Moncton High School Students Launch Online Thrift Store
MONCTON – Two Grade 11 students at Harrison Trimble High School are turning a project in a school program into a real-world business – Trendy Soul, an online thrift store.
“We repurpose clothing – either we will just resell it or we will take our own spin on it,” says co-founder Jenna Bastarache says. “If we see potential in the product, we’ll either bleach it, paint it, put chains on it, anything that will make it look more trendy.”
Bastarache says it’s a new business that started through the IDEA Centre, a program offered to high school students through NBCC.
“It’s an entrepreneurship program and you get mentors and sponsors and they just help guide you through to making your own business.”
Their mission is to find fashionable preloved clothing to give you a new outlook on stylish clothes.
“Right now we are mainly focusing on women’s clothes and teen’s clothes and eventually we might get into men’s clothes,” says co-founder Morgan Arbeau.
Most of the clothing they have at this point was donated from friends and family, but Bastarache says they’d be happy to accept donations from the public as well.
“If you would like to make a donation, just contact us on our social media,” she says.
The idea came to the students during the pandemic.
“Over quarantine, I always wanted to find a thrift store online. We both have a love for fashion and I have a love for crafting so we kind of put the two together,” Arbeau says.
“We both did Brownies, so we were friends then,” says Bastarache adds. “In high school, we had a marketing class together and we would always do our projects together and our teacher kept pulling us aside and telling us about the IDEA Centre, and how well we did our projects together. Ever since we started Trendy Soul, we’ve just been really close.”
Things have been going pretty smoothly so far. They have set up an Instagram account, Facebook Page and the Trendy Soul website, which will be up and running soon.