New thrift club opens store on campus

After a year of working to establish Augie Thrift, two juniors and their new club hosted their first shopping event for students on Feb. 8 on the lower west side of Tuve Hall.

Inside a cozy room decorated with strings of lights, half a dozen clothing racks stood full of shirts, dresses, pants, skirts and coats, sorted by gender preference and cost, awaiting student shoppers. Couches in the corner of the room allowed friends a space to socialize, and a previously dull common room came to life, transformed with activity. 

Augie Thrift purchased clothing racks with Augustana Student Association funding, and the student body donated the items displayed at the grand opening.

Junior Genna Rolfs said she attended the shopping event to support her friends and encourage others to do the same; however, Rolfs said she also knew it would simply be fun.

“And I just love thrifting, so [I] came to check it out,” Rolfs said.

The club creates a place on campus for students to access clothes and other reused items at a low price. More than 50 students and 10 Augustana staff members attended the shopping event, and all clothing items were sold for $10 or less.

According to co-leaders and juniors Libby Breckon and Grace Lenning, Augie Thrift has goals to promote and educate fellow students about sustainability, particularly through donation and reuse. Flyers around campus and bins in the laundry rooms of each dorm encourage students to give unneeded clothes a second chance instead of throwing them away. 

The plans for Augie Thrift solidified when Lenning needed to promote a project for her class, “Principles of Marketing” with business professor Matthew Willard, last spring. Until that class, the proposal had just been something casually tossed around among friends, but Lenning quickly realized the potential of the idea. 

“Oh, this could be a real thing. Do you want to do it with me?” Breckon asked Lenning in 2023. 

Over the past year, the group’s members have achieved a number of introductory goals: getting ASA’s approval, approaching Rick Tupper with Campus Safety about a space they could use and marketing their idea on social media. 

The proceeds from the thrift store will eventually be donated to other local environmentally minded organizations, such as the Big Sioux River Greenway Cleanup. Lenning said Augie Thrift would ultimately like to let students have a voice in deciding where the money will go each month.

“Once we get fully established, we won’t really have any costs,” Lenning said. “We want to be donating to other groups in Sioux Falls that share our ideals.”

Augie Thrift is now focusing on planning for its future. Lenning said the club is organizing a partnership with Augie Green for events during Earth Week and voicing ideas about potential end-of-year plans. One option involves redirecting the waste that move-out day creates. 

“When people move out of the dorms, they just chuck stuff in the dumpsters,” Lenning said. “We want to have a space where we can collect all that stuff.”