Tory Shanklin and Brittani Clancy at FashionPact store.
Brittani Clancey was a stay-at-home Anchorage mom with a taste for fashion. When the youngest of her four children went off to kindergarten, Clancey had a little more time on her hands to pursue a dream. The Anchorage-born-and-raised fashionista decided to start a business, one that would give back to her community.
She opened a thrift shop on the eastern end of downtown, with a business model that’s designed to boost revenue for local charities, Victims for Justice among them.
Her shop, located at 575 Ingra Street, is called FashionPact. It sells a wide variety of gently used clothes, accessories, household items and more. Clancey calls it a “resale boutique.”
Boutique or not, what sets FashionPact apart from other thrift shops is that a large share of everything Clancey earns she donates to over 50 local nonprofits serving Anchorage. The nonprofits are all homegrown, she said.
“Being from Anchorage, local is really important to me,” Clancey said.
Everything in the store sells for five dollars. Whoever donated the item gets to choose a nonprofit they want a dollar of the proceeds to go to and the buyer gets to do the same. With this formula, Clancey keeps three dollars and the other two go to charity.
“The charities basically don’t have to do anything. They sign up with us and they continue receiving a check each month,” she said.
Clancey uses custom software to track everything in the store via QR code. Once an item is purchased, the software directs the funds to be disbursed once a month to the appropriate nonprofit.
“I don’t think this model would be possible without it,” Clancey said.
Clancey counts on community members to donate items. Things are going well since she opened in June but she anticipates that things will slow down after the holidays. She urges anyone with gently used, fashionable clothes to donate them and shop, especially in January and February.
“We need a lot of volume. We need people coming in to shop and we need people coming in to donate. We have to sell a couple hundred items every day to stay in business.”
Victims for Justice executive director Victoria Shanklin recently stopped by FashionPact to thank Clancey for what she is doing for the community.
“Our organization has already benefitted greatly from FashionPact. In fact, it puts larger programs like AmazonSmile to shame! This is a perfect example of how for-profit can merge with non-profit to really make a difference in our community. This is transformative for Anchorage and we can’t thank Brittney enough. Visit! Donate! Shop!,” Shanklin said.
To see a list of the nonprofits that FashionPact supports, visit the shop’s website.
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