Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Keating.
Hi Caroline, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We renovated our house in 2019 and I was looking for beautiful mid century modern furniture pieces to put into my home. I would find a great piece, and as I kept looking I would find another one I liked better, and then sell the old piece. After doing this a few times I quickly realized there was a market for this and so I continued to source MCM pieces that needed a little TLC, clean them up or refinish them, and then sell onto others. Renewed Perspective actually started as a way to document the beautiful pieces I had acquired along the way.
At the time I was working full time as a Recruiter for a rapidly growing tech company. My husband is a firefighter, we had an infant and a 2 year old and in 2020 covid hit so we were all grounded at home. I spent all day on back to back zoom calls and after I had put the kids to bed at night, I would go into the garage and refinish furniture as a way to physically touch and feel something, see a finished product, and have a space that was all mine.
During covid, I would post an item of furniture and it would be sold that day. It was a time when the world was closed down, shops weren’t open, so many people were moving to Austin and furnishing air bnbs and houses and people needed furniture they could pick up right away. It was also so nice to actually meet people in person after spending so many hours talking to people across the US on zoom all day.
I spent the next 3 years working in tech and running Renewed Perspective on the side. Eventually when hiring slowed down at my company I decided to pursue Renewed Perspective full time. For the last few years I have refinished furniture in my garage, selling furniture locally and shipping nationally, learning about content creation and running my business flexibly around raising my two children and my husband’s schedule as an Austin Firefighter.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Due to my husband working as a firefighter and having two small children I have had to maintain a very flexible schedule. I have to work around being a sole parent 24 hours at a time every third day, not having any family assistance or help as I am from Australia and all my family live there, and my husband’s parents live a few hours away.
Refinishing furniture can bring up many challenges that you learn along the way. I joined groups and learnt from others, as well as many youtube videos, on how to refinish furniture but you definitely make mistakes along the way. There is constantly a threat of scams online when sourcing, buying and/or selling furniture.
I have had two major back injuries in recent years. Ensuring I can maintain fit and active in order to continue running a business that involves lifting heavy furniture regularly is an ongoing battle.
Maintaining enough space is always a challenge also – since I operate out of my garage – refinishing and storing furniture there, to having to expand into additional storage buildings and I am about to build my own showroom.
We’ve been impressed with Renewed Perspective Vintage, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Renewed Perspective focuses on selling mid-century modern and vintage furniture and art. I restore authentic mid-century modern and danish modern furniture to original refinishing schedules and I enjoy taking a tired vintage piece and restoring it for another lifetime of use, as well as finding unique pieces of quality that are built to last.
I have a strong local customer base with many repeat buyers. I enjoy sourcing specific pieces requested by my clients and working with them on finding pieces that will fit well into their homes.
We sell locally, predominantly online and ship furniture all across the USA.
I love personally connecting with my clients, learning about them, helping them find pieces for their homes and we often buy vintage pieces from our customers too.
Any big plans?
I am in the process of building a showroom, where I can display my finished furniture, take good pictures and have a better buying process, being able to offer more art and smaller vintage pieces and decor along with the furniture.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://renewedperspectivevintage.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/renewedperspective
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/renewedperspective
