If local youths Reade and Thomas Rex are any indication of where the vintage collectibles industry is headed, the future is indeed looking bright.

Reade, 17, and Thomas, 21, recently teamed up to open a new vintage clothing store near Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District.
The younger of the two brothers, who has been selling vintage clothing online for two years, says he’s always been interested in vintage clothing, and this year, he decided to parlay that interest into a brick-and-mortar storefront.

“There are a few vintage clothing stores in Kansas City, but I noticed they lacked diversity in their clothing,” Reade says. “My brother was very supportive. I didn’t know if my mom thought I was going to do it first, but once she realized I was turning my thoughts into actions, she was very supportive.”

Reade, who does the purchasing and marketing for the store, says he and Thomas work well together.

“I know my way around the clothing,” Reade says, with Thomas adding, “I’m the operations and Reade is the creative lead. He knows the ins and outs of the vintage community. Making everything work logistically is my game.”

Thomas and Reade likely inherited their interest in vintage clothing from their mother Nancy, who has had her own booth at pop-up events.

It’s always been near and dear to my heart,” Nancy says. “Watching Reade teach himself is fascinating. They’ll run new ideas by myself and their dad and stepdad. The two of them have done 98 percent of it, I’d say.”

Reade says he recalls going thrifting with his mother over the course of the past five years, and that’s when his interest grew. He says he’s learned a lot, too, about what buyers are after nowadays.

“Definitely any kind of clothing related to old music, I get a lot of requests for,” he says. “That is very popular, and also old denim pre-1960s is very sought after.”

He adds that he’s excited to expand his business from cyberspace onto Kansas City’s streets.

“The retail storefront ex-perience will help me understand the fundamentals of what it takes to make a small business happen,” he says, “as well with customer interaction, building a following, a community.”

Nancy says that Thomas, a University of Kansas alumnus, has his own media production company as well, and that the two brothers continue to learn much from each other.

“They are very close,” she says. “Reade also has had the opportunity to watch Thomas — they started a small production company — so Thomas is running a small company on his own. Reade watched him do that, so the two of them can lean on each other.”
Nancy adds that she’s proud of the path her sons have chosen, and that their skill and knowledge will take them far.

“They’ve taken a dream in less than six months and watched it become a reality. It makes a mom’s heart proud. The most exciting thing is, it doesn’t seem like work to either one of them,” Nancy says. “They have different personalities. Reade is the creative one and Tom is the logistics/operations one, but it’s been a journey that’s been fun. When I tell a friend of mine and they see the unconventional journey these two are on that isn’t just straight through high school and college, it’s fun to have a friend say, ‘Wow, I’m so impressed with what they’re doing.’ We’re not making the success, they are on their own.” 

Move over, Beanie Babies. Hit the road, Hot Wheels. You won’t find either at Ferris Wheel Antiques, a place that owner Michelle Ferris calls one of the only “true antique stores in Topeka.”

It’s a strategy that has worked well for Ferris and her husband Ronnie, who are celebrating their 20th year of operating Ferris Wheel in 2023. The Topeka store, which was built from scratch in 2003, wasn’t exactly some-thing the couple planned, Ferris says. Like so many wonderful life events, “it just happened.”

“It wasn’t something we planned on,” Ferris explains, adding that Ronnie is a buyer and seller of petroliana. “When his buyers didn’t buy as much, we decided we had enough to open a store… We just jumped in with both feet to see what would happen, and it worked.”

The couple decided they wanted to deal exclusively in antiques, opting to stay away from the junk one might find in other stores.
Also joining Ferris and Ronnie as fixtures in the store were their young daughters, ages 5 and 1.

“Somehow I ran a store with a 1-year-old. I don’t know how,” Ferris says, laughing. “Our girls basically grew up in the store, and our clients have seen them. Our girls would drive wagons and pedal cars around the store. It was like Romper Room.”

As their girls grew, so did the store’s physical space (Ferris Wheel began with just one building with 3,200 square feet of space and later would expand to its square footage of more than 6,000). Word-of-mouth promotion of the antique store in town that had lots of petrol-related collectibles spread as well. Visitors would discover a steady inventory of prim-itives, early Americana, and antique books, too.

Ferris says you won’t find any items more recent than the 1960s throughout the store’s shelves.
Over the past two decades, Ferris says she and Ronnie have amassed a following of customers who have become like family. And since they don’t have any hired staff to speak of – the Ferrises are at the cash register six days each week – they’ll be the ones you meet when you come in.

“We’re the fun place to shop,” Ferris says, “and we are the faces of the store. We could not have done any of that without customers, friends, and colleagues. We try to make our store feel like home. These customers we have are extended family. We’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime. My customers know that.”

Those customers, Ferris says, likely would describe her store using the three words “family,” “friends” and “fun,” while Ronnie adds that he believes they would use the words “traditional,” “quality” and “unique.”
Throughout the years, trends in buying antiques have come and gone, and Ferris says one of the biggest keys to her store’s success is that she always tries to follow them closely.

“We’ve seen cycles go up and down, trends come and go,” she notes, adding that younger buyers are increas-ingly repurposing antiques. “The younger generation now isn’t really into investing a lot of money in antiques, but the ones who come in now may have creative ways to use antiques and repurpose them, much more so now than 20 years ago.”