New website gathers local furniture, decor + fashion so Austinites can shop small

Furnishing or redecorating your space? Refreshing your wardrobe? Say goodbye to evenings lost to scrolling through countless websites and social media accounts.

Attic, a local shopping tool that focuses on indie businesses, has launched in Texas. It makes finding just the right coffee table or the perfect handbag so much easier.

This "visual search engine" helps you discover independent stores, dealers, and boutiques in the area, allowing you to support local businesses by having a single online destination to identify stores and products.

Attic Austin-San Antonio includes more than 12,000 furniture, home decor and clothing/fashion products from over 60 independent stores, with everything from coffee mugs to credenzas to clutches.

The website's unique technology continually indexes products from local stores, adding new items daily. Unearth great finds by browsing, and discover even more with searches like "sunglasses," "1980s dress," "midcentury dining chairs," and "teapot," for example.

"Shopping local means you're supporting the independent retailers that make the community character-rich and distinct from other areas," says its founder, Tarek Anandan. "It has some nice environmental benefits, too."

Founded in 2015, Attic already exists in such major markets as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC.

The expansion to the Austin-San Antonio region comes at a time when small retail businesses throughout the country — especially brick-and-mortar stores — are facing extraordinary challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ongoing trend in growth of big-box, national retailers.

Attic, by driving thousands of online shoppers to small businesses every month, hopes to help defend against these forces.

Shoppers in Austin and San Antonio can expect to unearth treasures from Revival Vintage, American Drifter, Feathers Boutique, Kiss My Att Vintage, Moss Designer Consignment, and Little Stars Vintage, to name only a few.

You can view a complete listing of the stores that ATTIC currently indexes here, and they expect to add more local, independent stores in the future.