Second Lyfe Vintage at Colony Square Mall focuses on 1970s, Y2K men’s items

ZANESVILLE − Dan Kennedy started frequenting yard sales and hitting antique clothing shops when he was a kid.“I’ve always been into something, anything, where I can make a couple dollars,” he said.He started collecting everything he was buying and storing whatever he didn’t sell or reuse.“Some people would have called me a hoarder,” he laughed. “But then it became popular to have all these items I had been collecting, and being a hoarder suddenly turned into me opening a store.”

Second Lyfe Vintage opened April 5 at Colony Square Mall in Zanesville. Kennedy said the April 19 grand opening saw lots of sales and customers that made him think maybe he should charge a door fee in addition to selling vintage items and men’s clothes.“It’s like a museum in here,” he laughed. “People come in and they just make a complete circle and talk about their memories. It’s like ‘hey, this was in my room,’ or ‘this was in my basement where I’d play video games.’“That’s how I gain a lot of my sales,” said Kennedy. “Customers stop in to just look at the things I have up, and then it leads to a purchase.”Initially, Kennedy ran his business online, but he was paying too much in storage costs to make it profitable.“So, we got a brick and mortar to see if it would outweigh the cost of storage,” he said.Located near T.J. Maxx, Second Lyfe Vintage buys and sells men’s clothing from the '70s era through early Y2K, everything from sports and Carhartt’s, to concert T-shirts and Harley-Davidson or NASCAR gear.“I’ve got everything you could possibly think of clothing-wise,” he said. “Except women’s clothing. It’s more men’s T-shirts and crew necks. We do have beer signs and advertisements for sale, as well as some of our sporting pictures and signatured items.”Kennedy said there are a few of his personal items on the walls that are not for sale, but that he had to add for a bit of personality.“I needed to add it so the walls weren’t bare,” he said. “Give it that old vibe from growing up from childhood; that old bedroom vibe.”Second Lyfe also buys gear from the public in addition to working with vendors.“We’re always buying daily,” he said. “That’s why we have a variety of items and some that are super rare to get. We might have to go deep down the rabbit hole to find those items, but we do, and people love it.”Kennedy said he also purchases 200-pound bails of clothing from rag houses.“A rag house is almost like a Goodwill, but instead of Goodwill selling individual things, they put it in bails and you buy 100 up to 500 pound bails,” he said. “There’s a few on the east coast but most are on the west coast.”Kennedy said many of his items are so rare because of the pandemic.“There was a trending video during COVID about how (this guy) went to Goodwill’s, thrift stores, yard sales, and resold them, and made a living doing so,” said Kennedy. “So, everybody started doing it, and now some things are almost impossible to find.”The next step for Kennedy is jumping into the shoe business.“That’s really where my passion is,” said Kennedy. “I’m knowledgeable with vintage, but I’m super knowledgeable with sneakers and modern clothes.”He said that’s he rented the old Foot Locker at the mall.“They had left all their old racks for the shoes,” said Kennedy. “Eventually, this space is going to become a sneaker shop and Second Lyfe Vintage will move to a new location. It depends on how everything goes here at Colony Square.”And the man who gives sneakers and clothing a second life, gets to have his own second life.“The whole business aspect of me selling these clothes (after a first life of collecting them) is me having a second life, too,” said Kennedy.Second Lyfe is closed Mondays and Tuesdays; open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; and Sundays noon to 5 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Second Lyfe Vintage at Colony Square Mall focuses on 1970s, Y2K men’s items