It’s that time of year again, when you’ve accumulated three seasons of clothes and you can no longer close your drawers or remember the color of your carpet. If that sounds familiar, don’t even think about June, when you’ll have to pack it all up and pray that you can zip your suitcases.
Many Northwestern students are getting a head start on their end-of-year clean outs by selling clothes to local resale stores, including Crossroads Trading Co. (1730 Sherman Ave.) and Plato’s Closet (9448 Skokie Blvd.). Both stores are seeing major traffic right now from NU students and Evanston residents. “It’s been really busy since spring break,” says Jessica Eboreime, assistant manager at Crossroads. “And it will be when the semester is over, too.”
Both stores require that clothes be clean and look new. So that shirt you got in middle school hidden in the back of your closet probably won’t make you any moolah. “We have a rigorous buy process,” says Matthew Goldman, a sales associate at Plato’s Closet. “We don’t want dirty, filthy clothes. Everything has to be washed, and it must be in the current style. We look at things that have been in the mall in the last year and a half.”
Each store offers money on the spot. Plato’s Closet pays 30 to 40 percent of the item’s selling price, and Crossroads provides 35 percent in cash upfront or 50 percent in trading. Representatives from both stores say prices vary depending on several aspects of the clothes, including the brand name. “A lot of things factor into the prices, including how well it sells,” Eboreime says. “We take into consideration how much a retail store would sell an item for.”
Northwestern students are using both stores to clean out their closets and fill their pockets. Weinberg junior Alex Valinsky has sold clothes back at both places. “You have to look really hard at Plato’s Closet for quality stuff,” Valinsky says. “But at Crossroads, they do a really great job of displaying the higher-end items. They’ll display a Kate Spade skirt on the wall so you can see the size and price easily.”
Before your closet explodes, you might want to make an appraisal of its contents. But that sweat-stained baseball tee from eighth grade belongs in only one place: the trash.
