Every college student across America is looking to make some extra cash.
“Bring Your Own Business” is a new club on Indiana University’s campus this year. It hopes to bring together the student population and vintage sellers, offering both pirates a chance to benefit. The club is IU’s first and only yard sale club, which hosts a monthly event.
The first of these events was held this past September, and since then, BYOB has been able to hold an event every month for all Indiana students.
BYOB was started by two Indiana seniors, Bella Habash and Mia Liss. The club’s beginnings were humbling. Liss was tired of selling her clothes at large corporate thrift stores. She had sold a lot of her clothing in these stores in the past and always received very little money for it. Liss wanted this to change, so she set up a small booth in the tailgating fields.
Only a few people stopped by Liss’ table that day, which prompted the idea for something bigger.
“So, Mia and I have been friends for a while, and she said I’m tired of trying to sell my clothes at Plato’s,” Habash said. “I’m not getting any money, or they’ll take two things and give me ten bucks for it, and so she was like, kind of what if we organize something so we can start selling clothes or have people start selling clothes, and our target audience was kind of broke college students or people that were just trying to make money, and I mean it grew so much we started with like 10-15 Sellers, and it is just expanded into this, and it’s been cool”
Since then, Habash and Liss have worked on getting the club to take off. So far, that’s worked for BYOB.
Over Time, the club has amassed close to three thousand Instagram followers and gained a widespread reputation within the Bloomington fashion scene.
Mitch Cross is an Indiana Alum who owns and operates Frozen Vint, an online vintage shop in Bloomington.
Cross is one of many vendors who use these pop-up shops to sell their products. Frozen Vint mainly runs on Depop but is focused on selling vintage pieces for those in and around Bloomington. Cross has a wide variety of clothing, including old Indiana hoodies and vintage Carhartt jeans.
Like many others, Cross looks for these types of events to sell their merchandise and connect with his clients.
“One of my favorite things about the in-person events is just interacting with the people,” Cross said. “You get to see a lot of people that kind of share that similar fashion interest and nothing schooler than the job that I do. It’s a lot of just kind of like Time by myself, so it’s a cool way to get to see people and also admire the things that you picked up as well and smile when they see a crewneck that they want or something like that, that’s a really cool feeling.
Habahs and Liss started this club for people like Cross. A club like this allows everyone to win. It allows students to go out and buy a nice piece of clothing while benefiting small business owners. Not only that, but it also allows the community and the student population to connect through a shared passion.
Everyone wins, especially those selling, as they are allowed to make a few extra dollars.
“I mean, what more do college students want than money to spend right like nobody has money? We’re all broke college students in some way, shape, or form. By being able to participate in something like this, they can take that into their own hands and make whatever makes some Pocket Change, whether they’re selling stuff from their closet, which was what I was doing. Now, we even have sellers who actually like to make things. They have Etsy shops, and they are trying to start a business. It’s so cool to see people grow from here.”
BYOB’s next event is this April 14th. It will again be held at Dunn Meadow and is looking to raise three thousand dollars.
You can follow BYOB on their organization account and check out Fronze Vint on their Depop website.
