Prairie Thrift, a non-profit thrift store located at 914 Main Street, will hold its grand opening on Saturday, April 25. The store will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Prairie Thrift is a donation-based thrift store governed by a seven-member Board of Directors and intentionally structured as a community initiative to reflect diverse perspectives.
The idea for Prairie Thrift originated with Delphina Baumann, one of the board members, who has built a career in nonprofit community work and has long enjoyed thrifting.
“I love thrifting,” she said. “I also used to be a board member of Second Mile, and usually when I go to a new place, one of the first things I will pull up is a thrift store.”
Baumann said the presence of multiple thrift stores in a community can create a sense of shared energy and connection, which helped inspire her to establish a new store in Grinnell.
“I also noticed if there are multiple thrift stores in a location, it’s even better, because there’s kind of a synergy that you build off of it. And then, when we lost a couple over the years, I thought, ‘Oh, we could definitely use one more thrift store,’” she said.
She also noted her interest in utilizing a downtown space that had been vacant for more than two years.
In an effort to engage with the broader Grinnell community, Baumann reached out to others who shared similar interests and goals.
“I approached quite a few of my friends and said, ‘Hey, would you like to start a thrift store for me? More importantly, it’s going to be a nonprofit.’ And everybody that I asked said yes.”
The seven board members bring a range of expertise to the project, including experience in property ownership and retail.
“We all have very different skill sets,” Baumann said of the board members. “A couple of them were building or owners of properties in the downtown area, commercial owners, and a couple of them were actually in the retail space. So that was important, because you get both sides of it, from the owner side to the tenant-relationship side,” she said.
Ren Lang, the newly hired store manager of Prairie Thrift, will oversee store operations, including sorting, selecting and displaying items. Lang has built her career in the vintage industry and previously owned Poweshiek Trading Post in Grinnell.
At Prairie Thrift, Lang hopes to apply her experience to create a curated shopping environment with a range of price points.
“Everything that is gonna come through, we’re gonna sell,” Lang said. “However, I think the way that you merchandise items, the way that you display things, will have more of a curated feel. We want it to feel a little bit more elevated, but at a very accessible price point for everyone.”
The store will offer affordable options, with some items priced as low as $4.
At the same time, Lang wants to include a selection of more curated pieces, utilizing her background in vintage retail.
“We’ll also have a selection of more curated pieces, you know, things we get in that are 100 percent natural fibers, vintage but we’re still going to be at an extremely accessible point. It’s not going to be vintage store pricing,” she said.
Prairie Thrift is currently accepting donations, and Baumann encourages students and community members to contribute.
The thrift store accepts donations from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Lang also expressed interest in collaborating with students and creatives in Grinnell.
“I’d like to collaborate with Gogue,” she said. “I’d like to collaborate with different students who do photography, who do fashion, have them come through and help make content. I’d like it to be very collaborative creatively with everyone in town.”
In addition, Prairie Thrift is seeking volunteers to support a variety of roles within the store.
“There are a lot of different ways that you can be a volunteer here,” she said. “Creatively, we want this to be a fun, collaborative space. So, you know, if you’re a photographer, a videographer, if you want to have some skills there, if you do social media, we want to make this a really fun environment.”
“We’re gonna have good music playing, gonna have a vibe here,” she added. “I would say start to get excited for there to be something to do in Grinnell again.”