“We love seeing people who enjoy finding secondhand items new homes, especially vintage things,” Allie Motyka said about her downtown business, Heartworn Vintage.
Coming up on 10 years of business, Motyka and her mother, Kathy Hurst, said their 1960s-themed vintage shop within Shops at Agora, also known as Agora Market, feels like a throwback to the 60s, 70s and 80s.
In the rows of brightly colored jewelry and clothing lie vintage pieces that are a passion project for both mother and daughter, to support their creativity and love of vintage and is now, after 10 years, the only original shop from when Agora Market opened 10 years ago.
They advertise a collection of vintage items; furniture, decorations, clothing, hats, lamps and jewelry.
“We both really like the loud colors and patterns of [vintage clothing],” Motyka said.
Through the items they sell, the co-owners share their passion with their customers.
The idea for the store started up when Motyka was brought thrifting with her mother as a child. The two accumulated so many items, they thought about creating a shop to store the extra items they purchased.
“I grew up going to auctions, yard sales, and flea markets with my parents as a kid, and I hated it until I became a teenager. My mom and I decided that we had too much of our own stuff, and that we should maybe try to open a store, so we did,” Motyka said.
Motyka and Hurst’s original plan was to open their store in a 1960’s Shasta camper after repairing it. Unfortunately for Motyka and Hurst, the camper was a shell, and therefore unusable.
“I used to work at Clementine and Ruby’s Arcade, the owner of those two wanted to turn it into something like the Dayton Farmers Market with lots of the shops.” Motyka said. The Heartworn Vintage shop had just been born.
When they first joined the Agora Market, the store was nothing bigger than a tiny corner near the bathrooms. As their business grew, so did their shop. They now share a big section of the market, furthering their advertisement.
Motyka and Hurst find their items the same way they did back then, by shopping in many places for special, one of a kind objects. Some of the most popular items that sell in the shop are records, cassette tapes, magazines, and character glasses. These quick-grab items help the shop bring in money to survive. As of right now, the business has given around 34,000 items new homes.
“We are definitely more involved with the community just by being a small business downtown,” Motyka said. “We see a lot of people downtown. We have regulars that come in for coffee, come to see us.”
As a small business co-owner, Motyka has found connections that have brought her closer to the community.
As she connected with the owner of Agora market during the beginning days of the shop, multiple suggestions were made to help appeal to more people. “There would just be empty space and the owner [of Agora’s market] asked us to just set up furniture for customers to use,” Motyka said.
From behind the scenes, Motyka’s father helps repair some of the items they receive in order to sell at a better quality for the customers. “He helps a lot when we need to furnish furniture and work on clocks or lamps. He does a lot of the repairs, cleaning, and the heavy lifting,” Motyka said.
Through all these experiences, a sense of belonging has been established for Heartworn Vintage in downtown Harrisonburg.
Although the shop has lasted for almost a decade, there are many things that have remained the same. “None of these things are brand new. If they are, they were brand new from the past, so we are not creating new products. We don’t print receipts, we reuse tickets, our price tags too,” Motyka said.
She voiced the importance of not wasting product, and making sure that the shop reduced the amount of trash by not buying anything new. The items sold in Heartworn Vintage have survived generations of wear and use, meaning that they are sustainable because of the sheer use they are accumulating. “We really never buy anything new,” Motyka said.
Along with the repairs done by her father, the items on sale are perfected to have good quality and last long, enhancing the sustainability of each item.
A lot of big companies and stores have taken the spotlight in recent years, causing an impact on the small businesses. “We’re doing all right. It’s not the most profitable, but my mom and I are okay with how it’s going. We are the last remaining beginning store and we hope to continue to stay here. We need everybody’s support to do so, though,” Motyka said.
Both co-owners talk about the hardships of having a small business and how important support is to stay open. Without the community, many small businesses will no longer be able to thrive, and they will be replaced with commercial brands. Without local businesses, Harrisonburg will no longer have the same community connection.
“Let the local people and the public know that small businesses are hurting now, and we need support in order to keep them,” Hurst said. “None of us want to only have the big box stores to pick from.”
