The university’s chapter of Her Campus, an online magazine designed to empower college women, ran a thrift and craft sale in the Student Center Thursday afternoon.
Previously, the organization held four thrift sales since the fall 2022 semester, where members and external entities donated clothes to the sale.
Aislinn Foran, Her Campus president and junior communications major, said she first generated the idea of hosting a thrift sale several years ago.
“It had been an idea that I had since I joined the club, but then once I became president, I felt like I could actually put it in, and it became less of a recommendation and more of something we actually wanted to do, and it was a huge hit,” Foran said.
In the first thrift sale, Her Campus ended up making around $4,000 and split the revenue between their organization and the clothes donors.
“It honestly helped us a lot as a club to fundraise more,” Foran said. “We were able to do even better events for our members. We go to New York in the summer for Her Conference, and we were able to offer a discount and stuff like that. So once that one really blew up, we kept doing it after that.”
Gabriella Adkins, Her Campus event coordinator and junior fashion merchandising major, said she was initially excited about pursuing the idea because of the sustainability aspect of the sale which encourages students to shop ethically and responsibly.
“I’m a fashion major with a minor in sustainability, and so when [Foran] first came up with the idea I was like, ‘This will be really good to promote sustainability,’” Adkins said. “For the first one, we had a big PowerPoint and just talked about different ways to be sustainable.”
All clothes and crafts were sold for under $10 in an effort to make the clothes affordable for college students. Items under certain brands such as Lululemon were priced on the higher side to help the students who donated make more income based on their donations.
“That’s the goal,” Foran said. “We want to help people shop sustainably, but then we also want our members to make money because sometimes it’s hard to get a job in college and any extra money is helpful, and it’s good for us, too.”
This sale was the first time Her Campus included crafts made by members that shoppers could purchase.
“We had a big board meeting, and we were thinking what we should do next semester, and we kind of thought of the idea that instead of a thrift sale, we could do more of a flea market sale,” Adkins said. “This was kind of our way of testing it out.”
Foran said Her Campus board members plan on partnering in the future with the Creator Collective, a new organization that brings students together to create an abundance of creative work, including art, photography and film. They hope to work on the flea market concept with Creator Collective to sell items like jewelry, crafts, books and a larger variety of clothing.
“We are hoping to collab with the Creator Collective that time, so hopefully getting more clothing, more masculine clothing, because we have a lot of feminine clothing,” Foran said. “We had paintings, crochet items and stickers, but hopefully a lot more to come in the future.”
Kayla Gleason is a reporter. Contact her at kgleaso1@kent.edu.