Lucy Biachiochi shops for a new sweater. Anna Stirton | Collegian 

Hillsdale’s newest resale store, 517 Thrift Shop, opened in September after more than a year of preparation.

The shop’s owner, Andrea Dixon, said the store has been a dream of hers since childhood.  The thrift shop offers a variety of refurbished clothing, furniture, dishware, and decor at low prices. 

Growing up, Dixon said she remembers helping her mom put on yard sales and hoping to do something similar on a larger scale. For the past five years, Dixon has been looking for an opportunity to start working on her dream. That opportunity finally arrived when her parents purchased a building on the corner of Willow and Oak streets and offered to rent part of it to her.

“My dad was like, ‘Hey, you want to do your thrift store?’” Dixon said. “I’m like, heck yeah!”

The building was just the first piece of the puzzle. For nearly two years leading up to opening day, Dixon said, she would head to the store’s space after her day job and spend the evenings planning layout, buying shelving, building racks, and searching for merchandise. While some of her merchandise is donated, Dixon said much of it she purchases herself, sometimes buying entire yard sales.

“I didn’t really tell anybody that I was doing it,” Dixon said. “I just lowered my hours at my other job and did it pretty much by myself here.”

Hillsdale College junior Jacqueline Roth, who recently visited 517 Thrift Shop for the first time to find a new outfit, said she was impressed by the business. 

“You walk in and it’s really cutely decorated with the items that are for sale,” Roth said. “The owner did a really good job of putting everything together aesthetically, and everything was pretty well organized. It was easy to navigate the store and explore the different items available.”

Dixon said that she hopes to reach more college students as the business finds its rhythm.

“I definitely want to do college days in the future, when we do like 20% off for students,” Dixon said.

Roth said she believes college towns like Hillsdale benefit from thrift stores. 

“I think it gives students another way to find high-quality items on very limited budgets,” she said.

While 517 Thrift Shop is not a nonprofit, Dixon said she hopes to invest in the surrounding community through her business. She plans to help pay for children’s community sports over the summer and to donate to local initiatives for breast cancer awareness.

Unlike other thrift stores, Dixon said she makes sure to wash all the clothes and dishes and fix anything that is broken so people can find items at a relatively low price, while still clean and operable.

“I want people to be like, ‘OK, I can wear this when I get home,’ or, ‘I can put this on my kids,’” Dixon said. “Even things like putting batteries in toys if they need them is something I make sure to do,” she added, “because there are people who can buy a toy for their kids, but then they can’t afford to go buy the battery.”

Store employee and Hillsdale resident Jadyn Murphy said that one of her favorite things about working in the thrifting industry is the dynamic nature of the enterprise.

“One unique thing is that we can kind of negotiate prices on things we sell,” Murphy said. “If it maybe is not quite up to quality, most bigger companies would just toss it, but we can fix it or lower the price.”

However, the negotiating element of the business model can also be challenging, according to Dixon.

“Probably the biggest thing I’ve had to just let go of is people’s opinions on my store,” Dixon said. “I usually don’t really care about what people think, but it has actually really bugged me when some people come in here and argue and criticize the pricing or stuff like that.”

While most shoppers’ responses have been positive and supportive, Dixon admitted that she has realized she can’t please everyone. 

“It hurts my feelings, because I work really hard and a lot of hours were taken away from my kids and my family,” Dixon said. “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what they say, because it’s going great.”

Despite challenges ranging from financial obstacles and time constraints to difficult customers, Dixon said she is grateful for how everything has worked out.

“Even though I didn’t have everything planned out at first, I just started because I knew this is what I wanted,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to go for it and do it, and trust that everything will fall into place.”