We had the good fortune of connecting with Troy & Taysha Harris and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Troy & Taysha, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?

That’s actually a very funny question, and topic that we haven’t thought about. lol thanks for asking that.

In the beginning we found it to be more balanced because life was as simple as going out to thrift, and then posting the item for sale on eBay. However, over the years, with the influx of sellers entering eBay and all the other selling platforms, we needed to get more creative.

Along with curating content for Instagram, we decided to create our Empty Vintage website, and Black Empowerment Clothing Line. Now you take those, and add in administration duties, artistry designs, customs designs for some of our clients, and the work, life balance becomes a tad more difficult to adapt towards. *chuckles*

However there’s no better reminder than a toddler popping his head into a personal shopping experience with a client to remind us that, we are working for ourselves “at home”.

So to answer that question, it’s surprisingly become more difficult to create that optimal work, life, balance. But we love it. In all its child interrupting, and constant moving greatness lol.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

In working through vintage we’ve discovered that the clothing that is not purchased during the sales week in vintage stores are transported to foreign landfills. So in an effort to keep the landfills “Empty,” we donate our unsold inventory to shelters. We also go to thrift stores once a month to purchase bags of clothing in various sizes to donate to shelters as well.

We intend to help the landfills locally and globally remain empty. In our efforts we hope to prevent the Christmas trees of the less fortunate children from being empty and furthermore helping the streets of Atlanta get back to being empty of the clothes-less. We believe that by helping all the other companies and organizations that provide clothing to the less fortunate and the homeless that we will be ameliorating one concern of theirs (being cold or not having adequate clothing). In turn, this helps them to focus on other necessities toward survival.

As we continue to do more in our efforts, and continue growing, we strive to be able to donate money and other services to help. We are also currently working on a toy drive for the end of the year. So if you have toys or would like to be involved, please feel free to contact us as we’ve already begun collecting toys. If you have or know of a shelter or children’s program that would benefit from us dropping toys off, please also let us know by emailing us at emptyvintage@gmail.com.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.

If a friend was to come here to Atlanta for a week we would definitely have to first ask what they have to do because there are so many amazing places to eat, drink, and visit. Getting what they have a taste for, and feel like doing would better help us sort out where we take them, and what exactly we do. Places that would be on the itinerary no matter what would be Little 5 Points because of the culture, and environment down there that is unmatched here. Piedmont Park to experience the beautiful landscape, and other outings there as well.

We’d definitely have to take them eating at some of our favorite restaurants/dessert places (that happen to also be black owned):
Slutty Vegan
Atlanta Breakfast Club
APT4B
Nana’s Chicken & Waffles

Sublime Donuts
Pop Bar

Everything else depends on the time of the month they visited. We’d definitely like to get them to a pop up. Two big ones that we do are The Fresh Tabernacle, and Vintage ConnectCon.

Website: www.emptyvintage.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/emptyvintage

Facebook: www.facebook.com/emptyvintage

Other: To access our Black Empowered Clothing Line visit:

Website: www.emptyvintage.com/blackaf

Instagram: www.instragram.com/BlackAFCollection

TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@emptyvintage

Image Credits
@CollarCandy_Troy @Karmatology @Chuckrare @Wire_ATL @mcm.harris @DanaChristian

 

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