- C
- K
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HELLO FAMILY, FRIENDS, STRANGERS, AND ALL THE IN BETWEENS:
We are Open Mouth Kisses Clothing!!! We though, are actually Bishop Malik and Audrey Beach, the kids running Open Mouth Kisses Clothing! We're a couple of goofy queer kids who have an idea for the store that we want to shop in and that we want to put together for everyone else with your help!!!!
THE VISION WE HAVE :
Open Mouth Kisses Clothing is a queer couple's dream for a different kind of vintage clothing store. The goal of OMK is to provide everybody with an extremely broad variety of up-cycled, used, and vintage clothing with specifically queer and trans POC communities in mind.
Especially in larger cities, like those in the bay area, there is a lack of vintage clothing or clothing in general that seems as if it was made for nonbinary folx or folx of varying shapes and sizes. As two nonbinary people, we experience dysphoria and discomfort on a regular basis while shopping in the average retail or vintage space. Most are separated by gender with clothes, in great majority, made for a thinner body type. We plan to buy in merchandise for OMK with a broad group of people in mind carrying sizes from XS to XXXL, varying cuts from different eras and regions, and cutting out the binary from our store entirely.
Vintage and used clothing allows people to have more agency when finding clothes and molding a personal style. We want to encourage people to get excited about their own styles, bodies, and tastes through clothes . We see a store where clothes are sold based on cut, color, and era bringing people closer to the style they see themselves in and not the expected style of an old binary society!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE REASON WE ARE ASKIN 4 $MUNTY$ :
We wish that it was possible to make this a reality without asking y'all to donate, but without support from all of you, It would be much more difficult and slow moving to bring folx all over the world our clothes! It's important because of the collection we plan to curate and the space which we will take. We see a safe space where the LGBTQ+ community can shop for clothes free from external judgements. obviously anyone is welcome to buy clothes, but have to respect our clothes and the communities which they support. In the future, we plan to do pop-ups with queer and trans resource groups, groups helping houseless folx, and sex-worker rights groups partnering to bring resources of all types (e.g. donating portions of money, donating physical resources, facilitating specialized events, etc.)
We expect all of this to take a lot of time and work regardless of our situation, but we both work full time. Living in the bay area is extremely expensive. We only have about 2 days off a week, so finding the time/money to buy, take photos, clean , steam, and curate things closely is extremely difficult. Even after working that much there's very little money left over after we buy food, pay rent, get gas and pay health expenses. Though we get some pocket change buying and selling now, bills take most of what we've got each month. So that brings us here. Either way we plan on buying, selling, making connections with community groups, and building a space and brand for and by queer trans people. However, we think our cause is a worthwhile one that people in all different communities would hopefully be interested in supporting. and so, with out further ado...
ALL THE SHIT WE'D SPEND YOUR MONEY ON!! :
3 months at Indigo Vintage - $1200
- Right now we are selling clothes both on Instagram and in-store at Indigo Vintage, but we only get about 15 pieces in the store at any one time. For $400 a month, we would be able to have a whole rack and shelf. Right now we are guaranteed a rack but still need to secure payment. With a full rack we could put out ~45 items at a time along with toys, VHS, and bric-a-brac. We would have the only rack in the store curated by trans people without gender restrictions!!
Steamer - $80-$120
-We find a majority of the clothes that we sell in estate sales, flea markets, and places where clothes aren't always left tidy. We want all of you to have beautiful vintage pieces free from wrinkles, so we need a nice steamer that can handle heavy use.
Website - $400
- We think the next logical step after getting our rack in Indigo is getting a website up and running. Website templates can be fairly cheap but they come with difficulties as far as accessibility. They don't always work in the smoothest most efficient way without customization, and customization can range anywhere from $300-1000! We need a page that works well on both ends and allows for seamless checkout and shopping. With a site like that we could do our own shipping through the site making it quicker and cheaper giving us more time to fill the store with better inventory.
Inventory - $350 - $500
- Up until now we have been buying and selling more casually, working retail jobs to pay for bills and life expenses. Even with buying and selling, we still aren't really making anything substantial enough to save or fully thrive. We decided that it would be worthwhile to focus primarily on selling vintage clothes instead of working full time retail. We have a shared passion for the clothes and the communities we seek to uplift. That passion has brought us here, but as of now we are buying clothes using our own money. If we received financial support building up inventory and back stock, we would not only be able to support ourselves and afford a constant stream of inventory, but we would also be able to offer a more affordable vintage experience.
Hangers/Racks - $60
Well, I mean... you know.
Storage - $120
So assuming we make our goal, we will have the resources to build a pretty big back stock of cool vintage clothes curated and ready to sell giving y'all a constant stream of cool fresh pieces to choose from. The monthly fee for a unit at the most affordable storage unit near us is ~$60. $120 would cover the fees for just about 2 months. From that point we could start to sustain ourselves on revenue alone.
Marketing & Photography Equipment- $400
Once we are selling in a physical location it will be easier for y'all to grasp who we are and what kind of atmosphere we are trying to create but even once we've got it, a majority of what we do takes place online. We have a couple of iPhone cameras and some fabric for backdrops now. In the future we plan to do both photo/video lookbooks and photoshoots for different seasons and events. To do this though we need to repair our cameras, get backdrops, and the proper to tools to take quality photos and video. We will also definitely need people to assist with shoots and to model the clothes. This could also take money because we want to compensate people that spend their time and skills on these projects. We plan to exclusively model our clothing on members of the queer community. Most of the people who would model the clothes are from in and around the bay, but when we TRAVEL we would have lots of our other pals from other states and maybe even all over the world join in!!!
Travel Expenses - $400
If we want to bring a diverse inventory to the store, then we need to travel. We already travel monthly to shop in places like LA, Sacramento, Oregon, and closer places where we have friends who are gracious enough to host us. If we have travel money, we would be able to research and find the cheapest flights/driving routes and places to stay in more places bringing back the most interesting things to the collection. This would also give us the opportunity to have pop-ups and partner with vintage stores in other areas bringing our clothes to more people and strengthening our community :)
So that's where we are at right now. Obviously we are two young people with very big ideas but we are also very hard workers. We have already been putting together pieces and have been shopping everyday to bring new, more diverse pieces into the mix. We have put together a business plan and have thought out these details thoroughly. The next step is to bring the rest of our ideas into reality.
If you think what we are doing is a worthy cause then please, take a minute a donate. Anything helps get us closer to our goal. Right now we wouldn't be able to provide rewards or incentives for donating that large but we could do some smaller things.
~If we get a donation of $20 or above we can send a small drawing and a note.
~A donation of $50 or more and we will send a thank you letter, a drawing and some cool vintage pins.
~$100 dollars or more and we will send some little toys, maybe a cute photo of us saying thx, a drawing, and any piece under $101.
Once our website is up we will also have a space with the names of all those who donated and a thank you for the supporting Open Mouth Kisses Clothing.
We are Open Mouth Kisses Clothing!!! We though, are actually Bishop Malik and Audrey Beach, the kids running Open Mouth Kisses Clothing! We're a couple of goofy queer kids who have an idea for the store that we want to shop in and that we want to put together for everyone else with your help!!!!
THE VISION WE HAVE :
Open Mouth Kisses Clothing is a queer couple's dream for a different kind of vintage clothing store. The goal of OMK is to provide everybody with an extremely broad variety of up-cycled, used, and vintage clothing with specifically queer and trans POC communities in mind.
Especially in larger cities, like those in the bay area, there is a lack of vintage clothing or clothing in general that seems as if it was made for nonbinary folx or folx of varying shapes and sizes. As two nonbinary people, we experience dysphoria and discomfort on a regular basis while shopping in the average retail or vintage space. Most are separated by gender with clothes, in great majority, made for a thinner body type. We plan to buy in merchandise for OMK with a broad group of people in mind carrying sizes from XS to XXXL, varying cuts from different eras and regions, and cutting out the binary from our store entirely.
Vintage and used clothing allows people to have more agency when finding clothes and molding a personal style. We want to encourage people to get excited about their own styles, bodies, and tastes through clothes . We see a store where clothes are sold based on cut, color, and era bringing people closer to the style they see themselves in and not the expected style of an old binary society!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE REASON WE ARE ASKIN 4 $MUNTY$ :
We wish that it was possible to make this a reality without asking y'all to donate, but without support from all of you, It would be much more difficult and slow moving to bring folx all over the world our clothes! It's important because of the collection we plan to curate and the space which we will take. We see a safe space where the LGBTQ+ community can shop for clothes free from external judgements. obviously anyone is welcome to buy clothes, but have to respect our clothes and the communities which they support. In the future, we plan to do pop-ups with queer and trans resource groups, groups helping houseless folx, and sex-worker rights groups partnering to bring resources of all types (e.g. donating portions of money, donating physical resources, facilitating specialized events, etc.)
We expect all of this to take a lot of time and work regardless of our situation, but we both work full time. Living in the bay area is extremely expensive. We only have about 2 days off a week, so finding the time/money to buy, take photos, clean , steam, and curate things closely is extremely difficult. Even after working that much there's very little money left over after we buy food, pay rent, get gas and pay health expenses. Though we get some pocket change buying and selling now, bills take most of what we've got each month. So that brings us here. Either way we plan on buying, selling, making connections with community groups, and building a space and brand for and by queer trans people. However, we think our cause is a worthwhile one that people in all different communities would hopefully be interested in supporting. and so, with out further ado...
ALL THE SHIT WE'D SPEND YOUR MONEY ON!! :
3 months at Indigo Vintage - $1200
- Right now we are selling clothes both on Instagram and in-store at Indigo Vintage, but we only get about 15 pieces in the store at any one time. For $400 a month, we would be able to have a whole rack and shelf. Right now we are guaranteed a rack but still need to secure payment. With a full rack we could put out ~45 items at a time along with toys, VHS, and bric-a-brac. We would have the only rack in the store curated by trans people without gender restrictions!!
Steamer - $80-$120
-We find a majority of the clothes that we sell in estate sales, flea markets, and places where clothes aren't always left tidy. We want all of you to have beautiful vintage pieces free from wrinkles, so we need a nice steamer that can handle heavy use.
Website - $400
- We think the next logical step after getting our rack in Indigo is getting a website up and running. Website templates can be fairly cheap but they come with difficulties as far as accessibility. They don't always work in the smoothest most efficient way without customization, and customization can range anywhere from $300-1000! We need a page that works well on both ends and allows for seamless checkout and shopping. With a site like that we could do our own shipping through the site making it quicker and cheaper giving us more time to fill the store with better inventory.
Inventory - $350 - $500
- Up until now we have been buying and selling more casually, working retail jobs to pay for bills and life expenses. Even with buying and selling, we still aren't really making anything substantial enough to save or fully thrive. We decided that it would be worthwhile to focus primarily on selling vintage clothes instead of working full time retail. We have a shared passion for the clothes and the communities we seek to uplift. That passion has brought us here, but as of now we are buying clothes using our own money. If we received financial support building up inventory and back stock, we would not only be able to support ourselves and afford a constant stream of inventory, but we would also be able to offer a more affordable vintage experience.
Hangers/Racks - $60
Well, I mean... you know.
Storage - $120
So assuming we make our goal, we will have the resources to build a pretty big back stock of cool vintage clothes curated and ready to sell giving y'all a constant stream of cool fresh pieces to choose from. The monthly fee for a unit at the most affordable storage unit near us is ~$60. $120 would cover the fees for just about 2 months. From that point we could start to sustain ourselves on revenue alone.
Marketing & Photography Equipment- $400
Once we are selling in a physical location it will be easier for y'all to grasp who we are and what kind of atmosphere we are trying to create but even once we've got it, a majority of what we do takes place online. We have a couple of iPhone cameras and some fabric for backdrops now. In the future we plan to do both photo/video lookbooks and photoshoots for different seasons and events. To do this though we need to repair our cameras, get backdrops, and the proper to tools to take quality photos and video. We will also definitely need people to assist with shoots and to model the clothes. This could also take money because we want to compensate people that spend their time and skills on these projects. We plan to exclusively model our clothing on members of the queer community. Most of the people who would model the clothes are from in and around the bay, but when we TRAVEL we would have lots of our other pals from other states and maybe even all over the world join in!!!
Travel Expenses - $400
If we want to bring a diverse inventory to the store, then we need to travel. We already travel monthly to shop in places like LA, Sacramento, Oregon, and closer places where we have friends who are gracious enough to host us. If we have travel money, we would be able to research and find the cheapest flights/driving routes and places to stay in more places bringing back the most interesting things to the collection. This would also give us the opportunity to have pop-ups and partner with vintage stores in other areas bringing our clothes to more people and strengthening our community :)
So that's where we are at right now. Obviously we are two young people with very big ideas but we are also very hard workers. We have already been putting together pieces and have been shopping everyday to bring new, more diverse pieces into the mix. We have put together a business plan and have thought out these details thoroughly. The next step is to bring the rest of our ideas into reality.
If you think what we are doing is a worthy cause then please, take a minute a donate. Anything helps get us closer to our goal. Right now we wouldn't be able to provide rewards or incentives for donating that large but we could do some smaller things.
~If we get a donation of $20 or above we can send a small drawing and a note.
~A donation of $50 or more and we will send a thank you letter, a drawing and some cool vintage pins.
~$100 dollars or more and we will send some little toys, maybe a cute photo of us saying thx, a drawing, and any piece under $101.
Once our website is up we will also have a space with the names of all those who donated and a thank you for the supporting Open Mouth Kisses Clothing.