The new and undiscovered thrift stores opened up by Gen Z-ers

Founded by 23-year-old student Cheow Sue-Jane, her elder sister, and their parents, this family-run Instagram business donates a portion of its second-hand stock to communities in need.

Their 56-year-old father, who has worked in paper recycling for 18 years, had for a few years known through a contact in Japan about bales of unwanted clothing discarded by Japanese households that were likely to go to waste. However, it was only in 2021 that the family decided to act on it and start the enterprise.

The family bought 40 250kg bales of unwanted clothing from the recycling centre in Japan. They sort the goods by hand into four piles – commercially viable clothes; a pile of less trendy but good-condition pieces for donation; damaged and stained items for upcycling; and trash such as underwear. The items in the first pile – priced from $3 to $40 – are sold via their Instagram store and at physical pop-up sales on alternate months. They hope to have a permanent space in the future, so people can walk in any time.

The business has brought the sisters closer to the small but passionate community of second-hand advocates in Singapore – and to their own family. Once a cynic, their father is now the first to rummage through the bales when sorting for pop-ups, says Cheow with a laugh.

“We didn’t go into it thinking about money. It was just a thing we cared about and the added advantage is getting to meet people who share your cause.”

Shopping for guys can be hard enough, but it is even harder for them to shop second-hand. Hon Liang Lung, 20, knows this well. The founder of thrift store HonsiePonsie at #02-40A Queensway Shopping Centre started out curating pre-loved menswear to “provide an avenue for guys to shop second-hand”.

At local thrift stores, menswear usually comprises only a fifth of the selection and are not fashionable for people his age, he says. Taking things into his own hands, Hon started an online thrift store @honsieponsie while he was still in national service selling affordable, yet good quality second-hand clothing.

In Sept 2021, he joined a pop-up of small local businesses to sell curated pieces he had thrifted in Singapore. The event went well and gave him the capital and confidence to open a store in Nov. As business picked up, he turned to suppliers in the region. Today, he gets his wares from a mix of thrift suppliers – middlemen in the South-east Asian second-hand market who curate and sell items to thrift store owners – and 100kg bales, which come from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

His items, which include cargo pants, sweaters, shirts and jackets, are priced from $15 to $35 on average. Unwanted or unusable items are given to rework artists, or donated to mom-and-pop thrift shop owners he has befriended over the years.

“Clothes nowadays are made to get people to ‘buy new, buy more’. Things used to be made to last, with the intention that people were going to wear them for a long time.”

At this thrift store at 43 Arab Street, you can get pre-loved clothes for $5, $10, $15 or even for free – just pick out jackets, T-shirts and sweatshirts from the boxes labelled so.

Co-founders Hafiz Arif and Yazid Sadali, both 27, started the venture with the aim of giving unwanted clothing fresh life – Function Five is aptly named after the F5 key on the computer keyboard, which is the “refresh” function. The childhood friends did not come from well-to-do families and had to find their own way to be stylish and express themselves. At age 17, when the two men were in polytechnic, they began thrifting in Malaysia and saw how big the second-hand industry was there. It became a lifestyle for them.

Years later, they visited textile factories to source for suppliers and realised thrifting was a way to save clothes from landfills. Function Five purchases 50kg to 100kg bales from textile factories, which buy them from landfills. The founders go on sourcing trips every two to three months to Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia.

Function Five started out at a small shop unit at the 749 North Bridge Road in Feb 2021. Eight months later, it opened a second store – a two-storey space a stone’s throw away in Arab Street. Here, the first floor houses more everyday wear such as T-shirts, priced from $5 to $25. Items on this floor are unwashed. Upstairs is a section called Reworked Vintage Colosseum, with more curated and streetwear-style pieces priced from $35 to $100.

Among their regulars are a loyal group in their 60s and 70s and a bunch of “uncles” who ride Harley-Davidson motorbikes. But the customer base is overwhelmingly Gen Z and millennial, says social media manager Aliya Azhar, 24.

Observing that Gen Zers like herself are leading the charge in starting thrift stores these days, she says: “There are so many now selling a wide variety. I love this new generation because they’re more understanding about where thrift shops come from, why people thrift.”

A version of this story first appeared in The Straits Times.

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