What began as a mobile clothing store in 2011 has become a recurring Dallas pop-up during the winter holiday season and the first North Texas ugly Christmas sweater store with a physical location.
“It just kind of hit me like a lightbulb moment where I was like, ‘It’d be really cool to make the first-ever Christmas sweater store,’” Turner says.
With the addition of two new locations in Austin and Chicago in collaboration with Punch Bowl Social, 2600 Main St., Turner expects this year to be a success for the business, and there might be another location next year.
During the early 2010s, Turner noticed an influx of interest in food trucks and came up with the idea to create a mobile vintage clothing store with his wife.
“It hit me one day, why not make that store mobile similar to the food trucks where you could just take your store to customers, and just go to different events and things like that,” Turner recalls thinking.
The two remodeled an old school bus, leaving the exterior painted shamrock green with the words TheVintageMobile all in one word. The inside had long poles on either side allowing for clothes to hang. Shelves just above those poles allow for additional space to place products.
Turner’s idea appeared to be a great one at the time, but he realized he was limited as to where he could set up to sell.
“Honestly, the city of Dallas pretty much shut that down because it didn’t fit with the existing code,” Turner says. “We could only set up at events here and there and on the weekends. So we couldn't be open like every day.”
Dallas prohibits mobile vendors from occupying private property without proper authorization and includes operational restrictions such as no operation between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m.
Regardless, Turner was already beginning to transition into exclusively selling ugly Christmas sweaters after noticing the demand during the winter season.
“They would just fly off the shelves and as soon as I would put some Christmas sweaters in, they would just be gone … we would just sell out immediately,” Turner says.
In 2013, the couple opened their first pop-up location in the Mockingbird Commons area in East Dallas and have since moved locations. In a promotion for their store, they released a song titled “Ugly Christmas Sweater” on iTunes with a music video on youtube racking over 12,000 views.
Since last year, the business has begun appearing in Punch Bown Social in Deep Ellum on Commerce Street. This season the pop-up opened on Nov. 15 and is expected to close on Dec. 24.
In past years, Turner says the sweaters were mostly vintage and thrifted. Now it’s mostly modern sweaters and about one third vintage. They are all priced around $23.
Ugly Christmas Sweater Shop received coverage from Good Morning America in 2016. That year, he had locations in Frisco and Fort Worth and required employees to handle the retailing side. Instead of a regular application, however, potential employees had to answer why they wanted the job and provide a video of them dancing.
Turner no longer hires employees for any of his locations and says it is now managed by Punch Bowl Social employees.
With the success of the pop-up in Punch Bowl Social, Turner says that representatives from the restaurant and bar asked him if he wanted to add a pop-up in one of the Austin locations and the Chicago location. Turner agreed and says he expects Ugly Christmas Sweater Shop to appear again next year at these locations.
“There's a good chance that we'll even have new locations next year,” Turner says.
When the holiday season is finally over, Turner says he feels like Santa Claus returning to the North Pole and he starts looking for more inventory for the next year. After this winter season, he is going to have to do more searching for the additional Austin and Chicago locations.
He does not think he will expand into different holiday-themed sweaters, as the business name is exclusively tied to Christmas. “It’s very similar to like Spirit Halloween,” Turner says. However, having an entrepreneurial mindset, Turner says he may consider taking up another business in the future.
“For me, it's sort of like I wait for that idea to hit me,” Turner says. “And if that idea excites me and I think it's unique, original and something that people would enjoy, then I’ll probably do that idea.”
