Redfern emporium Seasonal Concepts set to close, and building to be sold

“Being brutal about it, we’ll see the end of small retail in the inner city here,” he said, standing among the wealth of pre-1950s treasures at his landmark 1856-building in the heart of the village.

“It’s just too difficult for people to shop in Sydney and too hard for us to manage.

“Between the ‘destination’ shopping centres and not being able to park on the streets any more, I can only see it’s going to get worse in future.”

The business sells everything from flowers to stuffed animals. Photo: Supplied

Large emporium-style stores like his would be the first to go, he predicted, with vintage furniture and homewares seller The Country Trader already having closed down in Waterloo, and some of the vintage stores on Woollahra’s Queen Street facing tough times.

Although people love to wander around them, and film industry workers and magazine stylists are frequent customers to decorate sets and shoots, societal changes are hitting such retail hard.

“Buying Australiana is a generational thing, and the Pan-Asian population in the inner city don’t find our wares so desirable,” said Mr Wallis, 56.

He’s now moving to central Victoria with his American partner T.R. Keller, also 56, where they may sign a lease on another premises to reopen there. If they aren’t able to get the site, they may well have a giant sale of their wares before they go.

The building includes an apartment upstairs. Photo: Supplied

Their historic two-storey Georgian-style terrace in Redfern, with its vast warehouse retail space downstairs and apartment and rooftop garden on the next level, is now to be auctioned on March 14 with a price guide of $2 million to $2.2 million.

Agent James Griffiths of LJ Hooker Commercial said it was likely to appeal to a wide variety of buyers, with its prized location on Redfern Street and versatile layout, and could make an excellent restaurant, gallery or design studio.

“It’s a mixed-use building right in the heart of Redfern which makes it very desirable,” he said. “Redfern is evolving all the time, and this is a beautiful big warehouse space with a very cool façade and upstairs there’s a really nice courtyard and dual-level apartment.”

The store is well-known among Sydneysiders for its eclectic collections of old designer furniture, quirky furnishings, flowers and unusual taxidermy.

When it opened 11 years ago, one of its major attractions was the three-metre-high stuffed figure of a giraffe, known as Roger, from its shoulders up. Since then, there’s been a virtual menagerie of stuffed animals hanging on walls – all ethically sourced – as well as a fabulous array of pottery, pans, candlesticks, jewellery, curiosities, and even kitchen sinks.

Modern households did not have room for vintage decor, Mr Wallis said. Photo: Supplied

But there’s now The Kondo Effect – named after Japanese organising guru Marie Kondo – encouraging people to streamline their possessions, and life generally had moved on in a different direction, Mr Wallis said.

“I also think the size of dwellings now, especially with the design of apartments, don’t allow the room for people to decorate their homes and collect,” he said.

“Some of them now only have a breakfast bar instead of a dining table and three walls of the bedroom are taken up with cupboards, the bedhead and glass, so there’s not the space for anything else. People might like the idea of vintage stuff but the reality is, they don’t have the room.”