Fashion Trucks: Lodekka, Wanderlust and Showvroom Give Business a New Spin

When an entrepreneur decides to open a boutique inside a trailer, bus or truck, the endeavor requires equal parts nostalgia and innovation.

Portland has two fashion trucks—boutiques housed in renovated vehicles (plus one in the works)—and they are all vintage or resale clothing boutiques. That’s by coincidence, but not without reason.

“There are some common lines between finding your perfect vintage dress and shopping in a place that’s so unique,” said Vanessa Lurie, who co-owns the traveling Wanderlust boutique. “You will have a story when people say, ‘Where did you get that?’”

“I’m guessing it’s because we all have a love of old stuff and are pretty nostalgic,” said Erin Sutherland, whose Lodekka boutique is housed in a British double-decker bus. “I walked into this bus and fell in love with it. I had a vision of all the people who had ridden the bus and what they were wearing.”

Inspired by the popularity of Portland’s food carts, these mobile boutiques are some of the first in the nation, according to the entrepreneurs.

“Low overhead was the reason we could do this and bring our idea to fruition,” Lurie said.

“I saw food carts popping up everywhere, and I knew if they could do food in a cart, I could do retail in a cart,” Sutherland said.

Though both shops are housed in older vehicles and are filled with used, vintage merchandise, Lodekka and Wanderlust feel fresh, clean and even spacious inside. The shop owners reinvented their careers in developing their businesses, and in order to do so they had to reinvent the vehicles they chose and much of the vintage merchandise they chose to sell.

As one customer put it while visiting Lodekka, “It’s all about reinvention.”

Lodekka: Double-Decker Nostalgia

Sutherland’s bus helped reinvent her career after she was laid off from her job with the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland in May 2010. She had purchased the bus the month prior, thinking that she would turn it into a shop eventually.

“It was a back-up plan, but I didn’t think I’d need to start backing up that quickly,” she said. “I thought in this economy I had to do something drastic, something that people would notice.”

She found the British bus on Craigslist in Springfield, Oregon—it was about to be scrapped before she bought it—and spent six months renovating it. Since the bus doesn’t run, Sutherland had it towed to its current location on North Williams, where she hoped to complement nearby restaurants and female-focused retailers.

On recent winter afternoon the bus was packed with visitors—pairs of friends and mothers and daughters, and a young man in sneakers and running shorts who stopped by during a neighborhood run. Getting them all to maneuver in the 240-square-foot shop was like dancing or playing Tetris. Sutherland chatted with them on the cushy benches she kept installed on the bus’ first level. A winding staircase led visitors to a second level with expansive windows, shoes and boots, coats, dresses and a dressing room adorned in vintage fabric curtains.

Lodekka’s inventory is nearly all vintage, and much of the ambiance is too, with 1940s music playing and vintage gifts (novels, records, Thermoses, stockings, bobby pins in the original packaging) lining the shelves. The apparel selection runs from $8 to $75 and is mostly for women, but includes a rack of men’s Pendleton shirts, vests and the like.

The inventory also includes a few handmade goods, such as Top Drawer jewelry, sexy hostess aprons (that can hold 4 bottles of wine) by Stephanie Norwood, and CDs from Sutherland’s band, Stolen Sweets.

Sutherland recently heard from the City of Portland regarding her bus’ permanent location on a gravel parking lot. She said that because mobile businesses such as hers are still relatively new and unusual, there are questions as to how the businesses should be regulated.

“I am happy to get involved with the process of regulating” mobile businesses, Sutherland said. “I want to help more people get involved with micro-business.”

Wanderlust: Vintage, Handmade Goods on the Move

While Lodekka is a a stationary vehicle boutique, Vanessa and Dan Lurie’s Wanderlust 1969 Cardinal Deluxe camper trailer goes to its customers. The trailer shows up at events such as Crafty Wonderland and brings a following through online marketing.

Wanderlusts’s space is remarkably tiny at 10-by-7 feet, and anyone taller than 5’8” has to stoop or sit inside. The Luries lowered the floor to add a few inches and installed hardwood flooring, along with chalkboard paint and vintage fabric on the walls. A lot happens on the “porch” of the shop, the area just in front of the trailer where Vanessa Lurie displays a clothing rack and choice handmade goods.

The Luries first opened at a September event, and held a grand opening party November 20 at the Water Heater nonprofit arts space in Portland.

“A huge part of what we like about the business is the freedom to open up wherever you want and see what it’s about,” Vanessa Lurie said, adding that she hopes to travel to events in Seattle and San Francisco when the time is right.

They found the trailer for $400 on Craigslist in Hermiston, Oregon, and spent the summer renovating it for about $1,000—painting, repaneling the walls, adding a clothing rack and removing its kitchen and sleeping space.

The shop’s vintage selection includes Jantzen wool cardigans, a wide array of shift dresses, shoulder bags, scarves, vases, dish towels, metal workingman’s lunch boxes and kids clothes in a little wooden cubby. She aims to keep prices below $45.

The shop’s handmade goods include photos mounted on wood panels, pocket-sized zipper bags, hand-painted chalkboards, wallets made from vintage coats, wooden laser-cut jewelry (think tiny cassette tapes and cross-stitch hearts), kitschy business card and iPod cases, and vintage silverware jewelry.

Lurie’s selection is carefully curated, she said, because she has experience and connections as an artist herself, and has been collecting vintage clothing for 15 years.

“I’ve always sewn and silkscreened,” she said. “Because I sold at craft fairs and on Etsy I have a good understanding of how it is to run a business with handmade [goods]. ... I have a good idea of what’s different, of things that not everyone has seen before.”

Showvroom: Preparing for Takeoff

Though other vehicle boutiques are connected to Portland’s food cart scene thematically, Cecilia Doan’s emerging resale boutique Showvroom has even tighter ties. While her business is getting off the ground, Doan has stored much of her inventory above Portland-based KOi Fusion’s commercial kitchen space.

“I had the idea about three years ago and here it is coming back with all the resources of mobile vending,” she said, adding that KOi Fusion is owned by her boyfriend, Bo Kwon. “My idea is slinging clothes vs. slinging tacos.”

Doan is still on the hunt for her shop’s vehicle, but started selling resale and consignment goods online in mid-December.

“If you think of the UPS trucks, the boxy stepvans, that’s my ideal boutique vehicle,” Doan said, “It resembles a showroom to me—lots of white space, open areas for cool art.”

Like Sutherland and Lurie, Doan sells used clothing, but her collection includes more contemporary styles than vintage. Her market research found that a shop like Showvroom will likely draw women in their 20s and 30s who are eco-conscious, young professionals or mothers.

“It’s more about keeping those types of customers in mind than acquiring as many clothes as possible for everyone,” Doan said.

Doan graduated from the Art Institute in Portland in December. Prior to that she was a style blogger for about four years with Love Portland and calculated-fashion.com, and she handled social media for Crave Portland, a networking organization for female business owners.

“I feel like once I have the mobile boutique, it’s going to push a following,” she said. “Lots of mobile businesses use their vehicle as the primary marketing method. It drives people to the web site, it gets people talking, it brings buzz about the business in general. I can take it on the weekends, I can take it out at night. I can take it to private parties and make it the next tupperware party.”