Reed Orem (owner of Dig This)
Photo by: Hayley Lynch
The sign above Reed and Megan Orem’s furniture shop in Collingswood reads ‘Dig This.’ What is there to ‘dig’ in this store? The answer is everything! When walking through the door, it is best to know that you won’t find the typical run of the mill table or chair, but unique vintage or vintage inspired pieces to add that extra spark to your home. Based on a mid century motif, meaning mostly items resembling the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, Dig This sells anything from art for your wall, a desk to do work at, or a bar to serve your guests from. “My ultimate goal is to show people that you can mix vintage and vintage inspired in a way that is going to stick with you,” says Reed. See what else he had to say on the art of running and finding inspiration for his retro furniture shop.
Q: How did you get into the furniture business?
A: I used to sell furniture on the weekends, more of an arts and crafts style. I’m involved in real estate, and around 2006-2007, when the real estate market took a nose-dive, I had to find additional income.
At the same time, my wife and I decided to redo one section of our living room in mid-century, so I bought a bunch of furniture, and of the eight pieces we used one of them, so I said well I’ll go and sell the remaining pieces at the next antique show. Well, I sold all of the mid-century pieces and none of my arts and crafts because the mid-century pieces were good stuff, but it was also inexpensive. I bought it cheap; I was selling it cheap. Did it again, same scenario.
Then, I went out and bought a couple houses worth of furniture… I got to the point where I had more of a knowledge base of mid- century than I had five months prior. I had a good amount of stock. I had people asking me for specific things, so I had clientele for that, and then this building came up for sale. I live in Collingswood and I thought it was a good real estate investment…. What was important to me was that there isn’t anything else like this in Camden County and not really South Jersey. Now there are some other similar businesses in Philadelphia, but the rent is higher there, so we’d have to charge more, and our business model is a lot of buy it low and sell it below what the fair market is.
Q: Why did you decide to focus your furniture shop around vintage pieces rather than modern?
A: I’ve grown up around antiques. My mother is an avid shopper/yard saler. I like going to thrift stores. I like going to auctions. I like older things. I will say that I don’t always think that older means better. Sometimes there are great new things out there, but I do like seeing the quality in things, and [with] mid-century I really enjoy seeing one piece and seeing how it influences other pieces… A lot of that is kind of regurgitation. You can say it’s a homage. You can say it’s a copy, but a lot of it is I take this thing and I can tweak it with today’s materials and make it this thing, and that’s pretty cool.
Q: So, do you think that coming into the shop and finding something that resembles a different time and then mixing it with the current style of today can make for a more interesting room?
A: I do. When people say to me everything in my room is mid-century I think that’s a bad thing. No one wants to live in a store or a museum. You want to mix and match with something that works for a purpose, something aesthetic, and something that’s comfortable. And they can’t all be that. It just doesn’t work that way.
People are now buying lamps to introduce color, which I hadn’t really thought about or recognized before that, but it’s a great way to drop a color into a room, and with mid-century lamps, a lot of them have an artistic nature to them so you’re getting a little bit of the aesthetic as well….
A lot of what you see now with furniture is some thoughtful repurposing. Where that was such a small grouping of people 15-20 years ago, it’s now a larger grouping of people. It’s not just young people who are on limited budgets. It’s adults who are appreciating the quality of yesteryear. They also like the form and the function. What we do here is try to curate quality products and a variety.
Q: What is your personal favorite style of furniture that you get into the shop?
A: The Danish pieces that we see in. When I find a piece that you can tell that an individual took the leg off and put it back on because he didn’t think it was the right angle; I like that human aspect to it. And, a lot of people don’t realize that a lot of this was sent over pre packaged and then it was built here.
Q: What do customers come into the store looking for the most?
A: For us, we focus on 50’s and 60’s, so we focus on a mid-century feel, and we try to focus on more of a Danish modern feel. We definitely get a lot of customers who at first say ‘this reminds me of’ an aunt, or grandmother, or their parents. And then as they look around, they realize well this will work in my home too. And that happens a lot of times with pieces like dinette tables because people have the same home that was built in 1940, so it’s that same size kitchen and that thing fits.
Q: Where do you go to find the pieces in the store?
A: All over. When we first opened up, I was going to every flea market, yard sale, estate sale I could get my hands on. It’s a lot of traveling and a lot of wasted gas. I’ve been down to Virginia for a specific home. I’ve been up to upper New York. If I go traveling for whatever reason, I want to see what else is out there. Now I have more people reaching out to us to sell than me having the time to go out, and I miss the hunt… At the end of the day, it takes a lot of work to build this amount of inventory and that’s what we try and offer people, that kind of simplicity that you don’t have to run around.
Q: What advice do you give people on how to start creating a vintage inspired room?
A: What I typically tell people when they’re thinking about setting up a room, is that there are a couple ways that you can approach it. You can start with a color in mind. You can approach it starting with the use of the room. You can approach it with the period of the home. I usually say style, color, or use. When people come in saying ‘I want to do mid-century,’ I suggest that they walk around and tell me what they like, and I try and do a lot of research and then speak to something; tell people about the age of this cabinet and where it came from and what influenced it and what it might also work with. There are a lot of people out there that know what they want but don’t know what it is… Do it one piece at a time sometimes.
Q: Where is the future of the store headed?
A: We’re expanding things. We have a new line of sofas that we have based off of a vintage frame that we have recreated. We’re going to try to continue doing that – mix mid-century style that’s newly created and vintage stuff at the same time. As we try to expand our market, my ultimate goal is to show people that you can mix vintage and vintage inspired in a way that is going to stick with you… The quality lends itself to the idea that it suits you as a single person, it suits you as a couple, it suits you as a family, it suits you as a growing family, and it suits you back to when it’s just a couple again.
Here are some examples of the items that can be found at Dig This.
Blast from the Past 