His Picks Collective – not your typical antiques store
His Picks Collective is the latest destination for all things vintage and collectable in Orange, but it is far from your typical antique store.
Founders Matt Paton and Phillip Denman have long been lovers of all things vintage and antique and the pair have hunted through hundreds of antique stores all around the country. But with their new Summer Street store, they wanted to create a different sort of shopping experience. Rather than just displaying their wares, Matt and Phillip have created themed ‘rooms’ in the store, each a hand-curated collection of pieces of the same vintage, style or theme.
“For us, with the shop, it was about displaying a space, not just stuff on a shelf. We wanted people to see how it can be displayed and put together,” Matt said.
“We’ve been in a lot of antique shops, and I’ve never seen a shop staged like this. I’ve never seen a shop create a space.”
“That’s true,” added Phillip. “Not where you can see, that’s what my study would look like, or my mid-century lounge room… Nan’s left you her dinner set or antique dining table and you can walk in here and go, ‘That’s what I can do with that!’ Essentially, that is what we’ve tried to create.”
Step inside His Picks Collective today, and you’ll find a farmhouse kitchen, mid-century living room, Victorian study and more. But these spaces will constantly evolve as stock sells, with new ‘rooms’ with different themes and styles replacing the old.
“As a space gets almost empty, we will then take that space out and put a whole new different space in. So what you see here might not be here in four weeks,” Phillip said.
“We don’t want it to look the same every time somebody walks in the shop,” Matt added.
“One of the future installations will probably be vintage toy box and we’re planning on possibly doing religious iconography around Christmas time and an outdoor courtyard area; we’re not ruling anything out.”
Being keen collectors themselves, Matt and Phillip have made a point of only stocking items that they themselves like and are excited by.
“There’s no point in having a space full of just random stuff; you have to have a passion about what you’re selling,” Matt said.
And they do want to sell, he said, which is why they’ve made sure that everything is priced fairly.
“We want people to walk out and think they’ve got a bargain,” Matt said. “Obviously, we don’t want people to leave thinking that place was so expensive, or walking out with one piece feeling a bit ripped off.
“We want to keep it fresh and the only way we can do that is to keep stock rolling, and that means keeping a price point where it’s going to sell.”