my stuff was starting to trickle upstairs and it just wasn't pretty. So I run curated Cubs with one of my sister-in-law my brother's wife, and then on my other side my husband's sister-in-law has a dried floral and decor business and she was looking for a space and we kind of put our heads together and thought well, prices in Toronto, especially for commercial, are a little bit through the roof and they're squeezing people out when they should be welcoming small businesses in. But that's another podcast too. It's a podcast. It's a bit ironically found. It's found an old felt factory five minutes away from my home here in West Toronto and it's an old felt factory and we were able to get this beautiful, bright corner unit in this great heritage building or perhaps not officially heritage, but it looks heritage to me. Call it heritage.
Miranda Black:It's officially heritage right now.
Caitlin Martella:Old felt presses outside in the parking lot. So it kind of got this like cool. It's got this cool vibe to it and we have a nice large warehouse that to my sister-in-law, with the florals and I split, and then we've got a bit of a side room where we are going to be able to have pop-ups. We're going to be able to have in-store shopping events a couple times a month. We're also going to rent out that space for workshops and other small businesses. So we've also grown to be able to now provide other small business owners a chance to get some affordable space to do things like workshops and seminars and photo shoots and clothing swaps.
Caitlin Martella:I think it's going to be a game changer for us to be able to welcome people to do some live shopping as well.
Miranda Black:So it's not going to be like a traditional store open 9-5,. It's an event-based but mostly a warehouse where you're going to do your fulfilling.
Caitlin Martella:That's right. There will probably be around one or two times a month when we have sort of pop-up days where we are open to the public, oh my.
Miranda Black:God, that's a dream business, because you don't want to be open to the public all the time, just standing there waiting for the public. It's like this is the event time. This is when you shop. Wow, what a really smart business.
Caitlin Martella:Thanks, yeah, and I think, coming out of COVID-2, we have to remember that people have gotten really comfortable buying things on their phones and their computers. There is still, especially for parents, there's still very much need to have a fully operational web platform to sell your items on. So we do have a full website. I always joke that when I wake up in the morning I'm sure there's going to be an order, because moms are shopping at five o'clock in the morning because they're like, oh my gosh, I'm getting my kid dressed and they realize they don't have splashpants today. And it's so funny because my husband asked me and I'm like I told you 7 am, I've got an order. Here I go.
Miranda Black:It's such a great business story. I love your business story. I know that I love it because I want it.
Caitlin Martella:Come work with us anytime. When we open up more often than once a week, you're welcome to come in.
Miranda Black:Well, I'm definitely going to shop it. I want to go to the event. Awesome For sure. I just love it from start to finish, from getting the stuff that second hand to giving it away to the little men. The men are amazing.
Caitlin Martella:And so the last thing I'm going to mention is that we just started baby registries and that's a big one for us. We were speaking with another cousin of mine. I have a lot of cousins, in case you haven't learned from that.
Miranda Black:The key to this business is cousins.
Caitlin Martella:The key to this business is had many cousins. A couple of months ago she came and she said you know, I would really like to have my baby registry be more like this. I don't need a brand new baby bottle warmer, because who needs that right? And so I said I really wanted to do baby registries. Would you let me do yours? And she was 100%, and really quickly.
Caitlin Martella:We realized that there's a demand for baby registries in the second hand world. So we now have, you know, we've done the pilot, we've had a lot of inquiries and we're starting to build now more baby registries across Toronto. We have some really great perks with them. We offer some discounts for people shopping baby registries. We deliver and I think you'll like this one. I reuse the baby gift bags and I wrap the baby registry gifts in the reusable baby gift bags and wrap them. So it's like full circle. Full circle, you know full service and full circle process. But it's been really great.
Caitlin Martella:People have been extremely receptive to this idea of shopping what we've got. And I think also it's nice because a lot of the times they'll reach out to myself or Sara, who's my business partner, and they'll say is this good for newborn, is this good for? Do I need this? And we give them our honest answer it doesn't. You know, it's not like a big box, like, well, you definitely need the nursing pillow right. And then you get there and you're going what I'm not going to nurse, what do I use this thing for? You know right.
Caitlin Martella:So we can give some sort of real life examples and guidance. I mean, it's just two of us, so there's plenty of other opinions out there, but it's been a really great thing to try and I think it's new in this pre-love space. So we're really kicking it off and hoping that it sticks in the baby registry world.
Miranda Black:Yeah, oh, my God. I wish there was something like that when my child was born, because the amount of stuff that gets foisted on you.
Caitlin Martella:it just it's a mountain of stuff that happens, it's so crazy. Okay, Caitlin thank you so much, Thank you.
Miranda Black:Miranda, I love this place, thanks.
Miranda Black:Miranda, thank you so much, okay, bye-bye, okay, take care, bye. If you want to support Caitlin and her business, give curated cubs a click. You can find out how to make a little money from your kid's cast off clothing. And coming up next on what's this Place is a clothing challenge. Have you ever done one of those internet challenges where you dump ice water on your head or do something dumb like choke on cinnamon? Well, this is way easier, far safer, and I'm going to help you deep dive into your closet. That's coming up next on what's this Place. This episode was 100% human, produced with zero AI by me, miranda Black. You can find me online at what's this Place podcast. I will see you next time.