OSCAR O’SHEA ON OPENING STORE CANDY

If you haven’t heard about Oscar O’Shea yet, I’m sure you would’ve stumbled across his work, or something he’s been a part of. Oscar’s got quite a lot on. Starting off—he’s a film-maker, photographer and director, producing short films and many a music video for big names such as CLAMM and These New South Whales. This has led him to an appreciation of culture and tangible experiences. He then, under the alias of MOM, began to publish books, curate events and exhibitions over the last three and a bit years. Which then led to the establishing of MOM Gallery, which pretty much brings us to now—where he opens up the doors to a new physical space; Candy—a cafe, a shop, a place to hang. 

Oscar has invited a total of seven brands along for the ride—record store Lulu’s, Fiend Book Shop, skateboard brand Hoddle, Radio Eyewear, Hillvale Photo Lab, Steel City Dance Discs, as well as his own brand MOM. At Candy, they all share the rent and are able to take home 100% of their own earnings, whilst creating a collaborative physical retail space. He’s been able to pretty much turn a traditional wholesaling store slash concept store on its head, where each small business can work together & support each other. We caught up with Oscar a couple weeks back on our brief trip to Melbourne. I stopped by his place to chat with him about his new shop venture Candy—officially opening this Friday night!! Be there tomorrow at 6pm. From there, Candy will be open everyday 8am - 3pm.

WANDERER: So how did Candy come to be? Was it something that you've wanted to do for a while?

OSCAR: No, not at all. Candy is a product of essentially saying yes to a bunch of random things I didn't know I wanted to do. The gallery [MOM Gallery] came from a conversation with Dan Stewart who runs Lulu's with a bunch of friends. He reached out to me one day and was like, Hey, we've got this space out the back of the shop. You've been talking about wanting to put on exhibitions, do you wanna just take it? So I did and had no idea what I was doing. It somehow worked and slowly got better and better and became something I didn't wanna stop. It then got to a point where Lulu's wanted to move on and it was the same thing where I was just like, okay – now there's this other opportunity in front of me to have another space and what do I wanna do with that? 

What has been the motivation to create the store?

I think Candy for me is an opportunity that can also maybe put me in a position that has a bit more structure as well as financial stability so that I can continue doing all these other things that I love. But then I had to think of a way to tie it back into all the stuff I'm doing? So Candy is like evolving every moment and once it opens, I think it's gonna still be evolving every second. I'm still pretty unsure of what it's gonna be, all I know is that I just want it to be a new space to prop other people up. To me everything that's physical feels really good, so having a physical space just feels really important. So if I can create a space that allows these small brands to have a space where they have the freedom to sell their products and do what they want, I think that'll be really helpful. It's something I've always wanted for myself running a small company. And then on top of that I can do something as simple as selling coffees and sandwiches to put a little bit of money in my pocket and not have to monetise and sacrifice my other creative pursuits that are really important to me. But yeah, opening a cafe is something I've never thought about for one second. I still don't know how it's happening.

How do you just trust yourself with it all? Where you're just like I'm doing this.

I've got so many great friends around me and so many people that are coming in to help with the build. I've got my really good friend Archie who drums for floodlights, he's going to be managing the hospo side of it. I'm just pulling in all these friends that know what they're doing because I know nothing about hospitality. You know, I've worked in a couple cafes when I was younger but it's not where my brain sits. Like, you can hand me any cup of coffee and I'm going to be happy.

What’s the concept behind Candy?

There aren't many spaces around where someone like a young person can come and sit and feel comfortable.

Like a skate shop kind of vibe?

Exactly. We have Hoddle Skateboards coming in as one of the main vendors and we're gonna try and create that kind of space. I want a spot that feels culturally important. Where kids can come in, sit down and hang out. Which comes back to what I'd do at Lulu's: you'd go in there to buy records, but also you were there because you wanted to hang around and see Coco, Bradford, Ben and Dan behind the desk and chat to them a little bit because they were people you looked up to so much. I’m hoping it can be a space that can continue doing that. Where kids can come in, and see people that maybe they look up to 'cause that's the idea is getting people to work in the space that do have a contribution to the culture right now. It's just more of a collaborative environment, where we have apparel, records, books, accessories, film and then coffee and sandwiches. But we'll see, I'm still unsure exactly how it's all gonna sit.

I feel like the intention behind it, and what you're already doing is just gonna make it work anyway.

There's so many different ways I can take it, I'm already realising and so I'm trying to just figure out a way I can do all that. There's so many people doing so many cool things and just having a physical space feels really lucky. So it's like, how can I just put it all in there and hopefully have a spot that's like, feels really important in regards to a place maybe people can gain access to people doing really cool things whilst also being somewhere you can sit and like relax and have a cup of coffee at an affordable price and be around cool brands.