that Saturday morning was crazy.

everything that you've been working on for the last two years is gone in three seconds flat.

I got a call that my roof had collapsed.

at that moment, I had to make the choice of, I'm not letting down my customers.

I'm not letting down our community.

I'm not letting down these nonprofits.

We are moving forward.

I don't know what it looks like, but we'll find a way.

so this is the result of the roof collapse.

I love thrifting.

I just love having something different because then on top of not having a lot of thrifting in Alaska, there just wasn't a lot of shopping, period.

and I was a stay at home mom for ten years before I did this.

So it definitely marinated in my mind for a while before I jumped in and opened this thrift shop.

well, one of my favorite thrift stores growing up was owned by a local charity.

They were like a pet clinic.

And then they also had a thrift store on the side to help them raise funds.

so I shopped there often and then they eventually went out of business.

It turns out running a thrift store is a ton of work.

And so, you know, they're better off catering to the dogs and cats than they are running a thrift store.

I saw this as an ability to raise funds for many non-profits and allow them to keep doing what they're doing, not try to, you know, do their cause as well as run a thrift store on the side.

So the way Fashion Patch works is extremely original for a thrift store.

We use some high end technology, somebody can come in and they donate items, they designate a charity.

Each item that they bring in is coded with a QR code.

And then that ties back to the charity that they chose.

When that specific item sells, another person chooses a charity.

all in all we give 30% of each purchase back to charity.

So right now we have a list of about 100 nonprofits that people have to choose from when they shop at Fashion Pact.

The list has grown.

We started with a dozen, and we've added more on right now.

Our list of charities you can choose from is only local grassroot Alaskan charities.

We hope as we grow that we can be more inclusive and have even more charities join us as partners.

Fashion Pact has already donated $375,000 to local nonprofits.

And that was a huge milestone moment for me, right?

Because that's like such a big amount of money, I can't even imagine it.

Barely.

And so I definitely feel humbled.

And I feel grateful that everyone in our community has, like, stood behind me and has helped this thing happen.

Because as much as I want to take credit and say, look, what I did is this is this is a group effort.

This is a many components and the wonderful thing is it's working.

It's generating money.

I've had multiple nonprofits tell me that their Fashion Pact monthly donation is the biggest monthly recurring donation that they get, and they rely on those funds.

So honestly, I'm just I'm humbled.

I'm grateful.

And it is a team effort.

So that's how I feel is just so thankful that everyone's pitching in and doing it with me.