A Carlisle business that finds value in retro furniture is on a mission to prove newer isn’t always better.
Absolutely Nice Vintage, based in Atlas Works, on Nelson Street, has been carefully restoring worn-out mid century furniture and homeware and sending it off to new homes across the UK and wider world for the past 11 years.
Owned by Damian Sealey and Mark Howlette, who live in the city, the idea to set up the business first emerged after the duo found themselves spotting bargains while on holiday with friends.
Mark said: “We were going on friend group holidays in France and we were going to the markets there and thinking ‘oh that’s really cheap, we could bring that back and sell it.’
“So we started filling the car up with bits and pieces and putting stuff on our friends laps and bringing it back and selling it on Etsy. It just kind of grew from there and we started visiting charity shops and auctions and it grew into something more slowly but surely.
“For Damien, he also grew up going to antiques fairs and auctions, so he’s always been very interested in vintage and mid-century stuff came as an interest later on for him and for me, I found it in my early 20s going to rummage.
“But in 2015 we said let’s quit out jobs and give it a go and now here we are in 2024, doing it full-time and shipping things all around the world.”
Damien and Mark spend their working life hunting down specific kinds of old, unwanted mid-century furniture and restoring it to its former glory before photographing it and selling it on.
Much of the old furniture they find is completely worn, damaged or marked and often comes from places like auctions, house clearances, charity shops and even online platforms like Facebook marketplace.
Mark added: “Anything we find that we like we will try and sell it, but we predominately sell mid-century furniture from the 1950s and 1960s and anything Scandinavian and a hell of a lot of teak furniture. That includes everything from a sideboard down to an old Herbert Terry lamp.
“But we started off selling books, cups and forks and now we sell things like £2,500 sideboards. But it’s the thrill of the chase, that’s the best part of the job, it’s going and looking for it, everything else from there is the hard work!”
While most of the furniture the duo find is restored in house at their Carlisle studio – any very badly damaged or worn furniture is handed over to their network of skilled craftspeople.
Mark said: “We fully restore everything we get to its original condition, so we’ve got a big team including an upholsterer and an engineer who can make us little missing pieces.
“We restore as much as we can ourselves, but we do use some guys in Kendal, who work for the National Trust, so anything we get really stuck with it goes to them to get it right.
“But our days normally start with us probably procrastinating for two hours, and then we split it into two ways. I do the restoration and Damien does the photography and styling and we meet in the middle.
“The restorers we use in Kendal, we constantly talk their heads in for tips. But then it’s a lot of trial and error, there’s so much information on YouTube as well.
“But ultimately it is trying and seeing what happens. I still make mistakes and learn everyday and each piece is different and has its own history with cup stains and marks and it takes some problem solving to really think about how to get it fixed up.”
Mark and Damien sell and restore everything from furniture to homeware, objects, artwork and decorations and Mark said he believed the demand for retro items is still going strong.
The pair also sell vintage Christmas baubles – which have become more and more desirable over recent years and have even created their own retro-inspired bauble of Carlisle’s Civic Centre.
Mark said: “We’ve been doing it for 11 years and the demand for mid-century furniture has always been there and it doesn’t really seem to be wavering either.
“Maybe at some point it will die off a bit, our our generations just love that quality made, great design and great materials that has lasted all this time and now it has a new generation looking after it.”
The pair added that around 99 per cent of sales are made online but that they also sell furniture by appointment only visits to their studio.
Mark said: “We’ve been doing it for 11 years and the demand for mid-century furniture has always been there, and it doesn’t really seem to be wavering either.
“Maybe at some point it will die off a bit, but our generations just love that great design and great quality that has lasted all this time and now has a new generation looking after it.
“Our furniture stays within the UK as it’s problematic getting it abroad with Brexit, but we do sell a lot of mirrors to America. They pay more in shipping than the price of the product, but I’d say around 80 per cent of our orders go to London, it seems everything good ends up there. But we sell stuff all over Europe too.
“One year we did have someone in Berlin buy 200 of our vintage Christmas baubles for a shop window display and they completely cleared us out.
“The baubles are getting harder to find, so we buy them up wherever we can and get them, even in the middle of summer, so we can put them up for sale in October in new boxes.”
Mark added that as small business owners, the pair don’t make big future plans and prefer instead to take each year as it comes.
He said: “Doing this with my best mate and doing a job we love is a valuable thing and not many people get to do that, so I feel quite privileged in that sense.
“But finding a gem in the rough and getting a haggard old sideboard and then bringing it back to life, that’s my favourite part of the job. It’s restoring those forgotten, old trashed pieces that nobody cares about and seeing that value in them again.”
