WINTHROP — Nicki Stanford can’t take 10 steps in The Vault, her one-weekend-a-month vintage market, without being stopped by a vendor or customer.

One seller dressed as Mrs. Claus grabbed Stanford’s shoulder and told her how excited she was by her booth at the December holiday market.

A shopper approached with wide eyes and asked where she could find the booth she’d been looking for. Stanford smiled and led her in the right direction, through the bustling 6,000-square-foot space, which used to be the first floor of Winthrop’s big textile mill.

Another vendor stopped to chat about her first time shopping at The Vault, where she found the exact turkey dish she’d wanted for months but couldn’t find anywhere else.

Stanford has built a vibrant ecosystem between The Vault and her primary business, the Freckle Salvage Co. Across the two spaces, which sit on the same side of Main Street, she hosts about 60 vendors, who sell vintage items, artwork and everything in between. On a good weekend, 5,000 people shop between the two.

And she’s also built an ecosystem in the wider Winthrop downtown. A Main Street that had struggled for years to get passing traffic to stop has seen a renaissance since Freckle Salvage’s founding, with new businesses popping up on either side.

“I think we were a catalyst in kind of the reawakening of Winthrop,” Stanford said. “Winthrop used to be a really happening place, especially when the mill was here. It had everything, and I think it got kind of quiet and sad there for a while. We were — as far as the businesses that are here now, like Pickle’s Potions and the Art Walk Shop & Studio — we were the first.”

‘THE SECRET SAUCE’

Stanford founded Freckle Salvage Co. with her husband, Jesse, in 2019. She’d managed retail stores for years, but wanted to take a leap of faith and run her own show.

The idea was simple, but fresh: Vendors would rent space in the store to sell their own wares. That rent covers Freckle Salvage’s expenses, and the vendors keep their own proceeds.

Most vendors, she said, make more than eight times their rent costs.

“You’ve got 50-60 vendors that are all Maine small businesses under our roofs that are making a living, or a side hustle,” Stanford said. “And it’s great. I love writing those big checks for my vendors.”

She has recruited those vendors from all over the state and from many walks of life. Many were shoppers first, then sellers. Some have stuck around and become a part of the Freckle Salvage family.

Karen Vernola works as a cashier at Freckle Salvage on Saturdays, and she does it for free.

She started selling her homemade dog biscuits, Elliot’s Best, several years ago at the store. Now, she runs the check-out system better than Stanford. Or, at least, she claims so.

“When (Stanford) comes in and tries to do it, she does it all wrong,” Vernola joked.

It’s vendors like Vernola that make the system of both The Vault and Freckle Salvage work, Stanford said.

“The vendors — they hold each other accountable,” Stanford said. “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Stanford challenges her vendors at The Vault each month with a brand-new theme — a one-weekend-only concept that she said brings more shoppers in.

Vault vendors have one month to prepare, for instance, for the Home for the Holidays market held Dec. 13 and 14.

“Every month the theme is different and it changes,” Stanford said. “We’ve done ‘upta camp’ and ‘road trip.’ It makes it kind of fun and unique and different. Customers know it’s going to be different every month. The secret sauce is just keeping that event to the two days. People know if they miss it, they miss it, and it won’t be open again until next month.”

On Vault weekends, the check-out line in the mill can get long. Stanford has recruited a team of volunteers — also mostly former shoppers — to run the centralized check-out system. She jumps in when she can.

“The line can be like a 30-plus-minute wait, but the reason it’s long is because nobody leaves,” she said.

COUNTING CARS

Six months after opening Freckle Salvage, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I was like, ‘I made the biggest mistake of my life,'” Stanford said.

She watched from the window of the store as cars drove by, worried that her gamble — inspired, as the business name suggests, by the lucky freckle on her son’s ear — wouldn’t pay off.

“I would sit and I would count cars in a 30-minute period,” she said. “I knew the traffic was here — people drive through here constantly. I just had to find a way to get them to stop.”

Stanford kept Freckle Salvage open as often and as long as possible, to remain visible amid the shutdown. Her husband kept his job, helping out in the store when he could.

And then came the idea for The Vault.

“We had this large space in the basement of our store, and there were no flea markets, there were no events,” Stanford said. “And I’m like, ‘What if we created a vintage market, but we kind of operated it like a shop so we could stay within all the guidelines? So we could count customers and make sure that we were safe and everyone felt comfortable shopping and supporting, but it still supported our vintage friends.'”

It started with 12 vendors, mostly friends and experienced vendors whom Stanford had already worked with.

And it almost immediately blew up. Customers were lined up outside, with a bouncer-like figure at the door to limit the number of people inside.

Freckle Salvage’s social media started taking off, too, thanks in part to a provision in each rental agreement that Stanford stands by: Vendors must post on social media at least once a week, advertising their products, Freckle Salvage and The Vault.

The move to explicitly advertise using social media has brought more success to the Freckle Salvage ecosystem than almost any other strategy, she said. Some out-of-state customers now plan vacations around Vault weekends, Stanford said.

“It becomes this whole event,” she said. “And then the whole town benefits from it, all the stores that are here. Other stores, they all pick up extra business, but they’re also great about supporting us.”

Now, Stanford has to contend with the next big business decision: Owning her own space.

The operation’s gotten big, she said, and the limitations on making permanent changes to either space — both are rented — makes fixing common issues less convenient.

Eventually, that decision could come under the weight of leaving Winthrop behind.

“There’s so much uncertainty sometimes, you know, with people raising rents and buildings being sold out from under business owners,” Stanford said. “I’ve seen so much on social media, and there is a fear there always. So that’s where I want us to be: owning our own building, hopefully a much bigger space. It’s tricky, though. We love being in Winthrop. We don’t want to leave Winthrop — there’s not a lot of stuff for sale here.”

A second location is also in the cards, she said, but the long-term picture remains unclear.

What is clear to Stanford, though, is the secret sauce — the stuff that makes Freckle Salvage and The Vault the magnet it is.

“It is the Freckle family. It is a very big family,” she said. “(The vendors) are all supportive of each other. They all raise each other up.”