{"id":1040,"date":"2013-09-02T14:09:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T04:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2013-11-04T12:03:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T02:03:23","slug":"rockabilly-and-the-subculture-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/features\/rockabilly-and-the-subculture-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockabilly and the Subculture Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ella<\/div>\n

Rockabilly gents and pin-up girls. Tattoos. Hotrods. Dapper motorheads & lowbrow artists.<\/span> These are the hallmarks of Greazefest<\/a>, a 3 day Brisbane-based festival in August, celebrating everything kustom kulture.<\/p>\n

As I walked in, I was struck by a plethora of beautiful cars, raucous music & well-dressed people. However, lurking behind the pompadours & beehives is a quiet evolution in retail; a world where setting up a business is as simple as having a Facebook page, or an Etsy store. A world where having a shop\u2014<\/em>an actual physical store\u2014 is somewhat of an oddity, and your best customers aren’t walking in a front door; they’re liking your pics on Instagram, re-pinning you on Pinterest or buying via your Facebook page.<\/p>\n

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\"Greazefest\"As you walk into Greazefest, you’re struck by two things. Firstly, everyone looks amazing<\/em>. Men sporting freshly shaven quiffs & immaculately ironed cowboy button-ups; people rocking Tiki shirts \u2014to fit in, I repurposed one from a few weeks back<\/a>. There’s also cohorts representing from the black punk, psychobilly & metal genres too.<\/p>\n

Ladies wear gorgeous, bright dresses; retro-inspired outfits in a stunning array of colours. I’m certainly no expert, but I was informed by a reliable source that there were a huge variety of styles; from rock ‘n’ roll to rockabilly, punkabilly and more.<\/p>\n

Quite honestly, I don’t know if I could tell you what most of those are exactly, but I was very impressed indeed (you can see more at my photo album on Everpix<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This isn’t the kind of stuff you buy off the rack at your local shopping mall. Yet, a great deal of it is brand-new<\/em>. The majority of stuff on display that I saw (though most certainly vintage inspired) was decidedly not vintage stuff being re-purposed. And this leads to the second thing about Greazefest.<\/p>\n

The shops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rockin’ Retail<\/h1>\n

Set in the dust-bowl of the Rocklea showgrounds, Greazefest casts a large footprint. The whole sports oval is jam-packed with all the hotrods on the inside, and all the shops on the outer ring. And there were a lot of them!<\/p>\n

Most of the shops are small-time outfits. Sure, you’ve got larger stores like your Trash Monkey<\/a> and more established retailers. You also see rockabilly’s bigger names, with successes like Hell Bunny<\/a>, Tres Noir<\/a> or Deadbeat Magazine<\/a> on display. But for every Greazefest veteran, there were multiple tiny shops offering custom, handmade clothes, accessories, artwork or vintage knick-knacks.<\/p>\n

As I wandered around, most of the shops I spoke to were from Brisbane too; small-time outfits with just one or two people. As I wandered, I kept seeing the same patterns & signs emerge again and again:<\/p>\n

“Oh, there’s more stuff available online.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Go look at our Instagram account.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Much more on our Etsy store.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“We do weekly specials on our Facebook page.”<\/em><\/p>\n

At first I didn’t really get it. Why would a whole bunch of marketplace sellers want to shyly push me off to their website? I’m right here! Then it struck me; these aren’t normally people who sell their goods face-to-face. I was staring at a field of people who do most of their business online. In the same way a typical store flirts with online sales, Greazefest revealed the inverse; mostly online sellers flirting with a physical store.<\/p>\n

I needed to know more.<\/p>\n

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My Little Rockabilly<\/h1>\n

\"KatAfter Greazefest ended, I went in search of someone I could chat to in person about the whole scene. I came across My Little Rockabilly<\/a> (aka Kat Creasey), a Gold Coast-based retailer who recently moved to a Kustom Kulture Co-op in Brisbane called Chops’s Place<\/a>. She specialises in pin-up accessories, clothing, make-up courses and even vintage furniture & homewares.<\/p>\n

She has nearly 30 thousand people who like her Facebook page<\/a> and nearly 6 thousand on her Instagram account<\/a>. She regularly updates both with new products, and does most of her business through those two channels.<\/p>\n

Her approach to selling products completely flipped my perceptions about how people sell stuff online.<\/p>\n

“Firstly, I don’t have a website these days,” she told me. “I used to, but I just don’t have time to keep it up to date, plus I do most of my business through Facebook & Instagram anyway.”<\/p>\n

Kat began her retail life in a rockabilly store on the Gold Coast, working behind the register. Once that store closed up, she decided to take her own jewellery business full time. In fact, she was featured on the ABC show The Collectors in 2010<\/a>:<\/p>\n