IU students can sell their own clothing brands as part of a partnership started this school year with local Bloomington vintage store Eclaras. 22-year-old Schyler Marolf opened the physical store on South Walnut Street in September 2024, thinking of the initial idea for the business in June of that year. Eclaras offers space for over a dozen individual sellers to showcase their brands.
Marolf, who moved from Greenwood, Indiana, to Bloomington, connected with IU’s “Bring Your Own Business" in August 2024. IU alumna Mia Liss and IU senior Bella Habash created BYOB in August 2022 as IU’s first yard sale club. Now, BYOB focuses on entrepreneurship and building student businesses.
Reese Stephens, IU senior and BYOB president, said Eclaras sponsors the organizations’ events and provides a space in the store for six new sellers a month. Through the store, students get exposure for their brands, and some have become permanent full-time sellers outside of BYOB.
“We were instantly excited about it because we had been discussing a similar topic, and she already had the space,” Stephens said. “It's hard to buy a building with club money versus having an individual business owner, so that simplified a lot of things for us.”
Community members have told her they appreciate the variety of local sellers at Eclaras, Marolf said. Sellers often thank her for giving them a space to sell their clothes. Marolf said that despite the variety, she makes it clear to her sellers that not every item should be expensive.
“I want every person of every size, body, budget to be able to find something in there and that's been really cool,” Marolf said. “That's stayed the same since we opened, that everyone's been able to find something, like we've got the range.”
Aside from selling second-hand clothing, Eclaras also provides some of Bloomington’s unhoused population with clothes and food donated by some of the sellers. Marolf said that some of the community members who received her donations have returned to her store to tell her they’ve found permanent housing and won’t be seeing her very much anymore. Marolf said she has a few local businesses lined up to help her in the future to set people up in a hotel, about every month, for a few nights and get them food and clothes.
Aside from the chance to sell their products, Stephens said the partnership gives students valuable real-world experience running a small business. Students can do market research and see what sells and what doesn’t at $10 a booth.
IU junior Jenna Rinehart named her vintage clothing brand Vito’s Vault after her cat, Vito. Rinehart started selling clothes in summer 2024 and has been operating part-time through BYOB ever since. She recently moved into a permanent spot at Eclaras.
“I made a good amount of sales in my spot with BYOB, so I wanted to expand my business a little more, and I really like Schyler and her employees,” Rinehart said. “It's just a great space, and I want to help her business grow.”
Rinehart sources most of the clothes she sells from the Goodwill Outlet Store. Rinehart said she prefers shopping at the outlet because of its smaller customer traffic, which means more clothing goes unpurchased for long stretches of time.
“I feel like I'm almost doing something better for the world because I know that the regular Goodwills are more accessible to people who are low income,” Rinehart said.
Rinehart said that despite her success with selling through Eclaras, she is still learning how to manage a small business.
“It can be hard sometimes because a big part of where you learn is making mistakes, but I know that is how it is,” Rinehart said. “Even just talking to new people every day, making new connections, it's great, and I love being able to have a community where I can talk to other clothing sellers and learn from them and see how they run their business.”
Working with Eclaras is just one of many opportunities offered to student business owners through BYOB, Stephens said. IU freshman Megan Rose, owner of clothing brand Goldfish Vintage, said every part of BYOB, from registration to getting the discounted booth at Eclaras, had been nothing short of exciting.
“Everything that they do is so friendly to college student budgets, which I really appreciate, the registration for BYOB is very affordable and so is renting out a booth at Eclaras,” Rose said. “Doing it made me realize how much more accessible it is than I thought it was, like I didn't realize how cost-efficient it would be.”
