Coley Arnold and Lindsey Holt met 14 years ago and bonded over their shared love of all things vintage. They were both repurposing old furniture and selling it online, often talking about the desire for a physical place to sell their wares and showcase other makers. When they couldn’t find it, they created it.
“We put together a little backyard market. We had 22 vendors and they were all friends who we had met through Craigslist and Etsy,” Arnold explains. “We ended up having 600 people come to our friend’s backyard. After the end of the day, people were messaging us saying, ‘When’s the next one?’”
They didn’t know it at the time, but they had just started a business. Arnold and Holt set off looking for another space and landed at WestWorld in Scottsdale, which has housed Junk in the Trunk Vintage Market for the last 11 years. The semi-annual shopping experience allows attendees to support small businesses and shop for one-of-a-kind handmade and vintage goods.
The duo launched The Market by Junk in the Trunk, pop-up storefronts that allow shoppers to find the same unique merchandise in a smaller, more intimate setting, for the 2021 holiday season. The markets, which occur at Scottsdale Quarter and The Vintage Arcadia, were so successful that they decided to extend the dates through mid-February.
Through the years, Junk in the Trunk has become an iconic experience in the Southwest, attracting hundreds of thousands of shoppers. “It’s an experience. I think from the very beginning, we set out to make it this event that you would put on your calendar and look forward to for the whole year,” Holt says. “That’s kind of the fun of the market is the connection between the vendors and the shoppers, just bringing everyone together for one big weekend.”
When COVID-19 hit, the large markets came to a halt. “We knew we had to do something for our community,” Arnold says. So they launched pop-up markets to give vendors the opportunity to get in front of shoppers and allow shoppers to purchase locally made and sourced gifts for the holidays. They decided to extend the market to allow those who travel to Arizona from other states the same opportunity.
“We’re just hitting high travel season, so it’s just another opportunity for our vendors to still have a place to sell. The majority of the people that come in are from somewhere else,” Holt says. “It’s been fun to be able to be a local shop and a place where they can get unique gifts to take back with them.”
Some of their most popular souvenirs include turquoise jewelry, cactus prints and ornaments emblazoned with “Arizona.”
Through everything, Holt says the best part and biggest goal is bringing the community together. ”That’s what we strive to do in every aspect of our business and every endeavor that we take on is to create that community, to bring the shoppers to our vendors and to create a vintage and handmade loving community.”
For more information, follow Junk in the Trunk on Facebook and Instagram.
