About Us

Lonna’s Story

I started thrifting as a young girl in south east Kentucky. My mother was a single mom of 5 children. She had to be savvy in order to keep a roof over our head, while keeping us fed and clothed. She would connect with other mothers who had daughters a little older than me, and they would let us come into their homes to shop their closets of items that they no longer wanted or had out grown. I always had a love of fashion for the body and of the home, and when I entered high school, I was chosen to become a member of a southern department store chain “Teen Board.” It was a wonderful opportunity to work with other talented teens from other high schools to learn to stage, write, and model in fashion shows, while I also learned the basics of running a retail operation. We were very involved in the community, which is where I learned the value of giving back. In college, I studied fashion and retail merchandising along with business. I hung up my retail hat for many years to move to Michigan and raise a family, but as the kids got older, I decided to get back into the retail world again. I answered a blind ad for a small boutique in Rochester. I was hired to manage a small start-up resale shop that was charity based, and there, my friends, is where I became alive by drowning in this all-consuming business. After 8 years, the charity organization I was managing decided to get out of the retail sector of fundraising. With the connections, experience, and staff already in place, I hired a lawyer, wrote a business plan, and with the grace of God we are still here 14 years later. It has been my pleasure to work with my excellent staff, the community, the customers, and of course the backbone of this business our donors! I have had the experience of working in multi-million-dollar homes and homes of the blue-collar work force, their needs were the same as they wanted someone to take their much-loved treasures and find them a good home so they could start a new path. The stories I could tell are endless but they all end with the same passion shared throughout their lives.