Two grade 11 students at Harrison Trimble High School are turning a school program into an opportunity.
They’ve launched Trendy Soul, an online thrift store.
Co-Founder Jenna Bastarache says, “We repurpose clothing. Either we will just resell it or we will take our own spin on it. 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 which is offered for 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.
Morgan Arbeau is other Co-Founder of Trendy Soul. She says, “Right now we are mainly focusing on women’s clothes and teen’s clothes and eventually we might get into men’s clothes.”
Most of the clothing they have at this point, was donated from friends and family, but Bastarache says they’d be happy to accept from the public as well, “We are still taking donations, and if you would like to make a donation, just contact us on our social media.”
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.
Bastarache adds, “We both did Brownies, so we were friends then. 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 and Trendy Soul website, which will be up and running soon.
https://www.facebook.com/TrendySoulStore/posts/109519441207428
Arbeau doesn’t view this as just a school project, “We really want to make something of this,” she adds.
As for the name, “Trendy Soul” Arbeau says her dad came up with it, “We fell in love with it. We were looking at names for two weeks straight and then my dad said ‘Trendy Soul’ and we decided that was the one. It just clicked.”
Bastarache adds, “We have the business up and running with inventory, and will try to have ten products every week or two weeks. If this goes smoothly and how we would like it to, we definitely want to keep pursuing this.”
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