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| Charlie’s Funky Junk Shop is a local antique and thrift store in Statesboro, Georgia, and has recently reopened after temporarily closing for the COVID-19 pandemic. “We, you know, we're a little apprehensive and we didn’t want to risk our health or our customers’ health, so we closed the shop,” states owner Trish Carter. “We did work on another project where it was just a close-knit group of staff, but we didn’t interact with the public.” |
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| An area near the entryway of the store is set up with a tropical, summer theme in mind. The women who run the store strive to create a warm and comforting environment for their customers. |
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| Trish Carter explains the theme of one of the displays near the front of the store. “We have real estate stagers that will come in and buy a whole area,” says Carter of one of their dining room sets. |
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Pieces of a dining set sit on a table by the register. Carter likes to keep two or three sets like this on hand as it is an item that people ask about regularly. |
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| Clark, the Carter family’s dog, sits by the front door waiting to greet customers. Lewis, the family’s other dog, also comes to the store with the owners on most days. |
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| Trish Carter explains the process for how they make their price tags. “There is no routine here, it’s always chaotic,” says Carter of their daily routines. |
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A price tag sticker is stuck to Carter’s laptop. The first step in making the tags is printing the stickers. |
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| Julie McGuire is lining up paper to be cut for the price tags. McGuire is working on a glass countertop, underneath of which is a picture of the antique shop that inspired Trish Carter to open Charlie’s Funky Junk Shop. |
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| McGuire cuts the paper for the price tags. Trish Carter’s father, Charlie, owned an antique shop in upstate New York called The Bargain Barn; he became the inspiration for the name of the store. |
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| McGuire cuts ribbon for the price tags. Each of the handmade price tags will now be placed onto different items that will then be placed throughout the store. |
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Trish Carter searches for a baseball that they have listed on their eBay store. By selling some of their items on eBay, she can increase her customer base. |
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| Trish Carter brings an item down from the shelf to the small backdrop where she sets items up for pictures to be listed for sale on eBay. The baseball in her hand is an example of the kinds of things that she sells online. |
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Trish Carter explains how the special pre-lit backdrop works. The box provides a solid background and even lighting for smaller items, thus allowing her to get a well-lit picture of the items that she lists online. |
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| Greg Carter unlocks the door to the building next door where they store the items that are not yet for sale. The storage space is in an old building that has a rich history, it has been used for everything from a billiard hall to a music store. |
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The space contains lots of furniture and other items that are waiting to be restored or placed into the store for sale. Some of the items in the space have been left behind from the previous uses of the space and other items have been donated or sold to the shop. |
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| Greg Carter walks through the storage space. A task that must be frequently completed is moving items to and from this storage space to be sold in the shop. |
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Greg Carter reaches into a box of music books. As he walks through the space, he points out the items that had been left behind and what their uses were. |
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Greg Carter holds up an old music book. The books were once on the shelves of a music store, but they are now stored in an area that the Carter family uses as an art studio. |
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Greg Carter sifts through a stack of music books. Other items that have been left behind include old cash registers and displays from when the space was used as a small grocery store. |
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| Greg Carter reaches into a box of jars that were left in the space by the previous owners. The many boxes of jars are yet another item that was left behind from the building’s history; the jars remain from when the space was used as a barbecue restaurant. |
