It’s no secret that the secondhand clothing market has skyrocketed lately, especially in Southern California. Just think about every time you’ve complimented someone on a particularly charming item and how often you hear, “Thanks, I thrifted it.”
The United States secondhand market has grown 117% since 2018, according to research from Capital One, which also estimates that the market will climb to $59 billion this year compared to $27 billion in 2020. Looking at this boom, Capital One’s research also found that older teenagers and young adults are much more in tune to this movement.
That’s why Project ReWear, based in Thousand Oaks, is hoping to rethink the secondhand market to reach new customers in a more curated fashion. Kimberly Lau and Linda Young founded Project ReWear, a boutique style secondhand store with a focus on children’s clothing, with the goal of driving sustainability in a more family-friendly shopping experience.
For Young, it’s about “bridging the gap” for people who may have stigmas or preconceived notions about thrifting such as clothes being dirty or stylistically stale. Modeling the store to look like a boutique is a big driver for reinventing that mindset. By opting for organization and thoughtful styling examples, Young and Lau say many customers can’t even tell they’re in a secondhand store when walking in.
While many enjoy the traditionally chaotic set up of thrift stores, Young and Lau find that busy parents can find them overwhelming as it can take lots of time to comb through and find the right pieces. Plus, many of these stores aren’t geared toward children.
Since parents are the ones purchasing clothes for their children, marketing toward them is important, but Project ReWear is also interested in instilling a positive experience with thrifting for kids, too. This includes shedding light on the environmental impacts of fast fashion which promotes cheaper, synthetic fabrics known to shed microplastics.
“The main goal is to get in the minds of these kids and their families to start getting them to think about what they’re putting on their body, not just what they’re putting in their body and how that is affecting where we live and how we live,” Young said.
About 75%, of Project ReWear’s clothing is for children with racks tastefully spread throughout the store according to gender, dressiness and season. Encircling the kids’ collections, the remainder of the merchandise features a swath of unique pieces for adults in displays up against the walls of the store.
Project ReWear also has an online presence the founders are working to grow, although, the vast majority of sales are coming from the brick-and-mortar operation.
‘Planet first, profit second’
In light of the more recent popularity with thrifting – along with potential inflationary costs of running a business – 71% of thrifters have noticed higher prices at thrift stores in the past year, USA Today reports.
Meanwhile, Lau and Young are committed to low prices at Project ReWear with most children’s items priced at under $10. This is because of its mission to save items “from the last point of contact before they go to a landfill, are incinerated or sent overseas,” Lau says, adding that at thrift stores, 85% of the clothing ends up in these places if it’s not selling.
“You have to charge less and hope that you can sell more,” Lau says. “It’s a very different business model. It’s planet first, profit second.”
Responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions – higher than air travel and maritime shipping combined – the fashion industry raises environmental and economic concerns. Numerous reports illustrate that over 11 megatons of textile waste have been dumped into landfills annually since 2017 – up 80% since 2000.
Landfill diversion is a major priority for Project ReWear. In the year leading up to the store’s opening, Lau and Young complied 30,000 items for Project ReWear’s collection that otherwise would have been disposed of from other thrift stores, estate sales, or even checking with local schools for unclaimed lost-and-found items. The store also works to highlight impact by weighing each customer’s items at checkout and letting them know how many pounds of clothing that person saved from ending up in a landfill.
Between its opening in December and March, through sales alone, the store has diverted 716 pounds of clothing. Lau and Young’s goal for the store’s one year anniversary is to divert one whole trash truckload, which is about 8,000 pounds of clothing, from landfills.
In addition to its clothing sourcing, Project ReWear incorporates sustainable practices across all aspects of the business. For example, everything in the store is recycled or repurposed, including the clothing tags which are made of Monopoly money and playing cards.
Having launched the business less than a month before the wildfires that hit L.A. earlier this year, Lau and Young also created an #LAStrong campaign where they printed an original design onto recycled T-shirts and donated 100% of profits from the sales to the California Community Foundation, Pasadena Humane and the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation’s Emergency Wildfire Fund.
