Mosaic Collective Launches New Thrift Store To Fight Injustice

In a collaborative effort to give back to the local community, Rebranded Society and Mosaic Collective held a Thrift and Sip event April 8 from 5-8 p.m. at Atelier Studio & Gathering Space in Lynchburg.

Jennifer Olson, who founded Rebranded Society and Mosaic Collective in February 2021, said the organization’s aim for the event was to raise money for nonprofits.

Rebranded and Mosaic raised $10,000 last year to fund the building of safe homes in Lynchburg. The organization matched that success this year in clothing sales, raising $12,000 at the end of the day.

“In starting Rebranded, it just came from realizing … people like the idea of donating to a thrift shop that has a bigger purpose behind it,” Olson said. “They want to help fight human trafficking, and this is a great way for them to get involved.”

Rebranded and Mosaic will donate its proceeds from the event to its partner store called New Creation in Harrisonburg, Virginia. New Creation works with artisans in Moldova who create products and do a lot of wholesale. The store started raising money to help families coming from Ukraine into Moldova to get supplies such as food and diapers.

While she is starting with 10% of profits donated to nonprofits every quarter, Olson shared their long-term goal is to eventually donate 100% of the proceeds from the event to nonprofits.

“For this event, we will donate to these families. We’re going on a quarter-by-quarter basis. For the second quarter, we’re going to continue to donate to New Creation so the money can go to families. From then on, we’ll continue to just vet the organizations that we want to partner with,” Olson said.

Olson said the thrift shop really took off after doing several big events in the past.

“Instead of constantly doing these large events because they’re just very high caliber, high energy, lots of people involved kind of thing, we focused on starting this thrift shop,” she said. 

Both Rebranded and Mosaic encourage the community to get involved by donating to help fight against human trafficking and raise money for organizations. According to Olson, the thrift shops try to source from the most popular and sustainable brands.

“All the clothes have to be either donated or repurposing old clothes from (stores) like the Goodwill bins or something, but we try to source from a lot of the popular brands like Free People, Nike, Altar’d State (and) Lululemon who tend to mostly have sustainable practices,” Olson said.

If they do receive products with rips and stains in them, their goal is to make sure the items get repurposed rather than ending up in a landfill. 

“We just want to put 100% of that back into recycling in some way, so whether it’s donating to other organizations that repurpose fabric, or repurposing the fabrics on our own, we kind of have that overarching goal to never put it back where we know it’s going to a landfill,” Olson said.

Although the store does not have a physical shopping location, people can shop online and come to the store’s pop-up events.

“We have a goal to open a brick and mortar somewhere in the Lynchburg area hopefully in the next year and a half or so, depending how things go,” Olson said.

Olson wants Rebranded located close to Mosaic Collective to create the ultimate boutique shopping experience.

“People will be able to shop in Mosaic, get those survivor-made products, shop for home décor, gifts, all that kind of stuff,” Olson said “And then next to it would also be this thrift shop, like a boutique shopping experience with these clothes we are giving back.”

“Every week, we’re going to do a different drop, and then this event this weekend is kind of like our kickoff event for it to kind of just tell people what we’re doing, how they can get involved,” Olson said.

Those who want to donate can drop off items at 409 Fifth St., where Mosaic Collective is located.

woolwine is a feature reporter.