Traveling to New York City to find inspiration. Hand selecting 5,000 pieces of merchandise. Determining prices for all of these items. Poring over paint colors. This is how Nicole Fountain spent her summer.

Fountain is part of Students in Free Enterprise, an organization based out of Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, which will open a thrift store in Marshall Square Mall with the Rescue Mission next month. The thrift store, named 3fifteen, will operate in conjunction with Café Kubal, a coffee shop.

Students have been working tirelessly throughout the summer to prepare for a soft launch that will take place Friday.  The store’s grand opening will take place Sept. 19.

As project manager, Fountain said she has been involved in everything from picking out the flooring and ceiling fixtures of the store to selecting merchandise from the Rescue Mission’s warehouse.

The store will sell men and women’s clothing, costumes, designer goods, jewelry, furniture and home goods, said Fountain, a retail management and marketing major.

SIFE is a student organization that takes on several projects a year in which students work with for-profit, nonprofit or student organizations to teach and help implement business and financial concepts into these projects, according to the group’s website.

The group is currently working on nine or 10 projects involving organizations that range from social and environmental to economic, said president Camellia Loojune, a senior accounting major. But regardless of the type of project involved,SIFE always works to make sure the project can someday be self-sufficient.

“Our mission is basically teaching a man how to fish instead of giving him one for the day,” Loojune said.

The Rescue Mission, a nonprofit organization that works to aid the homeless and hungry, operates several thrift stores called Thrifty Shopper stores. The stores sell donated items and all profits go back to the organization, said Liz Poda, director of marketing for the Rescue Mission.

SIFE began working with the Rescue Mission last year to revamp the way its thrift stores were run. Students worked to improve supply chain logistics and store management. During the course of several months, SIFE saved the Rescue Mission $500,000 while also increasing sales, said President-elect Spencer Herbst, a junior finance and management major.

Students have been involved in 3fifteen from the very beginning, when they first pitched the idea to the Rescue Mission. After working to improve the Thrifty Shopper stores for several months, SIFE students became interested in opening a new kind of thrift store catering to students.

SIFE students decided it would be great to actually incorporate a store into SU’s campus because many students rely on the Salvation Army and other thrift shops to find clothing items for costumes or just to shop for fun.

“So we thought the best idea would be to have one right on campus,” Fountain said.

3fifteen is specifically targeted toward college students and pulls inspiration from trendy vintage shops, creating a coffee shop hangout that will appeal to a new demographic.

“This store is a completely rebranded idea,” Herbst said. “It’s being called 3fifteen for the actual area code, 315, and they wanted to make it something more than just your regular Thrifty Shopper store so it would make it more appealing to students.”

The addition of Café Kubal also makes the thrift store unique. Café Kubal and the Rescue Mission have worked together in the past. The two are “like-minded” organizations that are involved in bettering the community, so the opportunity to work together seemed like a great fit, Poda said.

“We think the idea of thrift store shopping and being able to grab your coffee or snack is a neat way to spend some time,” Poda said.

If parents are in town, and students want to shop, their parents can sit and have a cup of coffee in the meantime, she added. Or, if students are running to class and grab a beverage, they’ll make a note to check out 3fifteen at a later time.

Though 3fifteen is targeted toward a new audience, it will operate like the other Thrifty Shopper stores, with all proceeds going back to the Rescue Mission, Loojune said.

“The mission hasn’t changed. It’s just that this store is specifically catered toward the college-age market,” she said.

The store will also provide an opportunity for students in the Syracuse community to give back. Whether students choose to volunteer their time working at the store or donate merchandise, there are several ways for students to get involved and help out a good cause, Herbst said.

This year, the Rescue Mission will celebrate its 125^th anniversary.Poda, director of marketing for the organization, said this makes it the perfect time to open 3fifteen.

“The fact that we’re opening 3fifteen this year is really significant because it shows how we’re expanding,” she said. “We’re reaching out to a new group, who will ultimately help The Rescue Mission with our efforts to end homelessness and hunger, so that’s very important to us.”

Through research, The Rescue Mission found that thrift store shopping is popular among students. So when a property became available in Marshall Square Mall, it made sense to seize the opportunity, Poda said.

“We knew that the enrollment at Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF was high and that we would have a great customer population there,” Poda said. “It all just kind of came together.”

Published on August 21, 2012 at 10:08 pm

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris