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score some amazing vintage deals while helping us work
towards opening a new community learning creative space!
towards opening a new community learning creative space!
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SALE DATES & HOURS
DISCOUNT PRICING
LOCATION & MAP 132 Main Street East Windsor Ct In the OLD BRICK WAREHOUSE Parking off of MAPLE STREET Enter on MAIN STREET (go thru gate) PARKING: across from the cop shop, kitty corner to the library - turn onto MAPLE STREET and parking is in the lot attached to the Red Brick Warehouse building. If parking is full, you can try parking on Maple Street or even better, if you can walk 5 minutes, parking in the Geisslers parking lot just down Main Street.
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THE CRUCIAL 411: TL;DR: this is a safe space & all are welcome, there are no bathrooms, private dressing room is available, no returns, cash credit & venmo accepted, limited parking, & we've got stuff for everyone (but no pets, please). THE NITTY GRITTY: - there are NO BATHROOMS on site. this goes for us, too. there is a library across the street and a geisslers a few minutes walk away where you can use the restroom if needed. - cash is king but we take venmo and cards too! - this is a SAFE SPACE for everyone who is kind, caring, and considerate. absolutely no hate, bullying, or cruelty will be tolerated. all bodies welcome. but please leave your precious fur babies and besties at home <3. - this is an unfinished old office space in a historic mill building in East Windsor CT. don't expect much in terms of artifice and you won't be disappointed -- plus, you're here for the amazing deals on our epic vintage collection! - parking is somewhat limited. if you are unable to park in our lot you can try parking on that little side street or, if you are able to walk, parking in the geisslers parking lot and walking over. - there is a private fitting room on site with a lockable door, full length mirror, and decent lighting. you are welcome to try on whatever you want! this is a judgement free zone and we just want to see our collection find the right homes <3. - THERE WILL BE NO RETURNS on anything purchased during this sale. - our collection features garments for most sizes although we are not flush with larger sized goods anymore. our collection also features garments traditionally intended for men AND women -- although we see it all as non-gendered. |
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every purchase you make with us during our liquidation sale brings us closer to opening ... THE DEN -- A COMMUNITY SPACE TO LEARN, CREATE, AND BE. as with Society Wolf, the vision for The Den is simple. A comfortable and welcoming space where the community is able to take, teach and facilitate classes, workshops, and community exchanges of all kinds. A refuge, a place to learn, to wonder, to create, to play, to be - The Den is an answer to what so many of us are asking for: a safe, fostering place where we can support each other in the glorious, messy, and wonderous process of returning to joy, to wonder, and to the self in all its somatic, metaphysical, and existential glory. We believe that life is made for learning, and that many many people are eager not only to learn but to share, teach, and facilitate as well. We believe every community is filled with knowledge, and that by removing traditional barriers to entry The Den can support anyone in realizing their role as knowledge sharer and guide. To begin, The Den will operate as an extension of our studio -- I expect Brett and I to be the sole instructors initially, at least until the gears are fully connected and running somewhat smoothly. The goal is to find a space that can house both our own (open) private studio, as well as The Den itself. That way, The Den can share our studio's resources and all of our creative work can easily play into and off of what's happening at The Den. CLASSES: Right off the bat, we are ready to teach classes and workshops in: various crafts, poetry, fine arts, fiber arts, esoteric studies, occult studies, divination, curious histories, somatics, breath and body work, intentional movement, play, metaphysics, local history, liberatory self-care, life skills, zine making, self-publishing, book arts, and more! Once the wheels are spinning we will be eager to bring in facilitators and teachers from the community and beyond who can utilize our creative community space to share their knowledge in exchange for well deserved and often hard to secure income. RETAIL: While not a traditional retail space, The Den will also feature goods for sale that are essential and/or contributive to the things being learned and taught in the space. For example, if we are teaching a class about pendulums, we'll sell pendulums and their accessories. If there's a class on flower essences, we'll offer supplies that aren't included in the class as well as our own in house essences. Some things we will stock regardless of the current class schedule (incense, divination tools and supplies, zines, flower essences, etc). Another aspect to the retail side: I'd like to be able to use my access to wholesale purchasing to benefit facilitators who don't have a tax ID or capital to place wholesale orders; so, if you are teaching a course at The Den and need supplies for it, we could help you secure those supplies at a wholesale cost meaning lower overhead expense for you. A FURTHER NOTE ON STRUCTURE: I would also like to create a structure that allows for facilitators and teachers to be able to initiate a course or workshop with no upfront cost. I personally understand the barrier to access that low-funds can create for serious creatives, facilitators, and scholars who wish to teach and share their hardwon and precious knowledge in a reciprocatory way. I want The Den to be a space that works around that barrier. So, for example: if it is clear that your course registrations will cover the cost of any supplies we order for you and the facilitator fee (this fee will be as low as possible and sliding, too) you won't need to pay The Den for those things until you've been paid first. THE LIBRARY: The other exciting and unique aspect to The Den will be our in-house reading library. Brett and I are the (absurd) owners of a tremendous personal library -- well over 1000 books ranging in subject from the Occult to Art to Fiction, Poetry, Ethnography, Anthropology, Revolutionary Studies, Mythology, Metaphysics, Science, History and more. We would like to house our library in The Den so that it can be utilized properly in a community setting. We would of course selectively welcome contributions to the library as well as consider external loans on a case-by-case basis. I imagine at some point we may sell some books as well, but that's not in the immediate plans. What we see now is a sort of personally curated communal reading room that a state-sponsored library may have trouble being allowed to be. We also plan to share our other physical media with The Den as well, including our vinyl, cassette, and VHS collections. ONE ON ONE WORK: this space will also allow me, Ellen, to offer in person 1:1 sessions. I am currently working towards certification in a new branch of Timeline Healing, while simultaneously developing my own method of 1:1 pathfinding work grounded in somatics, metaphysics, astrology, and quantum healing. I am eager to begin offering these in person sessions but need the appropraite space to do so. CONCEPT: Above and below are some concept graphics I collaged together on Canva. These images don't represent exactly what we see The Den looking like, but rather show the biggest assets of the vision as well as the main attributes we'd like to find in a space. 
....want to know more about Society Wolf and how we got here?
Our Story We (Brett & Ellen) opened Society Wolf in 2014 in Marblehead, MA in a teeny little basement retail space. We had spent the previous year or so building up our inventory, traveling all over MA, CT and AZ to find the choicest vintage goodies and built up a really phenomenal collection that focused heavily on the 90s with some 70s and 60s mixed in. The concept at Society Wolf was simple - a small space with a manageable selection of vintage clothing, sterling silver and gemstone jewelry, metaphysical tools and special spirit / home goods that changed regularly. We built the space out ourselves (with some help from my family: my dad (who died in 2022) helped us build out our backroom, and my mom and her partner helped us paint the whole place!), and we created a really unique and special space on a very, very tight budget. Brett added his magical touch to the painted the floor with the phases of the moon, and I got to work my cabinetry muscle in designing and building our displays. As two natives with Saturn conjunct our angles (MC for Ellen and IC for Brett) we love hard work and are always ready (to the best of our capacity and ability!) to invest sweat equity, and that we did with Society Wolf indeed. The store was manned solely by the two of us, trading off shifts throughout the week as the space was only big enough for one of us to work (semi) comfortably. Every two weeks we turned over the two racks and ten or so short shelves we had to display our collection, making sure our floor stayed super fresh and that there was always something new to see and buy for our regulars. We quickly developed a cult following on the North Shore amongst an incredibly varied age set, and our den became so much more than just a place to shop. It immediately proved itself to be a small, subterranean gathering space where people of all kinds would end up spending time together playing dress up, finding special things, and sharing joy and wonder. We sold lots of great pieces during out two years there, but the truth is most of our inventory didn't get a fair shake. There were some things that never even made it to the floor! Especially the higher end, older pieces that don't appreciate a heavy hand. Our inventory was... too big, there's no doubt about that. But Brett and I are absolutely magnets when it comes to vintage hunting -- I've always been the one who walks out of the thrift shop with bags when the person I've gone with finds nothing. Eventually we stopped buying, but even then, we were stewards of quite the large collection. It was fun, though, having such a limited showroom, because it really allowed the pieces to be appreciated in the way they deserved to be. As an neurodivergent person, I know how overwhelming traditional vintage shops can be when there's racks and racks and racks, and so it was nice to create a space that worked differently than that but still offered plenty -- plenty -- to look through, try on, and take home. Sadly, around our year mark we found out our landlord was selling the house our apartment was in and that we wouldn't be able to afford the almost double rent the new owner would be asking. We started looking for a new place and there was not one single place we could afford that was close enough to the shop to be manageable. We asked around to no avail. We considered moving the shop, but that proved fruitless too. We had a sweet deal where we were and while we were quickly outgrowing our space we didn't have the renewed capital yet to make the move into something pricier and bigger. That was a reality that existed outside this new situation, and no matter how much we looked there just wasn't a commercial AND residential property close enough to each other that were within our budget anywhere on the North Shore or in the Greater Boston area at all. It was awful. Not long after receiving this news, we went away to AZ for our (already booked) annual February trip (Brett and his family had a house in Phoenix that we would stay at for two weeks each Feb) and we visited Tucson for the first time. We fell in love! We were able to see our shop fitting into the Old Pueblo's vibes so easily and it excited us; and when we looked at the cost of living and doing business in the city we were SOLD. We returned back to MA seriously contemplating making this cross-country move, but it was a hard bite to take. We had dreams of eventually being able to buy a little place on the shore and live by the beach, our shop within a short drive and situated in a community we knew would only keep growing. It was hard to let that dream go, and of course the universe had one more curveball to throw before we could be sure in our choice. The pitch came our way one morning while we were eating breakfast at the beloved diner down the street from our apartment just a few days after we came home. Across the street and down a block from the diner was a retail space I had kept my eye on since before we moved to Beverly. This space had actually been what made me want to move to Beverly in the first place, and when we the apartment we found and moved into happened to be just a five minute WALK from it I knew it was meant to be. It was on the historic main street and had been abandoned for decades. I was OBSESSED with the space and wanted SO BADLY to open Society Wolf there. But after we moved in all of my sleuthing got me nowhere, and so we ended But up opening in Marblehead. But in my heart and back of my mind, I always believed my chance to rent that space would come. This space was so special and, as I mentioned before, walking distance from where we were living. But of course, where we were living was going to have to change, so already that part of the this-is-perfect pie had vanished. Before finding out we'd have to move but many months after we had opened in Marblehead, I had managed to find an address for the woman who supposedly owned the space. I wrote her a compelling, thoughtful, and slightly desperate letter in hopes she would take a shine to a young female entrepreneur and let me the space. In my biggest fantasy, she sold it to me and I somehow had the money to buy it. Of course I never received a reply. Everyone told me she was lost and only owned the building because it had been left to her by her mother. Some people speculated she and her sister lived there. I'll never know. That morning at the diner, though, as I ate my breakfast, I looked out the window and saw there was activity in the space. We quickly finished our meal and walked over there, finding the developer/contractor who had bought the place there working (he wouldn't tell me how he managed to purchase it or from whom). From there it was a series of talks over a series of weeks about what his plans and how we might afford to fit into them. I told him our situation and we talked about us renting the commercial space below and an apartment above. He was planning a very shishi renovation -- as evidenced by our inability to find a place we could afford the North Shore by this point was reaching its tipping pint -- and as such what he wanted was... a lot. It wasn't psychoville a lot but it was uncomfortably high for us and the more I did the numbers the less I felt sure about it all. (Looking back, I think we might have been able to make a go of it, but that's something I only see now that I'm so many years down the road. It was the right decision at the time because it's the one we made with deep thought, care, and eventually, surrender.) As quickly as my excitement had skyrocketed at the possibility of my ultimate shop-girl dream coming true, the more the weight of the cost of living and doing business in MA continued to dampen it. The more challenging the numbers felt. And the desert had a hold on me. As winter receeded I found myself experiencing anticipatory dread about the one that was still half a year away. My joints hurt. The politics of Marblehead were challenging. As much as we had found a community in our space we were struggling to fit into the retail community at large. As it turned out, there were a lot of reasons not to stay. We also had a bunch of personal reasons why Tucson was calling our names -- and so by September of 2016 we ended up making the exciting decision to move across the country and close Society Wolf as we knew it. Our goal was to re-open in Tucson in a bigger space where we could also facilitate and teach classes and workshops of all kinds. We were going to give ourselves a year or so to find the right space and start to build. We expected to spend the foreseeable future there, to build our adult lives there. But the future had others plans. After two years of personal and residential disasters (a saga not to be shared here) we ended up returning to the East Coast. We had not been able to re-open Society Wolf in any capacity in Tucson, and even my attempt to open an etsy and webshop was met with resistance and challenge at every turn. After landing in CT in the winter of 2018, I found myself becoming a typewriter poet in 2019. For most of 2019 until March of 2020 this took my focus. After our calamitous and frankly traumatic move(s) were not in a financial position to rent a retail space, and the space we had (generously) been able to use to store our inventory (where the sale will be held!) was not fit for retail without a renovation we couldn't afford. Typewriting poems at gigs across the state while also vending my goods and some of the Society Wolf inventory (jewelry, divination supplies) at a handful of craft fairs in the area brought in enough that we were paying our bills and able to entertain the idea of taking the time to start selling off the vintage clothing inventory. Along the way, back in 2018 or so, I started to have a clear vision of what Society Wolf should become - and it was not a vintage clothing store. We were totally burnt out on the whole thing, by this point -- moving tonnage of vintage clothing (AND BOOKS) across the country twice is enough to make even sisyphus consider giving up! And so we knew that we wanted to liquidate the vintage collection and get out of the rag trade -- but making that happen kept proving more difficult to do than we could handle. But, in the beginning of 2020 we were finally able and ready to deal with this insane vintage collection we had transported from Marblehead MA, to Tucson AZ, and back to East Windsor CT. In February we set up a pop-up shop in the space where we store our inventory and for two or three weekends we had wonderful success. We sold off a bunch of bins worth of clothes and made some great connections; we even had some customers (cubs) make the drive from MA to see us! They were special weekends (without bathrooms, or heat) and we were so excited to keep going, keep selling off our inventory so we could finally take a financial deep breath while also raising the funds needed to open our next space. It was awesome! But... as you and every one in the world knows, the future once again had other plans for us all this time, and CV-19 changed everything on a dime. Thankfully those few sale days had brought in some money or else I'm not sure what we would have done in those early pandemic days! I'll stop here, because at this point it all gets too personal to explain why it's been so long since we've been able to get back to liquidating our vintage collection. I have a zine or two you can read if you want that tea. But, suffice it to say, at this point (June 2024) we're pretty much desperate to be free of this inventory and to have the capital it will give us instead. Along with helping to pay down our debt we're still working off from our disastrous move and the pandemic horror that followed, we want to use the money we make to open a new space. For six or so years now I have had a pretty clear vision of what our next venture will be, and it's so special and so exciting and quite frankly so desperately needed that I am overjoyed we might actually be inching closer to it becoming our reality. |