The Retro Room Sunderland at the city's Jacky Whites Market

Sunderland Echo

Owner Aiden Lynch talks about his pop culture collectibles stall and associated online business

Transcript

00:00 on so many occasions people walk past and they're like

00:03 "Oh my god I haven't been into the market in so many years"

00:05 "How long have you been here?"

00:07 We do get a lot of people shocked

00:10 a lot of people still come here expecting to see the old shops here as well

00:14 looking for the plates and dishes

00:16 and they're like "No, we've been here a fair while now"

00:19 You do get a fair amount of surprise and

00:21 like "Oh wow"

00:22 and it's good as well because

00:24 it gives people a reason to come in as well, they're sort of like

00:28 happy that this sort of stuff's here

00:30 July is Independent Retailer Month

00:32 and we've been speaking to some of the business owners

00:34 at Jackie White's Market in Sunderland

00:36 Here's a look at one of the stalls there, the Retro Room

00:39 Opened in 2022, May

00:43 We sort of made a conscious decision to open on May 4th

00:49 so we'd have the Star Wars day

00:51 We originally opened in the back in a smaller unit

00:53 and there was a little bit of success

00:56 so we moved to this unit

00:58 A good base of our customers is returning customers

01:00 actually we've been pretty lucky

01:02 we've picked up some really good customers

01:04 and we've been lucky with the other businesses in the area as well

01:07 they've been sending us some really great customers

01:10 so we do get a lot of repeat customers

01:13 but finding new customers is probably the most difficult part

01:17 because a lot of people just don't venture into the market

01:20 so we have been getting a good turnover of new customers

01:26 but returning customers

01:28 and people who know us through online as well

01:30 is another key element of what brings people in

01:33 Online has become a massive part of what we do

01:36 Initially when we set this up

01:39 I set it up with the intention of treating this as a base

01:42 and a way of bringing stock into

01:46 what was an already existing online venture

01:52 we were doing a lot via ebay, a lot via facebook marketplace

01:56 and I just wanted to have a physical space

01:59 so a lot of what we've done is

02:02 focused on just having this as a physical

02:06 and reliant on the online

02:08 but now it's turning a little bit

02:10 where we're doing pretty good in here

02:12 and we want to bring it all together into one big thing

02:16 and we're just opening the new website as well this week

02:20 so that will be theretroroomsunderland.com

02:26 I don't think markets in general get enough recognition

02:29 every town I've ever been to with a market

02:32 I've always gravitated towards it

02:34 I've always gone to look

02:36 specifically because that's where you find shops like this

02:38 that's where you find all the cool little hidden gems

02:41 and with so many colourful collectibles on the shelves

02:43 we had to ask Aidan what are the real holy grail items

02:46 that he'd love to see in stock

02:48 for stock for the shop, for me there's two

02:50 stock wise we really really want transformers

02:55 I've struggled since opening to get good quality

02:58 early 80s transformers

03:01 I'd really really like a good boxed original Optimus Prime

03:06 a good Megatron, Megatron's another one that's really tough

03:10 but for me personally, I'm a wrestling guy

03:13 so anything Ban-Ban Bigelow related

03:17 that was my favourite guy

03:19 that's who I'd like to get hold of a couple of rare pieces of his

03:24 some ring worn stuff

03:26 if there's anybody who sees this and has that

03:28 it's a billion to one chance but

03:30 come and see me, I'm your guy

03:32 that I would say would be the grail items

03:35 but please bring us transformers, we need them

03:38 we need them

03:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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